Archive - February 24, 2022

  A friend who worked overseas and at HQ sent me this story of when he worked for Jack Vaughn as the Peace Corps Liaison Officer to the Department of State. • “I was invited to a meeting at State,” he wrote. “When I got into the room, there were some 15 different agency representatives seated around a large round table. The person at the head of the table was acting as its Chair — probably from State’s Intel Services. He posed this question: ‘Which agency here has access to what is going on in the villages of our world; which agency has people in the field that speak their languages; which agency has the most credibility with these villagers; which agency can report back to us on a regular basis in reference to what’s going on out there that we need to know about?’” “As he moved his finger . . .

Ukraine taught me a very Jewish concept: hope By Jeremy Borovitz, JTA (Ukraine 2010-12) • I watch what is happening in Ukraine and I feel helpless, scared for the state of the world, terrified for my friends and former students and anxious about the future of the place that I called home for nearly four years of my life. When I first arrived in Ukraine 12 years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer, I didn’t speak the language, was intimidated by the culture and was plagued by stories of pogroms and mass shootings that had penetrated the Jewish collective trauma. Imagine my surprise (not to mention the surprise of my family and friends back home in the United States) when it was Ukraine, and life in a small Ukrainian village, that led to my own spiritual awakening, which brought me closer to Torah, prayer and God, and which was the . . .