World Teachers’ Day 2025: This Educator Has a Lesson for Jews Around the Globe

Lyudmila Bondareva spent her life as a passionate, dedicated educator. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, she lost everything she’d worked for. Now retired, Lyudmila, 79, struggles to survive on a meager pension that fails to secure her basic needs. If not for the JDC-supported Hesed Shaarey Zion social service center in her hometown of Odesa, Ukraine, she doesn’t think she’d be alive today.

With World Teachers’ Day right around the corner, Lyudmila has an urgent lesson she wants Jews around the globe to hear, as well as a message of gratitude to those whose generosity sustains her.

My dream was to become a translator. I was a brilliant student and had the best teachers at university. But because I was Jewish, this dream was thwarted — I was unable to get the job I’d always wanted. 

I pursued teaching instead, and I was never sorry I did. It’s a blessing to master a subject and pass your knowledge and passion on to your students. 

An effective teacher must enable her students to believe in themselves. If a teacher can give her students wings, the world will change for the better. I always encouraged my students, motivated them, boosted their self-esteem, and helped them discover their own power. 

When you see them become leaders in your own right, you realize you played a crucial part in their development. That’s perhaps the best thing about teaching; you touch people’s lives in the most direct way. 

I knew I’d done my job if my students internalized these three simple lessons: Never give up. Find your way. Work hard.

In the classroom, I tried modeling this in everything I did. Learning languages requires discipline and hard, consistent work. I was a strict teacher, but my students always thanked me in the end. Even years later, they would visit me with their families. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did the entire world we’d taken for granted. 

The 1990s were brutal years. Most life-sustaining systems — healthcare, education, and other essential services — vanished overnight. It was nearly impossible for teachers to make ends meet. We’d work for months on end and not receive a salary. Doctors, professors, scientists, and other accomplished professionals would go to European countries to buy cheap clothes and resell them at the local market. We never thought our lives would come to this. 

That’s why it was hard to convince my students that education mattered — it seemed like a degree didn’t amount to much. That didn’t deter me, though. Sure, I was hungry. Yes, I was desperate. But I never gave up my faith in learning. I continued teaching, despite everything. 

In this dark period of time, JDC was like a lifeboat, and I found my way there through my mother. She had been a victim of Nazi violence and had to evacuate during the Second World War. When she got older, she received a great deal of JDC assistance. 

In time, I also became a client — and if not for JDC, I wouldn’t be alive today. The multiple crises my generation had to endure obliterated our quality of life. I myself worked tirelessly for more than 35 years, but today my pension is barely more than $3 per day. No one can survive on this. 

JDC gives me the dignity that all elderly Jews need and deserve. They deliver both material and spiritual support.

JDC gives me the dignity that all elderly Jews need and deserve. They deliver both material and spiritual support, and it’s simply a miracle that they enable us to live our Jewishness proudly and openly.

Since the conflict started in 2022, we’ve needed this Jewish joy as much as ever. Thankfully, I know I have a home in JDC. They have been the support at all times for all Jews. 

This isn’t just about financial help, but about programs like JOINTECH, an initiative that connects Jewish seniors like me to vibrant Jewish life online. I have no one left to call. The students who used to come visit me have left. So, JOINTECH is everything to me now. 

My favorite program is Kabbalat Shabbat. Each Friday, alongside my friends, I say the hamotzi and kiddush, engage in Torah discussion, light candles, and sing songs in Yiddish. 

JOINTECH expands my mind, too. I adore University Without Borders, a virtual program in which I get to learn about Jewish culture, literature, and art — topics I wasn’t encouraged to explore growing up in the Soviet Union. These stimulating sessions are led by renowned historians, musicians, artists, and other leaders in their respective fields. 

To put it simply: For homebound Jews like myself, JOINTECH is our one conduit to not just the Jewish world, but the world entire. It connects us all, and I don’t even want to imagine my life without it. 

Though I’m retired, I still consider myself a teacher. And if there’s one lesson I think the world needs to learn, it’s that we must embrace our humanity. We were born to live, to create, to raise children, and to improve the lives of others. Only by staying human can we continue to exist as a people. 

It’s hard to live without bread, but it is impossible to survive without love. The moment I wake up and go to bed, I always say prayers of gratitude to the Jews that love and help me. This is the circle of kindness that we have always created for each other. 

You complete that circle with your good deeds, and it’s a mitzvah none of us here will ever forget. 

Lyudmila Bondareva, 79, is a JDC client in Odesa, Ukraine.

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