Why we opened this campaign
Near the Botanical Garden in Jerusalem, there is a wooden walkway along Burla Street. Artemiy built it with his own hands.
Every day, people walk along it who will never know his name. And that may be the best portrait of Artemiy: someone who makes life better for others while quietly staying out of the spotlight.
Artemiy and his family made aliyah during a period of relentless hardship. Every time it seemed that things were finally beginning to settle, another crisis struck.
Back in 2022, after Artemiy’s grandmother suffered a stroke, she was discharged from the hospital with the words, “fully palliative.” Although the doctors had effectively given up on her, the family refused to do the same. They brought her home and helped her get back on her feet: in less than a week, her speech returned, then her mobility, and within a month she was able to stand again. Artemiy carried her down from the fourth floor in his arms and took her to rehabilitation.
That is how this family treats their loved ones: they do not abandon them, even when medicine has already run out of answers.
But his grandmother’s ordeal did not end with one stroke. Over four years, she suffered five. Each time meant another hospital stay, another setback, another need to rebuild from the beginning. And between hospitalizations and rehabilitation came new blows: Artemiy’s grandfather passed away, the family lost their apartment, and Artemiy was left carrying the debts.
To repay those debts and support his family, Artemiy gave up his master’s degree and a career in programming. But his dream of moving to Israel was his first step forward. Three years ago, he arrived in Israel with his wife and started from zero. He studied Hebrew on the bus between shifts, joining lessons online because there simply was no other time.
He worked construction jobs for 18 hours a day, without weekends or holidays. He came home after his wife was already asleep and left before she woke up. Sometimes they went weeks barely seeing each other.
Throughout all of this, Artemiy never had a chance to get back to zero financially: he kept sending money to his family — for a caregiver, medication, and the essentials they could not manage without. He himself lived on food from subsidized grocery stores and borrowed money for gasoline.
In January 2026, his father was admitted to intensive care in extremely serious condition. For several months, he hovered on the brink, eventually undergoing an operation that doctors had initially refused to perform. Artemiy dropped everything and flew to be with his family.
From that day on, one apartment became two hospital rooms: his grandmother in one, his father in the other. Artemiy learned to care for both of them himself: changing dressings, giving medication on schedule, and doing everything normally handled by medical staff. He traveled to another city to obtain medications. Over four months, going back and forth between two hospitals, he drove 6,000 kilometers and slept only three to four hours a night.
Artemiy did not break. But no matter how hard one person works, it is impossible to outwork five strokes, a father’s severe illness, and the loss of loved ones all at once — not because he did not try hard enough, but because the crises came faster than one person could both pay off debts and earn enough to keep going.
And still, he paid them off. Everything Artemiy earned and borrowed over these years went toward settling his family’s debts in their country of origin. His loved ones are back on their feet, while he and his wife have been left at zero in the country he had only just begun to call home.
That is why this ₪31,000 fundraiser is not for the relatives he has already helped.
It is for Artemiy and his wife.
Your support here means offering a shoulder to someone who never once gave up and never abandoned his loved ones.
₪180 — a week of groceries for Artemiy and his wife.
₪500 — bills covered so he can get to work instead of counting every shekel.
₪1,000 — a month in which Artemiy can simply work instead of struggle to survive.
Help and please share this with one person.
Artemiy built a path for strangers. Today, a few strangers can help build a path forward for him.
