On Tu B’Av, These Two Leaders Celebrate Love and Jewish Life in Ukraine
Love can find you anywhere — even a young Jewish leadership conference in Ukraine.
By The JDC Team | August 19, 2024
If there’s one thing Yura S.’s and Lesya F.’s story proves, it’s that Jewish life isn’t just a source of spiritual meaning, community, or important life skills — it can also be an avenue to romantic love. After meeting at a JDC-Hillel/JAFI Madrichim school in Odesa, Yura and Lesya, two young Ukrainian Jewish leaders, knew they had a special bond and fell deeply in love.
Today, they’re happily married and living in Kyiv, and Yura and Lesya have built their relationship around their beloved Jewish community — Lesya is acting director of Hillel Kyiv, while Yura serves as Hillel CASE’s (Central Asia Southeastern Europe) director of education, pioneering several educational and leadership initiatives in partnership with JDC. This Tu B’Av, we sat down with them to hear more about their love story.
Q: How did you two meet?
Lesya: We met at madrichim (counselor) school in Odesa in autumn 2017 — I was coming from my hometown of Kharkiv and Yura from Kyiv. That summer, I’d gone on a Taglit trip to Israel, and when I came back, I threw myself into local Jewish life back at home in Ukraine — the first time I’d really been involved with the community. It was something totally new to me.
When we first met, it wasn’t like we immediately hit it off. What I mean is that we didn’t ignore each other, but we were seven years apart in age. Before we stared dating I thought that Yura would not start dating me because of our seven-year age gap.
Yura: Madrichim school had three sessions. During the first session, in Odesa, we didn’t communicate that much. In Kharkiv — the second session — I started paying more attention to her. Before the session began, Lesya was tasked with meeting me and other madrichim at the train station. She was so thoughtful, not only welcoming us to her city but buying us subway tickets and giving us pizza upon our arrival. That was the moment I started looking at her from a different angle.
L: Part of madrichim school was to develop our own leadership projects. I had some ideas for how to better integrate Taglit and Hillel, and Yura was part of my working group. That’s what made us closer, and in 2018, we started dating. We were together for five years before we got engaged.
Y: Our birthdays are two days apart — hers is Nov. 16, mine is Nov. 18. In 2022, I decided to ask her to marry me on Nov. 17. We decided to go away together that year, and I had the ideas that we could make it a three-day celebration: a marriage proposal bookended by our birthdays. Unfortunately we both got sick, but I was committed to the plan anyway. Lesya was participating in online Interactive Jewish Quest, supported by JDC, where I am the main game author/creator, and as she left her computer to get some water, I got down on one knee right there in the hallway!
L: I had thought ahead and kind of expected the proposal, so I sent him a design for the ring I’d like — but the actual experience was a total surprise! I was caught off guard, as I had no idea when and where it would happen. I was so happy. Six months later to the day, in May 2023, we had our wedding.
Q: Tell us about your wedding.
Y: We split the wedding into two parts. The first part was more formal — that was the day we officially registered our marriage. It was relatively small, just 15 people, and we didn’t have a chuppah (But who knows? Maybe we could do it on one of our anniversaries.). Our dear friends and family made the wedding special.
The second part was the celebration, and it was a community effort. Usually, the couple plans the wedding. But in our case, each guest helped organize a part of the wedding program, bringing their own sense of creativity. It was a Jewish wedding because most of the guests were Jewish — we brought people together from different organizations, cities, and countries: Odesa, Chișinău, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Hillel, as well as the JDC-supported Halom Jewish Community Center (JCC) and Beit Dan Jewish community center.
L: Most of the guests were madrichim, and they had some fun, unique ideas for the wedding celebration. Savva Shapiro, the director of JCC Halom, taught a salsa dancing master class. One friend from the Czech Republic who couldn’t make it produced a film congratulating Yura and me on our wedding — it was far more special than any standard, professional wedding film.
Q: Getting married during the Ukraine crisis is a big decision. How did you take the leap?
Y: The decision wasn’t that complicated. From the very beginning of our relationship, we understood we’d share our life path together. It was just a question of when. We postponed our wedding during the COVID-19 pandemic, then postponed it again when the crisis began. Our parents kept saying, “It’s time to get married!” But we resisted — we wanted to make our own decision. Finally, we said, “Who knows what tomorrow holds? Let’s tie the knot.”
L: I’ll add that we were, and still are, incredibly busy people. When we started dating, we weren’t yet Jewish community professionals, just participants. In 2019, I started working with Hillel, and my schedule was stuffed full with seminars, projects, and more. When we finally decided to get married, we booked the wedding on a day when there was no seminar so that guests could actually come. The timing of the celebration reflected our core values — honoring and meeting the needs of our fellow young Jewish leaders. The day after the wedding, Yura went to Superhero Camp, a JDC-created and supported weeklong retreat in the Carpathian Mountains that offers trauma support to internally displaced Ukrainian Jewish families.
Q: What do you love most about each other?
Y: I love her honesty, openness, loyalty, and the fact that she’s incredibly talented.
L: For me, it’s his sense of humor. He has an incredible mind and knows so much about many things. He’s also always ready to support me, no matter the circumstances. He’s honest, too.
Q: What’s your advice for how to have a successful relationship?
The timing of our wedding reflected our core values — honoring and meeting needs of our fellow young Jewish leaders.
Y: Don’t be scared to love. Don’t be afraid to live. Listen to your heart. If you’re both Jewish community professionals and you’re planning to build your marriage and life together, stop looking at work as work. This is your life — together.
L: Wait for love to happen and it will come at the right time — not too early or too late. If both of you work in the Jewish community, give a lot of space for your partner to have time to themselves. That way, you’ll have more energy for the other person and you might actually start missing each other.
Q: Why is it important to stay involved in Jewish community life, even at this difficult time?
L: It just feels so natural that we’re both involved in community life and development — in fact, it’s hard to imagine life without it. For us, it’s not even a question. Jewish life gives us vitality and motivation. I can’t imagine my partner not being involved in the community
Y: The Jewish community created us — and it gave us to each other. Life is full of challenges and difficult circumstances, but the community was always here, and it gave us a foundation to grow and flourish. And now, we’ve managed to find that perfect balance between community life and time to ourselves — it’s the best of both worlds.
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