Little Leah spotted her counselor across the lawn. Instead of running into her arms, she ran the other way, squealing because she knew her counselor would chase her.
“She does that every single day,” her counselor, Perel, said. “It’s not a game to her. It’s her way of checking: Will you still come after me?”
And every day, the answer was yes.
That is Yeka.
This summer, that same spirit played out again and again in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. Twenty-six English-speaking girls from around the world spent fourteen days with their Yeka sisters. They triple-wrapped tubs of marshmallow fluff because they already knew what the girls in Ukraine go wild for, then shlepped seventy-pound suitcases across four countries, picked up enough Russian on Duolingo to say “bike” and “duck,” and somehow fit in lollipops, Rebbe stories, snacks and prizes. After three days of travel, they arrived with enough love to fill far more than their luggage allowance.
Some of these campers have been coming for years, and something about this place gets them to let their guard down in a way nothing back home does. A girl who is generally non-expressive tells her counselor things she has never been able to say out loud because here, she finally feels safe.
Girls boarded the train carrying shopping bags, small overnight bags and whatever life has handed them: homes marked by war, orphanages with little room for individuality, families that never gave them the tenderness a child deserves.
Then they arrived at Yeka: the mountains, the late-night laughter, the fiercely competitive Capture the Flag games, the lip-sync battles, and the feeling that somehow, for a little while, everything is okay.
This summer, 120 girls and staff representing fifteen cities across Ukraine gathered under the theme Всегда на связи, “Always Connected.” It was supported by Chabad’s Jewish Relief Network Ukraine (JRNU). Throughout the session, they explored staying connected to Hashem, to the Jewish people, to the Rebbe, to one another, and ultimately to Geulah.
Yeka Girls director Mrs. Menucha Hanoka put it simply: “Every year I think we’ve seen it all, and every year these girls show us something new about what it means to hold on to who you are. This isn’t a vacation we’re running. It’s a home we’re building, one summer at a time.”
For Rabbi Shlomo Terishkevitch, the camp’s on-site Ukrainian director, “Always Connected” wasn’t just this year’s theme. It’s the whole reason Yeka works.
“Any camp can teach a girl a song or take her rafting,” he said. “What makes Yeka different is that every staff member knows which girl went quiet at lunch and which one needs her own personal daily schedule because too much structure can be overwhelming for her.”
None of it happened by accident. These twenty-six counselors spent months fundraising thousands of dollars to make these fourteen days possible.
And that connection doesn’t wait for summer. Every weeknight, year-round, girls scattered across Europe and Israel join their counselors on a Rebbe Time Zoom call to share their lives, sing together and end with Shema before saying good night to their Yeka family.
But there was another phrase that needed no theme and no curriculum: “I love you.”
At Yeka, you learn to say it in Russian before you learn to say, “Hello, what’s your name?” And it’s said with meaning.
You see it during the rest hour, when Milana, a girl who struggles socially, decided completely out of nowhere to grab the mic and start singing. The counselors who were filtering out of the dining room could have kept going to their rooms to rest. Instead, chairs were pulled into rows, phones came out, flashlights flicked on, and suddenly the room was a concert hall.
“I didn’t even know she could sing until that day,” said her counselor Esty Thaler. “None of us did. She just decided she was ready, and the second she started, sixteen counselors turned into her audience like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
Nobody planned it. They just saw a girl having her moment and decided to make it bigger.
That same instinct showed up everywhere. A younger camper shared a Torah thought at lunch, and the whole dining room erupted around her, chanting, “Dana is a Chossid!” For the rest of the day, she was a celebrity.
Ten girls chose Jewish names this summer, and within days those names were being called across the dining room, on the field and in the bunkrooms. They weren’t just names anymore. They were theirs.
Twelve girls lit Shabbos candles for the first time in their lives. One camper quietly ended a relationship that had been pulling her away from Yiddishkeit.
And while all of this was happening, the reality these girls came from was still there. They were rafting the Carpathian rivers, racing through a Color Run and getting soaked at foam parties, while some of their hometowns were being bombed.
A mother called camp to say that, for the first time in months, her teenage daughter Yulia was sleeping at night rather than crying at the sound of explosions outside.
Vika came to camp carrying the recent loss of her father. One day, she was sitting alone, overwhelmed by grief. Within moments, the entire office staff was dancing around her. No meeting, no discussion.
“Someone just looked up and said, ‘Vika’s having a hard moment,’ and that was it. We were all up,” said staff member Mina Jaffe. “Nobody assigns that. You just move.”
Because nobody stays alone for very long at Yeka.
Alina arrived at an orphanage only weeks before camp. At Yeka, she began to discover what it felt like to have people who kept showing up. A counselor gave away her Shabbos dress. Another handed over her bathing suit.
“Nobody told us to,” said head counselor Yaffa Lebovic. “You just look at a girl who has nothing extra and realize you have two.”
Some breakthroughs were dramatic. Most were not. Sometimes it was nothing more than a girl laughing so hard that, for a few minutes, she forgot what life was like outside the gates.
And maybe that’s one of the remarkable things about Yeka. Some of these girls wait all year for their turn at camp because, for them, Yeka is a haven. Here, they just get to be girls: loud, silly, loved, dancing until they can’t anymore.
Even more, they leave carrying some of that feeling with them.
Anya, a longtime camper, is moving to Israel next year for high school. When people asked if she was nervous about starting over in a new country, she wasn’t.
“I already have family there,” she said. “My Yeka staff will take care of me.”
Maybe there really is something in the kasha at Yeka.
You can’t put it into a curriculum. It’s twelve years of relationships, girls who know what it feels like to be loved here, counselors who instinctively step in, and campers arriving with circumstances that make every moment matter. Somehow, every summer, all of it comes together again.
And maybe that’s what Yeka is: a place where a little girl can run away from her counselor, knowing without a doubt that someone will lovingly come after her.
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What isn’t mentioned here is that an entire second Yeka Girls camp took place in Israel this summer. We now have two full camps to cover, and we are still far from our fundraising goal.
We are grateful for our sponsors, and Yeka relies heavily on people like you to make these camps possible. Every donation helps us get closer to the finish line.
Support Yeka Girls: yekagirls.com/summer
Follow along on Instagram: @campyekagirls
