Jody Jacobs
Genesis Challenge Tikva Appeal
Fundraising for Tikva UK
Story
In 1993, Rabbi Shlomo Baksht arrived in Odessa to revive Jewish life in this former communist region. Seeking out the Jews who had remained, he established a small Jewish school and utilized educational and social programming to reach and mend this dwindling Jewish community. While working towards that goal, Rabbi Baksht discovered the plight of hundreds of local Jewish children, those without homes, those who had suffered abuse and neglect, those living on the streets, and those confined to bleak and sometimes even cruel institutional settings. In response, he secured an apartment, removed six Jewish children from a state orphanage, and created the first "children’s home”, the nucleus of what was to become Tikva.