The age structure and history of Ukrainian Jewry is testament to the enormous need for welfare services for the disproportionately large sector of the Jewish population that is elderly. According to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, at least 180,000 Jews in Ukraine are in this category. A lifetime of poor nutrition, a collapsing health care system, meager pensions, overpriced basic medicines, inadequate housing, severely degraded ecological conditions, and the trauma of twentieth-century Jewish history in Ukraine have generated an impoverished and fragile elderly Jewish population whose needs seem infinite.

Contemporary Jewish octogenarians in Ukraine have lived through revolution, civil war, Stalinism (collectivization and state-induced famine, forced closure of small businesses, political terror), distortion and suppression of Jewish life, Nazi occupation of the entire country accompanied by the slaughter of 1.85 million local Jews, accusations of economic crimes in the 1960s, the emigration of younger and more vital family members beginning in the late 1970s, state-sponsored antisemitism throughout the 70-year Soviet era, and post-Soviet economic upheaval. Most elderly Jews live alone, their families destroyed during World War II and the Katastrofa or separated by emigration. Many reside in poorly maintained urban apartment buildings, some without elevator service, or in village bungalows, often without indoor plumbing or central heating.