A ‘pilot light’ of global compassion is awakened for Ukraine

It is a phrase I heard many years ago – from an Orthodox rabbi with a long, graying beard and a twinkle of optimism in his eyes – and it’s been increasingly on my mind amid the Russian army’s murderous assault on besieged civilians in Ukraine.

Pintele yid. The words are Yiddish. And, as the rabbi explained, they encapsulate the traditional belief that inside any Jewish person, however distant or alienated from his faith, there’s always a tiny flicker of Jewishness waiting to be rekindled at the most unexpected moment.

It’s a bit like a pilot light in a gas heater that ignites a flame.

Now, the violence in Ukraine seems to have revealed a pilot light in millions of people of all faiths worldwide. A pintele of simple human connection, compassion, and caring has sparked a widespread desire to relieve Ukrainians’ suffering.

The outpouring of concern is not, in itself, new. We’ve seen it in response to a range of natural and man-made tragedies in the past – tsunamis, earthquakes, famines and, yes, wars as well.

But this international wave of solicitude seems different in important ways, not least because of its context. Our young millennium has so far been marked by a trend toward narrow nationalism, culture wars, and a certain disdain for humanitarian concerns as mere “virtue-signaling” or “wokeness.”

The breadth of the popular response has been remarkable. I’m not alone, I suspect, in having been struck by the number of friends who have previously shown little involvement, or even interest, in world affairs but who’ve now become personally invested in what’s going on in Ukraine. And they want to help however they can.

In Britain – an island nation where a growing suspicion of immigrants helped decide the 2016 Brexit referendum vote to leave the European Union – the response has been dramatic. Even MPs from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s governing Conservative Party have been vocal in urging a much more generous and less bureaucratic policy toward Ukrainian refugees.

When the government opened a website to match potential arrivals with British families willing to give them a home, it was inundated with offers: more than 100,000 on the first day alone.

The response has been even more extraordinary in the poorer countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova – where more than 3 million frightened women, children, and elderly have already fled.

Poland reacted with alarm seven years ago to Europe’s last refugee influx, from the war in Syria. This time its government is facilitating the arrival of those fleeing the war next door, helped by hundreds of thousands of ordinary Polish citizens who are caring for the refugees at the border and welcoming them into their homes.

There are other significant differences between the Ukraine invasion and crises past. One is technological, as social media sites at last show signs of fulfilling early hopes that they might bring people closer together.

In recent years they have had the opposite effect, cushioning users inside political silos, their walls reinforced by politically skewed news feeds.

Yet from the first days of the Ukraine invasion, smartphones and social media technology have spread real-life images of Russia’s attacks on civilian areas almost instantly, giving the victims’ plight a worldwide 24/7 immediacy seen in no previous war.

The result: The only way to ignore it is to shut one’s eyes. And few people seem ready or willing to look away and do nothing.

The West’s unity in imposing unprecedentedly tough economic sanctions on Russia was largely the fruit of its political leadership, of course. But, in European countries at least, it was ordinary citizens who led the way and set the terms of debate, by demonstrating in their hundreds of thousands against Vladimir Putin’s attack and in solidarity with Ukraine.

Not just in Europe, but in America and beyond, Ukrainian churches have also suddenly found themselves welcoming visitors of all faiths to offer their prayers and support.

And for some, technology has shaped their ongoing response to the suffering.

The home-rental site Airbnb has been swamped by users who have been using the site to make donations to ordinary Ukrainians by signing up to “rent” homes in war zones that they have no intention of actually visiting.

A pair of young Harvard undergraduates, meanwhile, has rushed to set up an Airbnb-like site of their own – called Ukraine Take Shelter – to allow people to link up with Ukrainian refugees forced out by the invasion who are seeking a new home.

My rabbi friend, no doubt, would say that all of this has been as unsurprising as it is inspiring: a case of the divine pilot light igniting a widening flame of humanity.

And I have a feeling that – with the violence in Ukraine nowhere near over, and enormous help still certain to be needed even when it is – he would add a further challenge, and a further hope: that the world can keep that light burning.

Editor’s note: The description of the Ukraine Take Shelter app has been clarified.