anti-Semitism has a Russian trace (VIDEO)

Jews are one of the largest and oldest national minorities in Ukraine: at the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion, the community numbered regarding 300 thousand people. However, the war forced a significant part of them to leave the country, and today there is no exact data on the size of the Jewish community in Ukraine. Despite the decrease in the number of Jews, their organizations continue to conduct projects in Ukraine, help those affected by the war and are increasingly Ukrainized.

The Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty talks regarding how the life of Jews in Ukraine has changed over the past two years.

“They live the same life as Ukrainian families”

At the beginning of 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced that 15 thousand Ukrainian Jews decided to emigrate to the country following a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even more Ukrainians of non-Jewish origin have left for Israel, who have family or friendly ties in the country and in the future may also join the Jewish community in Israel, says Israeli political scientist Vladimir Zeev Khanin. However, Israel is not the only country where representatives of the Jewish community left because of the war. In particular, the American Jewish humanitarian organization JDC helped transport Ukrainian Jews across the border to Moldova, Poland and Romania, Deutsche Welle journalists wrote.

Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Azman says that regarding half of the Jewish community has left Ukraine; he estimates that this is almost 150 thousand people. Azman believes that some of them will return home following the end of the war; some have already done so without waiting for the end of hostilities. Especially, according to him, the migration processes were influenced by the war between Israel and the extremist group Hamas (recognized as terrorist in the EU and the USA), which began on October 7, 2023.

On April 18, at a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on the eve of Passover, the chief rabbis of Ukrainian cities said that they had not left the country since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, because in such difficult times it is important to stay with their community.

“The main thing is not to give in to fear,” says Chief Rabbi of Dnepr Shmuel Kaminetsky. And the President of Ukraine noted the symbolism of seeing the leaders of society in the bomb shelter of a Jewish school.

A significant part of Ukrainian Jews became internal migrants, so communities in the rear regions of Ukraine made humanitarian and psychological assistance to these people their priority, said Vlada Nedak, head of the women’s Jewish organization Project Kesher.

“Jews live the same life as Ukrainian families. Some are waiting for men, sons from the war, some have lost their family. There are families where the men stayed and the women went to Israel. And some returned because to live It’s not easy there either,” says Nedak.

Since the beginning of the war, the organization’s projects have focused mainly on supporting displaced people.

“Families move, move, and in search of some kind of support in a new city they often remember their roots, and they turn out to be Jewish,” explains Vlada. “There have been cases when a woman comes and says that her husband is Jewish, but they never belonged to the community. Now these people want to be closer – and the community opens its doors to them.”

She says that the demand for communication in the community is very high, so the number of offline events has almost tripled.

“We used to start Shabbat or a meeting with a very quick introduction and move on to the main part, but now we need to remember home, create a comfortable atmosphere so that people do not experience unnecessary stress because they are not in their home or that it no longer exists,” explains Nedak. And he admits that when examining Torah texts in a new circle, you never know which passage might become a trigger for people who lost their homes due to war.

“Now I basically try to speak Ukrainian”

Another trigger was the Russian language. The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Reuven Azman, admits that he began to speak Ukrainian publicly because he did not want to use the language of the aggressor.

“I was born in Leningrad and at first I didn’t know a single word of Ukrainian. But now I basically try to speak this language,” says the rabbi. “When I go to Germany and hear German there, it’s very difficult for me to perceive it, this is the language of the Jews.” genetic level. And I understand that for many Ukrainians it’s the same with Russians.”

Moshe Reuven Azman says that the transition to Ukrainian in the Jewish community is not yet a mass phenomenon, although the number of those who fundamentally abandon Russian is gradually growing. At the same time, the rabbi notes that Russian is an opportunity to address Jews from Russia, Belarus or Kazakhstan. “In other countries, I speak Russian to convey the truth regarding what is happening in Ukraine,” Moshe Azman emphasizes and adds that out of respect abroad, people increasingly speak to him in Ukrainian.

Just a few years ago the situation was completely different. Vlada Nedak recalls that “Project Kesher” was one of the first to create a completely Ukrainian-language website in 2018. Not everyone reacted favorably at the time, she says.

“Believe me, there were those who said: this is not your language. And now I understand that Russian is not mine either. The language of my family was not even Hebrew, but Yiddish. I heard in my childhood how my grandparents spoke exactly this language,” shares Vlada.

According to her, Russian now feels like “the language of the enemy.” Nedak says she would like to see Ukrainian Jews be easily identifiable anywhere in the world. “Even if they speak Ukrainian poorly and can only say hello in this language. Then we in Jewish circles might say: “Oh, you are from the Jewish community of Ukraine!” she shares.

She recalls how they gradually began to introduce Ukrainian at events: first, welcoming words, informal communication, individual speeches in Ukrainian, and then the entire official part.

Vlada was especially amazed when she heard Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny conduct the entire Shabbat service in Ukrainian. The woman says that during the service a special prayer, Kaddish, is read when Jews who died in different historical periods are remembered.

“Then the rabbi suggested that we remember all the fallen Ukrainian soldiers. It was very powerful, simply amazing. It was 2019-2020,” says Nedak. “Previously they only read in Hebrew or Russian”
Translations of religious texts are gradually appearing in Ukraine: psalms, Easter Haggadah, children’s books for the holiday of Purim. True, there are not enough professional translators, admits Rabbi Moshe Reuven Asman, so it is necessary to translate not from the original, but from English or Russian.

One of the professional translations of the Passover Haggadah was published by the Spirit and Litera publishing house with the assistance of Project Kesher. Previously, Ukrainian Jews read the main text of the holiday meal in Hebrew or Russian, the organization says.

The reading of the Haggadah is the main part of the seder, that is, the festive dinner for Passover. The text retells the mythology of the holiday and establishes the order of ritual actions. It also contains passages from the Torah and Talmud, songs, and instructive stories that are passed down from generation to generation.

In addition to classical texts, they decided to add commentaries and methodological materials from Ukrainian Jews to the printed version of the translation: Sholom Aleichem, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Zeev Jabotinsky, Chava Shapiro and others. In addition, “Project Kesher” enriched the publication of the Haggadah with quotes from modern Ukrainian leaders, public figures, artists and poets – Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, Lina Kostenko, Oksana Zabuzhko, Semyon Gluzman.

So far, translations of important religious texts into Ukrainian are more an educational initiative of Jewish organizations than a request from the community itself. But the situation, says Vlada Nedak, is gradually changing.

“Translating from Hebrew is a complex process in which we involve many specialists, we consult a lot, we involve the community. And recently at the presentation of the Haggadah the question was asked: “What are we going to translate next?” The word “we” sounded, the head shares. Project Kesher” and adds that among the proposals is to translate the Shabbat siddur next.

She explains that the text of the Haggadah was chosen first for translation precisely because it talks regarding how difficult it was to achieve freedom, how long it took the Jews to get rid of slavery. And the theme of the struggle for freedom, Nedak notes, is especially relevant during Russia’s war once morest Ukraine.

In addition, for the first time they are preparing to publish the Torah, the main book of Judaism, in Ukrainian. This was noted at a meeting with the President of Ukraine by the Chairman of the Council of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, Rabbi Meir Stambler.

Throughout the history of their existence, Jews have united into communities, and synagogues have always been the centers of this unity. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Jewish community tried to restore houses of worship in Ukraine and create Jewish cells even in small communities. In particular, in Transcarpathia in 2020 they began to restore one of the oldest Ukrainian synagogues. Russian military aggression thwarted these plans, they say in the Jewish community; some of the synagogues were completely destroyed by shelling. Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Azman says that most Jews left the occupied regions for territories controlled by Ukraine, some of them went abroad. In addition to synagogues, Jewish memorial sites were also damaged by shelling: the cemetery in Bila Tserkva, Berkovetskoe cemetery, Drobitsky Yar in Kharkov, Babi Yar in Kyiv.

“It’s symbolic that they [россияне] they talk regarding denazification, and their rockets are fired at where the Nazis exterminated people,” says Moshe Reuven Asman. Answering a question regarding anti-Semitism in Ukraine, he says that there is “much less of it than in America, Europe and even Israel.” Since the beginning of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the number of recorded crimes motivated by anti-Semitism has sharply decreased, as stated in the annual report of the Freedom House organization for 2022.

Moshe Reuven Azman explains: “people with an inadequate position or a hostile attitude can be found in any country in the world,” but the determining factor is the position of the state and its reaction to such cases. “In Ukraine there is criminal liability for anti-Semitism, and this was adopted even before the full-scale invasion began,” the rabbi notes.

He says that he recently received a report from the SBU regarding some cases of anti-Semitism that law enforcement officers recorded in Ukraine:

“Most of them come from Russia. Often these are teenagers who are not even anti-Semitic, who do not understand who the Jews are. They communicated with them from Russia in small telegram channels, not everyone was even paid, some did it simply for likes on social networks “.

Azman calls not to react to such cases. “My position is this: if the state does not react, then we must intervene. There is no need to fan the flames if someone drew a swastika somewhere, because an agent might have done this in order to later raise the topic of Nazism in Ukraine,” he emphasizes . And he notes that almost half of his time is spent on information activities during the war; he devotes the other half to humanitarian projects, providing assistance to those affected during the war.