Stories About Ukrainian Jews? Try A 1,000-Year History, The Pale Of Settlement And A Global Diaspora
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(OPINION) In August 1991, I visited Ukraine — then still a captive state within the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics. The USSR was on its last legs, and Western media pundits, academic experts and gloating Western politicians predicted its full collapse at any moment.
History was about to explode in risky and unpredictable ways. But that wasn’t my prime concern. I didn’t go there to cover a political revolution.
Rather, I was in Ukraine for two weeks to write about the historic Jewish community of Odessa, the Black Sea port city that was once one of the Russian empire’s crown jewels. Sadly, as I write, Odessa faces what’s likely to be a large-scale Russian military assault. Just don’t call it a war in the streets of Moscow.
My employer back then was the Baltimore Jewish Times. The paper sent me to Ukraine because Baltimore and Odessa were “sister cities” — meaning the Baltimore Jewish community committed itself to financially assisting Odessa’s largely poverty stricken Jews and to rebuilding Jewish community institutions largely destroyed under, first, the Nazis and then the Soviets. To this day, Baltimore has maintained its commitment.
The first story I wrote for the Jewish Times ran under the headline, “An Uncertain Future for the Jews of Odessa.” The headline — sorry, but I can’t find a working link to this story — reflected the situation as I experienced it.
One might say that it was also prescient, given the horrific situation there today. The current Russian invasion has reduced “uncertain” to a sad understatement.
My guess is most GetReligion readers have followed the Ukraine crisis closely. If so, I assume you’ve also noted the slew of sidebars about Ukraine’s Jewish population.
Why emphasize this angle when the Ukraine story has so many larger implications? Some historical background will help.
Prior to the start of the current civilian refugee exodus, Ukrainian Jews numbered an estimated 100,000-200,000 individuals, down from nearly a half-million in 1989. That’s quite a spread. But even if the actual number is at the estimate’s low end, it still means Ukraine has one of the five largest Jewish communities in Europe.
This is despite a 1,000-year Ukrainian Jewish history that’s as blood-stained as the history of any persecuted minority.
I’ll say more below about the relevance of this history and why it still resonates so strongly. But first let’s look at some of the coverage, which has been exhaustive and, in my opinion, generally quite good. This is despite the instances of conflicting and confusing information that always mar war-zone reporting.
Both the mainstream secular press and American Jewish and Israeli media — the latter two are the ones I’ve relied most on during this crisis — have left no Jewish stone unturned. The sheer number of news stories, analysis, opinion, maps, video, sound bites and other journalistic chum out there has been overwhelming.
I’ve seen stories that called Ukraine’s courageous Jewish president Volodymyr Zelenskyy — the world’s only Jewish head of state besides Israel’s — a modern Jewish hero. He’s been called a David to Putin’s Goliath and compared to the biblical Maccabees of Hanukkah fame.
Other stories detailed the Herculean efforts American Jewish communities and organizations have made to aid fleeing Ukrainian Jews, an effort I’d rate just below the intensity of the mobilization that happens when Israel is at war. Here’s one example, from the Miami Herald.
There have been stories about the Jews counted among Russia’s oligarch class. Western sanctions now threaten their vast holdings, garnered through their close connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Missing from some oligarch stories has been the truth about the often shady manner by which most gained their incredible wealth. These stories concentrated on the possible loss of the huge donations Jewish oligarchs have given to Jewish and Israeli institutions.
Reporters have also descended on communities such as New York’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, known as “Little Odessa” because of its preponderance of Russian-speaking Jews. New York City is home to an estimated 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the majority coming from Russia and Ukraine. Here’s a bite from one such Jewish Telegraphic Agency story:
Samuel Kliger, the director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, explained that the majority of Russian-speaking Jews in New York are expressing solidarity with Ukraine and support Ukraine’s territorial integrity, regardless of which country they immigrated from. He added that many from the community have been attending protests at Russian diplomatic headquarters in New York.
There are small groups, Kliger said, whose members believe Russia has a legitimate claim to invade Ukraine, although without as much military aggression, and an even smaller group that supports the military invasion. But the divide is more along political beliefs than support for one’s home country.
“There is no significant difference between Russian Jews or Ukrainian Jews because they identify themselves as Jewish in the first place (more than) where they’re from,” Kliger told The New York Jewish Week. He noted that in the last 10 years, many Jews in the community have been deliberately identifying themselves as Ukrainian Jews or Russian-speaking Jews, not Russian Jews, a trend that will likely grow after the invasion.
The intense Jewish connection to the Ukraine story has not been lost on Zelenskyy. He’s appealed to American Jews to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden into doing more to help Ukraine militarily.
I’ve also spotted numerous stories about how Israel’s dependence on Russian acquiescence to continue its air strikes against Iranian proxy forces in Syria has kept the Jewish state from more forcefully responding to the crisis.
Lastly, I’ve read several stories about Israel gearing up to receive thousands of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in the coming weeks. Several hundred have already done so since the fighting started.
Now back to the question of why Ukraine resonates so strongly for so many Jews.
Simply put, it’s about a millennium of Ashkenazi Jewish history, the power of inculcated tribal memory and nostalgia tempered by deep communal trauma. Ashkenazi Jews, as Jews from central and Eastern Europe are known, comprise the largest Jewish subgroup in the U.S.
It’s important because, like myself, so many American, European, Canadian, South African, Australian, Israeli and other Jews trace their family histories back to the Pale of Settlement, the vast territory stretching from the Baltic nations to the Black Sea to which Jews were restricted to living for centuries by the Imperial Russian court, the tsars.
Today, the pale is divided between Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Russia and, of course, Ukraine. My grandparents came to the United States to escape antisemitism and in search of economic advancement from what’s now Poland and Belarus.
But that was then, and this is now. Everything I’ve read and watched on Ukraine in Jewish and Israeli media has emphasized that, of course there is still some antisemitism in Ukraine, as there is most places.
Still, in 2019, Ukraine elected a Jewish president by a landslide. Though not a religious Jew, Zelenskyy, who lost several relatives in the Holocaust, has not shied from professing his Jewishness.
I’ve also seen comments that Ukraine has evolved into one of Europe’s least antisemitic nations. If so, I think that’s an extraordinary turnaround.
My wife, Ruth, is a psychotherapist. Among her Jewish clients — and friends — are children of Holocaust survivors, as is she. The Ukraine invasion has been particularly upsetting for them, a group collectively known as second generation survivors.
My wife tells me that for her and other second generation members, the Russian invasion has triggered buried pain passed along by their parents — the actual survivors who in one way or another tended to pass on their Holocaust-related trauma to their kids.
Mesmerized by the news out of Ukraine and often confused by their new sympathies for a people previous viewed as hated persecutors, they’re worried that what they believed was a horrid past is, in a sense, not really past — sorry, Faulkner purists.
The global roller coaster is off its tracks. And the Jews of Odessa, and all of Ukraine, are again fleeing a murderous Russian reality.
This post originally appeared at Get Religion.
Ira Rifkin is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, with special emphasis on globalization. He was formerly the news director of Belief Net, a Washington-based national correspondent for Religion News Service and has contributed to many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and others.