New Round-Up

The Other Jew Who is Winning Ukraine’s War

His name is Denis Shtilerman, the CEO of Fire Point, the top drone company in Ukraine and perhaps in the world. Fire Point produces the long-range drones that have hit Russian oil refineries and weapons factories all across Putin’s land, and have turned the tide in the 4.5 year old war. The company is now signing contracts with European defense enterprises. Meanwhile, commentators on Russian State TV have called for his assassination.

Shtilerman was recently the subject of a profile in The Atlantic (“Ukraine’s Dr. Strangelove” by Simon Shuster). Among the fascinating points it mentions: Fire Point churns out about 200 long-range attack drones per day, which can reach Moscow and St. Petersburg. The company also produces a cruise missile, the Flamingo, which goes twice as far as the American Tomahawk missile.

Shtilerman was born in Kyiv in 1974, the child of a scientist and an engineer. He attended the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology beginning in 1991, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. He lived in Russia for many years and worked for Russian State military institutes in the 2000’s. Shtilerman claims that he was stripped of his Russian citizenship in 2016, because he supported the Maidan revolution in Ukraine. He returned to Ukraine in 2019, and founded Fire Point in 2022.

Most observers have not drawn attention to Shtilerman’s Jewish identity. But his Jewish story is more interesting than meets the eye. His father Leonid changed his last name to Danilov, in order to avoid (or mitigate against) Soviet antisemitism. Denis switched his name back to the original family name, Shtilerman, after he returned to Ukraine. While some claimed he wanted to clear his tracks from his Russian past as Danilov, there can be no doubt that by adopting the obviously Jewish name Shtilerman (as opposed to, say, Shevchenko) he was publicly affirming his Jewish identity.

I wrote to Atlantic journalist Simon Shuster to ask if he knew more about Shtilerman’s Jewish identity, and here is what he replied:

“Yes, we talked a lot about that. He claims to be a descendant of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and the physical resemblance between them seems rather striking. He said he learned this about his family history only after moving back to Ukraine in 2019 and reconnecting with Kyiv’s Jewish community, partly through his friend and ‘personal banker’ Mykhailo Tsukerman, the brother of a suspect in the Mindich [corruption] case.”

To break that down: (a) Shtilerman has ties to the Kyiv Jewish community, (b) he is close to the Tsukerman family and to Mindich, observant Ukrainian Jews who have fled to Israel, (c) he boasted to a journalist about being a descendant of Ze’ev Jabotinsky (which might even be true). And d) he intentionally restored his very Jewish last name.

So move over Volodymyr Zelensky, there is another Jew who is rescuing Ukraine these days.

Arrogance or Unprofessionalism?

Retired Israeli Major General No’am Tibbon, who served in the IDF for 35 years and was commander of Israel’s Northern Formation, spoke about Israel’s security challenges on the Ha-Shavua podcast of Ha’aretz. Among other things, he urged the Israeli military to consult with Ukraine on drone warfare.

“Without a doubt, dealing with the small drones is a major failure [of the IDF]. There is no doubt that we should have, a long time ago, sent a serious military delegation to Ukraine. To learn what’s going on over there. The Ukrainians are the world champions in small drones, including anti-drone defense. They organize attacks on Russia with thousands of small drones. But here as well, we have a certain kind of arrogance or unprofessionalism. This type of weaponry, which is very simple and inexpensive, causes Israeli losses and casualties.”

New Books in Jewish Studies

Despite the war, and all the difficulties it creates for everyday life, the field of Jewish Studies is active and creative in Ukraine. Here are some new books issued in 2026.

This is a bilingual (Ukrainian-English) guide to Jewish places in Kamianets-Podolsk, a city that had 23,430 Jews on the eve of World War II (47% of the total population). Kamianets is best known in Jewish history for two tragic events: the 1757 burning of the Talmud by order of the local Bishop, and the August 1941 mass murder of Jews there by the Germans, the first major killing of the Holocaust in Ukraine. More happily, Kamianets Podolsk is remembered as the birthplace of Yiddish actor Zvi Scooler.

This is an attractive pocket-size guidebook full of photographs. As you might expect, there is a section on the old Jewish cemetery, 80 of whose early 19th-century tombstones are still intact. And a section on the Great Synagogue, built around 1800, closed by the Soviets in 1936, and destroyed by bombing in 1944. Other historic synagogues are still standing: the artisans’ synagogue, a four-story structure located next to a fortress-tower in the old town, and the Litvak Synagogue on the outskirts of the historic city. The Talmud Torah building (the community school for poor children and orphans), is in use today as a boarding school. The guide also covers former Jewish streets, such as Dovha Street, once known in Yiddish as Yatke-gas (butchers’ street), which featured five different Hasidic Kloyzn. Some sections are surprising – portraits of Jewish-owned businesses: the first pharmacy in Kamianets, the Grand Hotel, and the Jewish shopping district.

Author Evhenii Levinzon dedicated several years of archival research to preparation of the guide, but chose to compose it in an accessible format (no footnotes). The book won my heart because it renders the city’s name in Yiddish according to the local Podolian dialect – Komenets. My Podolian grandmother, “mayn tote’s mome” (my father’s mother) would have been pleased.

This is the first academic survey of Biblical Hebrew ever written in Ukrainian. The author Dmitro Tsolin is a linguist and professor at the Ostrah Academy National University. His previous books dealt with Biblical and Targumic Aramaic. He is now working on a new Ukrainian Translation of the Bible.

This beautiful publication was funded by the Papal Foundation in Rome and published by the Catholic University in Lviv. It is structured like a classical grammar: phonology, morphology, grammar. I can’t evaluate its academic merits (my linguistics and my Ukrainian are not strong enough for that), but the book’s layout and multicolored font, its use of tables and sample verses, make the volume inviting. It concludes with a short glossary of Biblical Hebrew.

At the end of the introduction to his book, Tsolin expresses special thanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which, he writes, made possible not only his work, but all of higher education and scholarship in Ukraine.

After World War II, the Jewish State Theatre of Ukraine was not allowed to return to Kyiv. Instead, it was dispatched to Chernivtsi (former Czernowitz) in Western Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the theatre, now named after Sholem Aleichem, presented a rich and varied repertoire of Jewish classics and Soviet agit-prop to audiences all across Ukraine. The curtain fell due to Stalin’s order in 1950, when the theatre (along with all other Yiddish theatres and cultural institutions in the USSR) was dissolved.

Historian Oleksandr Bezarov has mined the archive of the Jewish State Theatre and other sources to reconstruct this neglected chapter in the history of Yiddish theatre.

The Chernivtsi Jewish State Theatre was a large institution, with a staff of 181 employees – actors, an orchestra, directors and writers, costume-tailors, stage hands of all kinds. And it performed on a daily basis, about 280 performances of 10 different plays per year.

The theatre had difficulties with its repertoire. When it performed the Holocaust drama “I live”, about a traditional Jew who fought the Nazis, in 1945, it ran into serious trouble with the authorities. Classics like Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye Der Milkhiker were popular, but officials complained that the theatre performed too much old, non-Soviet material. However, when it performed translations of Soviet Russian plays, attendance figures dropped dramatically.

In the end, its fate was like that of its more famous older brother, the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre. Director Moishe Goldblat was fortunate. He was not arrested and fled to Kazakhstan, where he worked in a Russian theatre. But chief playwright Mikhoel Pinchevskii was arrested in 1951 for nationalist and anti-Soviet activity. He spent three years in the Gulag and died shortly after his release.

The book features photos of actors on and off the stage, and reproductions of theatre posters and programs.

Jewish Travel Notes from the Ukrainian Hinterland: Podolia

I just spent more than a week in Western Ukraine – mostly in the region known as Podolia. I’d like to share my impressions on Jewish-related topics, in note form.

Podolia (Ukrainian: Podilia) is an old area of Jewish settlement, going back to the 16^th century. It was the heartland of Hasidism. Medzhybizh, home to R. Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, and Bratslav, home to Rabbi Nachman, are both in this region. Other famous Jews who were born there include Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908), the father of Yiddish theatre, Zionist thinker and agriculturalist A. D. Gordon (1856-1922), Hebrew author Micha Joseph Berdyczewski (1865-1921), and modernist Yiddish poet Peretz Markish (1895-1952).

I was there to supervise a research project on Jewish historical documents in the local archives.

A Conversation with A Ukrainian Driver

I entered Ukraine from Moldova, taking a 3.5-hour drive from Kishinev airport to the border. I walked over a bridge that crosses the Dniester River, which forms a natural border between the two countries, into the Ukrainian town of Mogilev Podolsk. (I walked because there was an hour-long wait to enter by car.) It was night-time, so I spent the night in town. (“Grand Hotel” – 2 stars.) The next day, I took a taxi to the city of Khmelnytskyi (formerly Proskurov), 3.5 hours further north, which was my main destination. I ordered a car and had an interesting conversation with my driver (44 years old) and his sister (50 years old). They were very nice people, happy to meet an American and talk.

When talking with Ukrainians, I usually wait a bit before bringing up my Jewishness, to first establish a rapport. But I always bring it up - to see what the reaction will be. About half an hour into the ride, the driver’s sister complimented me on my Russian and asked if I had heard Russian at home as a child. “Oh no, not at all”, I answered. “My parents spoke to me only in Yiddish, in the Jewish language.” The sister got interested and animated.

• “You’re Jewish? On your mother’s side or your father’s side?” The question showed that for her, meeting someone both of whose parents are Jewish is rare in today’s Ukraine. The assumption was that I was Jewish on one side.

• “I’m Jewish on both sides, on all sides. I consider myself a full-fledged Jew”, I replied.

• “Then I must ask you a question.” That’s when I took a deep gulp, expecting an antisemitic question, like ‘why are Jews so rich?” or ‘why was the Communist leadership so full of Jews?”. Instead, I got something very different.

• “My grandfather had a strange last name - Frenki. Could he perhaps have been Jewish? He was born in a small village near Mogilev Podolsk in 1921.”

• “Well, Frenkel (Frankel) is a common Jewish name. It’s possible.”

• “Hmm. He fought in the Second World War against the Germans and was a prisoner of war. One time, the Germans selected prisoners to be shot. A German officer asked him his name and whether he was Jewish. My grandfather answered ‘no,’ and the officer ordered him to pull down his pants. Seeing that he was not circumcised, the officer let him live.” So the woman knew from her grandfather about the German treatment of Jews in World War II, and knew that Jewish men were circumcised. No particular attitude was expressed; these were just known matters of fact. But even after telling this story, the woman still had lingering doubts that maybe her grandfather actually had been Jewish, and that he had lied to the Germans. She was interested in the similarity between Frenki and Frenkel.

• “Well if your grandfather were Jewish, you’d have the right to emigrate to Israel”, I said.

• “I never thought about emigrating, even at the beginning of this war. But as for Israel, we do have relatives in Israel.”

• “What, you have relatives in Israel?” I held back my disbelief to the best of my ability.

• “Yes: My mother’s sister married a Jewish man, and they left for Israel many years ago. They’ve lived there ever since. My mother speaks with her sister at least once a month. I think they live in Ashdod.”

So instead of being antisemitic, the Ukrainian woman had a family connection to Jews and to Israel. Then the conversation moved on to Trump and the prospects for Ukraine winning the war. Nothing about the tenor of the conversation changed. We just moved on.

Maybe it’s my upbringing, but I’m always surprised by how naturally most Ukrainians accept Jewishness, including simple people like the driver and his sister.

The Khmelnytskyi Syndrome

Khmelnytskyi is a provincial capital, a city of about 300,000 inhabitants, 333 kilometers (207 miles) southwest of Kyiv. For Jews, the fact that a city is named after Bogdan Khmelnytskyi is jolting, if not shocking. They consider Khmelnytskyi to be the prototypical pogromist and murderer. For Ukrainians, he was the leader of a Ukrainian rebellion in 1648 against the Polish Commonwealth, a country that enserfed and persecuted Ukrainians. In 1654, Khmelnytsky established an autonomous Ukrainian state, the Hetmanate, under Russian protection. The Jewish aspect of the story, that Khmelnytskyi’s forces killed tens of thousands of innocent non-combatant Jews, is unknown to most Ukrainians nowadays. For them, Khmelnytskyi fought against the Polish lords and created a Ukrainian state.

While Khmelnytsky is still considered a national hero in Ukraine, his stock has been dropping of late. The main reason is that he allied himself with the Russians and created the Hetmanate state under Russian protection. The subordinate “little brother” role of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia that he established is no model for contemporary Ukraine, which is fighting a war against Russia. The massacre of Jews also plays a role in his diminished reputation, at least for some. A segment of Ukrainian society compares Khmelnytsky to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed liberty throughout the land and at the same time owned hundreds of slaves. National heroes, they say, can be deeply flawed and have mixed legacies. At Ukrainian universities, the topic of Khmelnytsky’s “mixed legacy” now gets more attention than ever before. The main Hebrew chronicle on Jewish martyrdom in 1648 was published In Ukrainian translation several years ago. A history teacher from Khmelnytskyi (the city) told me that when he went to university back in the early 2000’s, his history professor told the class that Khmelnytskyi (the person) and his forces had committed “ethnocide” against the Jews.

The city used to be called Proskurov. The Soviets renamed it Khmelnytsky in 1954, and also made it the capital of the surrounding oblast. So here we are in 2026, talking about the Khmelnytskyi Jewish community, a term that might seem to be an oxymoron. Bogdan Khmelnytskyi is probably turning over in his grave. His city has a model Jewish community, and his country has a Jew as president (or “Hetman”).

The Khmelnytskyi Jewish Community

The head of the local Jewish community, Igor Ratushnii, says he has 1,250 members and clients on the books. That’s not very much. But his operation stands out in many ways. For a community that size, it is remarkably active. More on that in a moment. It is also a rare case when the synagogue-community is subordinate to the secular Jewish community.

Ratushnii is the director of the JDC-funded “Chesed Besht” (named after the Ba’al Shem Tov, since Medzhybizh is in today’s Khmelnytskyi oblast). But unlike many Cheseds, which are purely social service agencies for the Jewish elderly, the Khmelnytskyi Chesed is the umbrella for most Jewish activity in town. It planned and funded the Holocaust memorial at the local mass murder site; it sponsors a Jewish museum, housed in a separate facility, which is visited by groups of local schoolchildren; it publishes a periodic Jewish almanac called “shtetl”; it sponsors secular holiday celebrations and cultural programs; and it supported the refurbishment of the synagogue. And on top of that, Ratushnii supervises all of the humanitarian and social service work of a Chesed – for the elderly, for Holocaust survivors, for the needy, including internally displaced persons.- including the all-important psychological services in wartime.

Ratushnii selected the local rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Teitelboim, from a group of candidates and works closely with him. But the hierarchy is clear. Ratushnii, a secular Jew (and a former member of the Communist Party back in Soviet times) is the number one Jew in town, with good political connections in the municipality.

In reality, “Chesed Besht” isn’t a local institution – it’s a regional one. It sponsors and supervises smaller Jewish organizations in several cities: Kamianets-Podolsk, Starokostiantyniv, Rivna (Rovna), Lutsk, and Ternopil. Ratushnii runs a small Jewish communal empire.

“Chesed Besht” pays tremendous attention to aesthetics, design, and art. Everything is bright, clean, and modern. There are numerous exhibits on the walls – of Jewish books, religious objects, paintings, and photographs. Jewish life becomes one big museum. But in a town with relatively few living Jews, the visual stimuli energize and excite visitors, creating a sense of dynamism and vitality. The satellite communities follow the same model – at least that’s what I saw in Kamianets-Podolsk.

The Scholar and the War Veteran

The scholar: Nadia Ufimtseva is the only bona fide specialist in Jewish studies in Khmelnytskyi. Nadia is a 30-something-year-old woman with an MA in Jewish Studies from Kyiv Mohyla Academy University. She is now working on her Doctoral dissertation, about the collection of rare Jewish religious books held at the Kamianets-Podolsk Municipal Museum. (I saw the collection and it truly has many treasures, all of them confiscated by the Soviets from local synagogues in the 1930s.)

Nadia’s life is complicated. Her husband serves in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and they have a five-year-old daughter who doesn’t see her father much. Nadia’s brother is also a soldier in the UAF. This is typical. While Khmelnytsky is a “quiet city”, where air alarms are infrequent, everyone has friends and relatives fighting in the war. The local Jewish museum, where Nadia once worked preparing the exhibit, recently added a section on Jewish fighters in the UAF. And the city’s central promenade is lined with portraits of residents who have fallen in combat – including one with a distinctly Jewish name: Halkin (Galkin).

Anyway, back to Nadia. Despite her complicated life, she is engaged in things Jewish - the holidays, Jewish art, Israel, the Holocaust – and her enthusiasm is contagious. She often gives talks and tours on Jewish history and culture to Ukrainian students and adults. She is the indispensable Judaica resource in town. But she made a point of telling me that she has no Jewish roots whatsoever. Ukrainian audiences are stunned that she is a “pure” ethnic Ukrainian. She tells them: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be fascinated by Jewish history and culture. If I studied math, would you ask me if I am a triangle? If I studied French literature, would you ask if I am French?”

The Veteran: I was introduced to Sasha Rudman as the chairman of the Kasmianets-Podolsk Jewish community. He is a man in his forties. Kamianets doesn’t have a rabbi, but it does have, like its parent community, Khmelnytskyi, two facilities: a Chesed for social services and a community center for everything else, including prayer. They meet for Kabbalat Shabbat on Fridays at 4:30 PM, and usually get 10-15 people.

Anyway, back to Sasha. He’s a sweet and quiet man. I assumed he was a businessman, like most community chairmen. His commitment to Jewish life in Kamianets was palpable. And his wife, Victoria, who is not Jewish, was even more enthusiastic about the community’s activities.

An hour into our acquaintance, I learned that Sasha had just returned, three days ago, from a nearly year-long stint serving in the Ukrainian armed forces. He had a rather dangerous job – driving a truck with supplies to troops near the front in Donbas.

Sasha didn’t open up much. Since I didn’t know him, I couldn’t tell whether his laconic hesitancy was part of his personality or a reaction to difficult military experiences and his brand-new return to civilian life. Here’s what I got: Everybody knew he was Jewish because Rudman is an obviously Jewish name. (His dark hair and eyes also fit the “part”.) He said that the reaction of Ukrainian soldiers to his Jewishness varied. Some soldiers called him a zhidonek, but commanders generally treated him with respect. Most comrades in arms bonded with him at the front; they had other things in mind than ethnicity.

Sasha said he couldn’t keep shabbat, kashrut, or Jewish holidays at the front. He did get matzah on Pesach. And his Jewish objects were very important to him during his service: a kippah, a magen david, a chumash. His eyes lit up when he mentioned meeting other Jewish soldiers at the front. Those encounters were joyous moments.

Sasha was most animated about one point. The Kamianets Jewish community had been a major source of moral support for him. He received letters, phone calls (when he could use his phone), and small packages from friends and even from unfamiliar members of the community. “The community, the community, that’s what kept my spirits up.” Now he is back home and is ready to give back to the Jewish community.

Jewish Summer Camps in War-Time Ukraine

It’s summer! I interviewed the heads of three Jewish summer camps in Ukraine to learn about their activities and how they have adapted in wartime. Each is a sleep-away camp with a large number of children, and is sponsored by an organization with a different orientation: The Masorti movement (Conservative Judaism), Chabad-Lubavitch, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. My impression is that the system of Jewish camping in Ukraine is larger and more diverse than in Russia (which has more Jews on paper), or than in any east European country. The level of commitment and enthusiasm of the camp leaders is inspiring.

Ramah-Yachad Camp of the Masorti Movement.

Lev Kleiman, head of Aviv Community for Conservative Judaism in Chernivtsi, and Deputy Director of Ramah Yachad.

The Conservative Movement conducts a two-week sleep-away camp for kids between the ages of 10 and 16 in Boian, which is near Chernivtsi, five kilometers from the Moldovan border. We have 165 campers and 40 staff members. (There are 3 madrichim [counsellors] for every group of 20 kids, plus specialized staff.) This year, we will meet from August 12-26.

Ramah-Yachad is an “old” camp. I attended as a camper in the 1990s. But it has grown and evolved over the years. We moved Ramah-Yachad to Boian after the war broke out because this is the safest location imaginable. The resort facility we use has an enormous bomb shelter that can fit all 205 of us.

The campers and counsellors come mainly from the four Conservative communities in Ukraine: Chernivtsi, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa. These cities also have modern Jewish schools. But this year we will also have children from Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Uzhhorod and one or two other cities.

The camp schedule is full and busy. Wake-up time is at 8 AM, and bedtime is 12 midnight. Staff meetings take place after the campers go to bed, and the staff goes to sleep at roughly 2 AM.

Most of the weekdays are taken up with activities, discussions, and clubs. The discussions are all on Jewish and Israeli topics. We are an openly Zionist camp. For instance, we taught the children about the Israeli parliament, and the kids conducted a mock Knesset, with a Prime Minister, left-wing and right-wing representatives, etc.

All campers choose a club based on their area of interest - singing, nature, sports, filmmaking, painting, theatre, etc. On many evenings, there is a concert conducted by a group of campers.

The religious side of the camp is central. We have shacharit services every day, and birkat hamazon (Grace) is recited after meals. We have a full kabbalat shabbat (service welcoming the Sabbath) on Friday night, and shabbat morning services with Torah reading. The Torah is read by counselors on the first shabbat, and by campers on the second shabbat. Several of our adult staff serve as the Mashgikhim in the kitchen.

The war affects our camp profoundly. Many of our kids live in cities that are frequently bombed, and many have fathers who are serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are even mothers who have volunteered for the military. The campers have a lot of stress and trauma. Our goal is to give them two weeks when they can forget about the war, as if they were in a foreign country.

That’s not an easy task. We teach a lot about Israel, and used to teach about various Israeli wars, such as the Six-Day War. Now we minimize talking about wars, the military, etc., because it brings up unpleasant memories for the campers. Even “family day”, when we discuss what family means in the Jewish tradition, is sensitive. Some campers’ fathers have been killed in combat.

We admit only Jewish children to the camp, based on the Law of Return [i.e, at least one Jewish grandparent, DEF]. We’ve made a few exceptions for non-Jewish kids who attend Jewish day schools. They feel Jewish and usually undergo giyur (conversion) after age 18. The Masorti movement only performs giyur after age 18.

Parents pay a symbolic sum of $100 per child for two weeks of sleep-away camp. Nonetheless, some parents can’t afford the fee and apply for a discount. The vast majority of our budget is covered by the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem and the Masorti Olami organization. The camp is directed and supervised by Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya of the Schechter Institute.

We are very proud of the level of care we give to campers. Parents tell us that it’s the only summer camp in Ukraine that makes sure kids wear clean clothes, brush their teeth, etc. We’ve had many non-Jewish applicants whom we’ve turned down, and there is a waiting list to be on the staff.

It’s hard to ignore the importance of Ramah-Yahad for the Conservative movement in Ukraine. For two weeks, we are not four separate communities in different cities, but one community. The bonds between campers and among staff members are very strong. In many cases, our adult communities have adopted the atmosphere and the religious practices of Ramah-Yachad.

Staff Seminar for Ramah-Yachad Ukraine

Camp Yeka for Boys.

Rabbi Levy Berger, Assistant Principal of Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim in Montreal and Director of Camp Yeka.

Camp Yeka is a three-week sleep-away camp for boys between the ages of six and seventeen. This summer (June 30-July 20), we will have 130 campers. It is based on the model of Camp Gan Israel of Chabad. The Rebbe felt very strongly about the importance of summer camp.

Camp Yeka has a rich history. It was founded twenty-five years ago by young men from the US, Israel, and elsewhere in cooperation with the Jewish community of Dnipro, headed by Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky. The camp was named Yeka, short for the city’s former name, Yekaterinoslav. Fifteen years ago, when the Jewish community of Dnipro had financial difficulties, it dropped funding for the camp. But the staff of young men stepped up and took over financial and administrative responsibility themselves. So the camp is like a staff-run cooperative.

Our campers come from all of Ukraine. I would say that 30% come from religious homes and know how to daven (pray) in Hebrew. Many are Jewishly unaffiliated; from families who receive humanitarian aid through Jewish communities.

About half of our campers come from underprivileged backgrounds. Many come from the Jewish orphanages that exist in Kyiv, Odesa, and Dnipro. Others come from families with a history of alcoholism, neglect, or abuse. One is a halakhically Jewish boy, both of whose parents died of alcoholism. He lives with his non-Jewish grandmother. Our main goal is to give campers a warm, loving, joyous atmosphere and to strengthen their love of Judaism.

Our counsellors come from all over the world. They are enthusiastic, talented, special young men. About half of them can speak Russian; some of our campers can speak broken English or broken Hebrew. Our strength is the interpersonal relationship between counsellors and campers. We have 2-3 counsellors per bunk of 20 kids. Davening and activities are organized by bunk.

For the past several years, we met on the outskirts of Zhytomyr, in a resort facility owned by the local Jewish community, which is headed by Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm. But Zhytomyr has been a target of drone attacks, and we had a night with lots of sirens and alarms, which we spent in the shelter. This was traumatic for the campers. We wanted to give them a calm and stress-free environment. So this year we have moved to a resort facility in Revakivtsi, in the Carpathian Mountains, Northwest of Chernivtsi.

A year ago, we had a boy from Odesa, whose apartment building was destroyed by a Russian attack while he was at camp. His mother came to live with us, because she had nowhere to go.

We have a Mashgiakh who is koshering the kitchen. We obtain our meat, milk, and dairy products from the main kosher food distributor in Ukraine; we buy our fruits and vegetables locally; and we make special arrangements with a local fish market that uses our knife.

Parents or families pay a sliding scale fee, anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 Ukrainian Hryvnia [$22 to $88 dollars]. We do this so that families have a sense of ownership and responsibility. The orphans and the poorest families do not pay at all. The real cost is $1,500 per camper. We receive support from a variety of sources, including the Jewish Relief Network of Ukraine and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine. Many of our counsellors do fundraising themselves.

There is a parallel girls’ camp, with its own administration, calendar, and facility.

Yulia Dor, Director for Ukraine, Jewish Agency for Israel.

The Jewish Agency sponsors two types of summer camps in Ukraine: camps under our direct administration, and camps to which we provide financial support (operated by Hillel, the Masorti Movement, and Reform Movement). The two Sokhnut (=Jewish Agency) camps are eight days long; one is for younger children aged 6-12, and the other is for youth aged 13-17. The total enrollment is 260 children and youngsters. Each camp has a staff of thirty counsellors, at least 6 of whom come from Israel.

This year, our camps will take place in Western Ukraine, near Uzhhorod. Before the war, they were held on the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv, but those places are too dangerous now. For the first two years of the war, our camps were held outside of Ukraine, and we took the children out of the country for safety purposes. Now we are back in Ukraine, but in the west, which is a much safer region. We want to provide the children with a calm and secure environment. A child who is eight years old has spent half of his or her life under intolerable conditions of war. We need to give them a lot of care and love.

The Jewish Agency camps are educational projects with Israel at the center. Each camper has an Israel project. We give them a map of Israel, and they pick one or two points they have heard of. They may have relatives there, or just have heard of the place: Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. For the entire week, they research the place by interviewing counsellors and staff, and conducting internet research. They describe the aspects that interest them – sports, education, and nature. At the end of the camp, they present their research project.

Our goal is for campers to have a connection to Israel, to have friends there, to care about Israel, and what is happening there. We also want them to feel that Israel cares about all Jews in the world. To feel that being Jewish and being connected to Israel are a source of strength in life. For many, our camp is the first step in a journey that will lead to Aliyah.

My personal journey was actually in the opposite direction. I made Aliya from Russia in 1996 at age 19, and then two years later, participated in a Jewish Agency camp in Moldova as a counsellor from Israel. I know the power of creating a summer community and home for young Jews from that experience.

About half a year ago, Ukraine opened up its border for young people between the ages of 18 and 22 to leave the country for study and education. This has enabled us to resume conducting staff training seminars in Israel for the local Ukrainian counsellors.

For us, Shabbat is a special time at camp. We begin Shabbat with a ceremony, a pluralistic ceremony. There is kiddush, singing, and discussion of the weekly Torah reading. I believe our kitchens are kosher, but I’m not sure of the level of kashrut.

Hawaiian Shabbat at the Jewish Agency Camp

Needless to say, running a camp with 160-170 people is a very complicated logistical operation. But we believe it is an extremely important activity that will influence young people for the rest of their lives.

Ukrainian and Kosher

During our visits to Kyiv, my wife and I have eaten in the “Tak i da” kosher restaurant next to the Shchekavitskaia Synagogue in Podil. I never gave too much thought to the restaurant’s kashrut supervision – until this week, when I spoke with Rabbi Pinchas Vishetsky of Kyiv, who is Chairman of the Ukrainian Kashrut Committee.

Ukraine, it turns out, has a very developed system of kosher food, which serves at least 28 communities and thousands of individuals. The system has struggled but persevered through the four years of war and devastation.

Rabbi Pinchas Vishetsky is the heir to a family tradition of religious activism in the Soviet Union. His grandfather spent six years in the Gulag for his activity in the sphere of Jewish religious education, and his father grew up as a Chasidic Jew in post-war Chernivtsi, before moving to Israel in 1965. Vishetsky junior was born in Kfar Chabad, and settled in Ukraine in 1993. For twenty years, he was the rabbi of Donetsk, in Eastern Ukraine, but left the city after it was seized by Russian-sponsored forces in 2014. He has since then headed the “Kedem” community in the Podil section of Kyiv, known informally as the Donetsk community.

Our conversation, conducted in Hebrew, has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Tell us basic facts about the kosher meat and food system in Ukraine.

A: When I arrived in Ukraine in 1993, there was no local kashrut at all. All the kosher food was brought in from outside the country. But it was clear that you couldn’t sustain such a system for years – it’s too expensive. If you want to build Jewish life, you need domestic kashrut. The challenge of building such a system was enormous. At the outset, we had two Tzadikim who supported this enterprise, the philanthropist George Rohr, and Rabbi Sholem Duchman, head of the Kolel Chabad organization. Rabbi Duchman convinced me to enter this sphere of activity by saying, “If there won’t be kashrut, there won’t be Jewish life in Ukraine”. Thanks to their financial investment and vision, we developed a professional kashrut system in Ukraine. Today, we have a staff, we pay salaries, we pay taxes. After 5-6 years, we told our two benefactors that we could function independently, without their funding.

In the first years, we functioned on a very modest scale. Rabbi Duchman sent us a shokhet (kosher meat slaughterer) from the United States for visits; later, we sent one of our shlukhim (emissaries) in Ukraine to Canada to study shechitah in Toronto. We also trained our own students to be mashgikhim (Kashrut supervisors); one of them, Rabbi Kalmanshtein, is a Talmud Chacham who also knows a great deal of chemistry, and is an expert on the kashrut of ingredients.

Q: How does it work? Are there private companies for the slaughter and distribution of kosher meat?

A: We encouraged a few local businessmen to establish a kosher food company, called Ukrkosher, They operate the business side. They approach, for instance, a slaughterhouse and negotiate with the owners the rental of the facility for a week to ten days, during which the entire slaughterhouse is exclusively for kosher slaughter. Our organization provides the ritual supervision. Ukrkosher markets the products, with our stamp on them.

Ukrkosher offers four types of meat: chicken, beef, turkey and lamb. They also market a wide range of products with our kosher approval: milk (chalav yisrael), cheese, ice cream, mayonnaise, ketchup, etc. Several countries in Europe with old, established Jewish communities lack as strong a kosher food system as Ukraine.

Parallel to that, we supervise factories whose products don’t need special supervision of their ingredients – producers of cooking oil, sugar, potato starch etc. In such cases, we visit the factory four or six times a year.

Q: How many shokhtim are there in Ukraine?

A: We only have one local shokhet. When we rent a slaughterhouse for kosher slaughter, we bring in a whole group of shokhtim from Israel and Europe, train them, and supervise them. Usually, the group consists of nine shokhtim: 2 each for beef, lamb, and turkey, and three for chickens.

Q: How has the ongoing war affected your operations and activity?

A: The war has caused several challenges for us. First, there was a loss of staff. Our mashgikhim were overwhelmingly young people with children. Needless to say, when the war broke out in February 2022, they left the country with their families. I myself encouraged them to do so. I don’t think small children should be exposed to air raid sirens and explosions. Many of our mashgikhim also left early in the war because they were subject to the Ukrainian draft.

Our second challenge was that the market for kosher products shrunk because of the war. Many hundreds of kashrut-observing families left Ukraine. And many other Jews who were connected with our communities and ate food at communal meals, also left the country. This loss of consumers was partially made up by a wave of new people, Jews who drew closer to Jewish communities and synagogues during the war. But overall, there was lower demand, which led to lower production. Lower production led certain factory owners to say that designating a week or more for kosher production wasn’t profitable for them. The factory owners are businessmen, after all.

But “thanks” to the fact we are in a state of war, another force arose that assisted and continues to assist us in the area of kosher food – The Jewish Relief Network in Ukraine (JRNU). This is a Chabad affiliated organization that provides humanitarian aid to the Jewish communities in Ukraine. JRNU fund the preparation and distribution of food packages to Jews and others who are in need, through the local communities. They distribute thousands of such packages each month. They do an amazing job. They give people life, oxygen. Each community has a list of needy people who receive this support. These needy people are new consumers of kosher food, and this has helped sustain the branch of kosher food production in Ukraine.

In short, the private, individual market of kosher consumers has shrunk, but the communal food market has grown to the point of balancing out the losses.

Q: Has the war caused problems for kosher production?

A: The greatest challenge we face is the safety of our staff. Some production facilities are located in dangerous areas – near Kherson, Sumy, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv – and we need to send mashgikhim there.

Allow me to tell you from my personal experience. Last September, I travelled to a factory of Pepsico, where they produce both soft drinks and potato chips. The factory is located 20 kilometers from the front line. A colleague and I travelled there to examine their production process. The further we travelled, the more tense we became. We were the only vehicle on the road, and we knew that the Russians could attack us by drone at any time. We recited the Psalms to appeal for God’s protection. We reached the factory – all the window-panes were sealed with metal. Inside the factory, there was no sunlight, and there were numerous signs pointing to the underground shelters. I spent 6-7 hours inside the facility, but I made sure to leave while it was still daytime.

We send mashgikhim to such places. It requires a lot of prayer and a lot of Divine assistance (siyata di-shmaya) for them to return safely. I believe that thanks to the merit of the mitzvah of kashrut, which is a holy labor, the Lord protects us. But it’s not easy.

Q: Can you tell us more about the scope of the kosher food market in Ukraine?

A: There are approximately 28 Jewish communities in Ukraine, all of which use this service. In most cities and towns, there is one community, but in Kyiv and other large cities there are several communities.

There is another market we haven’t mentioned: those Jews who visit the holy places – Uman and Medzhbizh. A large number of people arrive each year in Uman, especially for Rosh Hashanah. Most of those people eat food under the supervision of the Badatz of the ‘edah charedit in Jerusalem [the Ultra-Orthodox community]. But many of the products those visitors eat are under our supervision.

Q: Do you cooperate with the Badatz?

A: Very much so. The visitors to Uman eat meat that is slaughtered by a group of Badatz shokhtim who come to Ukraine. But we provide the organization of the slaughter process – the facility, the logistics, the delivery of cattle to the facility, even some of the mashgikhim. There is a surge in kosher food demand in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah. Some of the local hotels in Uman follow Badatz, and some of them use our meat and our products.

Q: Do you have a relationship with the O-U [the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America kashrut division]?

A: Absolutely. The O-U turns to us to confirm the kashrut of ingredients and raw materials that come from Ukraine, and we are happy to respond. We consider the O-U and the OK to be our “older brothers”. They are much larger than us in scope, but we aspire to maintain the same high professional and religious standards as they do, the same methods of operation.

Q: Do you have any competitors?

A: Besides our national organization, there are local kashrut supervisions by local rabbis. [The rabbi of Chernivtsi recently arranged kashrut supervision for the bread baked by a local bread factory – DEF]. I myself have a local kashrut organization that supervises two kosher restaurants, including Tak I da.

Q: Any final thoughts?

The Lord is testing us by forcing us to work under conditions of war. On the other hand, the Lord opens the gates of compassion and of blessing by helping us in our work.

Nazi Collaborator or Ukrainian National Hero?: The Reburial of Andriy Melnyk in Kyiv

On May 25, the remains of Andriy Melnyk, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during World War II, were buried in the National War Memorial Cemetery in Kyiv. They were exhumed from Luxembourg on May 19. The reinterment ceremony was attended by President Volodymyr Zelensky and several other high-ranking government officials, who paid tribute to Melnyk as a national hero. Melnyk’s faction, the OUN-M, was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II, fought against the Soviets, and sought to attain Ukrainian independence under German auspices. Its members perpetrated atrocities against Ukrainian Jews.

At the funeral and online, Zelensky raised the prospect of creating a Pantheon of Ukrainian Leaders, which would include rival OUN leader Stepan Bandera, and the head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1919, Symon Petliura. Both had highly troubling histories vis-à-vis Jews. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, Zelensky used to characterize Bandera and the OUN ambiguously, acknowledging that their legacy was a source of controversy in Ukrainian society. Now he celebrated the absence of disputes regarding Melnyk’s reinterment.

No major Ukrainian Jewish organizations reacted to the event. Yad Vashem posted a statement condemning it. “Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance. Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a similar statement: “We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis. There is no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

I discussed Andriy Melnyk and his legacy with Dr. Yuri (Amir) Radchenko, a specialist on the Holocaust in Ukraine who lives in Kyiv. Radchenko is a staff researcher at the Babyn Yar National Memorial Reserve, and is the author of Auxiliary Police, Local Administration, the SD, and the Shoah (in Ukrainian, Kyiv; Fenix, 2024). Our conversation was supposed to take place on Sunday May 24, but Radchenko asked to postpone it because of the massive Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv the previous night. He said he needed to regain his composure and catch up on sleep. We spoke on May 25, the day of Melnyk’s reburial.

Q: Who was Andriy Melnyk?

A: Melnyk was a Ukrainian political leader who was born in 1890. He was active during the Ukrainian revolution of 1918-1921. In that period, he actively opposed pogroms against Jews, as the commander of a unit of the Ukrainian army.

Melnyk was imprisoned by Poland in the 1920s, and eventually became the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1938. (He was called vozhd’, the equivalent of the German Führer and Italian Duce). The organization was Integral nationalist in the 1930s, and close to Fascism from 1940 on.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: It was on the radical right, similar to the Romanian Iron Guard and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party. But unlike the latter, it was a party without a state and functioned underground. In Eastern Galicia, which belonged then to Poland, there was a spectrum of legal Ukrainian political parties: liberals, socialists, centrists, and religious. OUN opposed legal activity under conditions of increasing Polish repression against Ukrainians.

Q: How prominent was antisemitism in Melnyk’s and OUN’s ideology?

A: After Melnyk was elected leader of the OUN, the second Congress of OUN was held in Rome on August 27, 1939. It adopted a draft constitution of the Ukrainian state, which included separate points on the Jews.

From the Draft Constitution Adopted by the OUN, August 1939

“’The existence of political parties will be prohibited by law’… The state would control ‘all forms of publishing activity, especially the press’. […] Commercial enterprises owned by ‘non-Ukrainians disloyal to the Ukrainian state will be confiscated without compensation’. Non-Ukrainians would be allowed to engage in commercial activities by special licenses issued by the government. […] The 1939 program promised ‘freedom of conscience’ but only ‘insofar as it does not go against the welfare and morality of the Ukrainian nation’. The state would ban […] ‘those religious cults that manifest antinational and immoral tendencies’.”

John Paul Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust, pp. 141-142

Antisemitism was the overall trend in East-Central Europe in the late 1930s – in Romania and Poland, and almost everywhere. Melnyk, like Ukrainian leaders Symon Petliura and Dmytro Dontsov, did not start out as an antisemite but embraced antisemitism later on in his career. By 1940, when the OUN split into two parties, the Melnykists and Banderists, they disagreed on various issues, but not on antisemitism. And the Melnyk wing of the OUN held on to its antisemitic slogans longer than the Banderists, until 1945.

Q: What was the OUN’s and Melnyk’s relationship with the Germans?

A: In the fall of 1939, the Germans established Ukrainian self-government in a part of the General-Gouvernement, with a Ukrainian Central Committee based in Kraków. Both the Melnykist faction and Banderist faction viewed Germany as the global power that could bring about the creation of an independent Ukraine. In fact, the Melnykists remained loyal to Nazi Germany longer than the Banderists. A small group of Melnykists tried to oppose the Germans in 1943, by creating partisan brigades that fought the Germans (as well as fighting Polish and Soviet partisans), but that project collapsed. (Interestingly, there were some Jewish doctors in these short-lived partisan brigades, but their subsequent fate is unknown.)

Q: What control did Melnyk have over his members and forces?

A: From the summer of 1941 on, Melnik was in Berlin with his wife, and was under German surveillance. He travelled to Vienna a few times, but was not allowed to travel to Ukrainian territories. Emissaries would come to visit him and provide him with information and reports. In January 1944, he was arrested by the Germans, and spent some time in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He had considerable influence, but not control, over the OUN-M.

Q: So what role did he play in the Holocaust?

A: He didn’t murder Jews himself, but he certainly knew about the mass murder of the Jews, and knew that members of his organization participated in it. But the topic wasn’t that important for him. For him, the priority was that his people integrate themselves into all German political and military structures in Galicia, Volyn and other regions of Ukraine – into the auxiliary police, local administration, military intelligence (the “Abwehr”), the Waffen SS, the Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). That integration would eventually lead to the establishment of a Ukrainian state. And if integration meant killing Jews, that was OK. No political party or movement in Eastern Europe was upset by the mass murder of the Jews, except for the Polish Home Army.

Q: What cases of Melnykist participation in the murder of Jews stand out?

A: In the summer of 1941 in Bukovina. As soon as the Soviet Army retreated from Bukovina, in late June, three forces entered the region: the Fascist Romanians, the German Einsatzgruppe D, and the Bukovinian unit (Bukovinskiy Kurin) of OUN-M, Melnykists. Each of those three groups committed crimes. There were a few towns where the Melnykists committed crimes alone, on their own, in the summer of 1941. These were among the very first atrocities against Jews in Ukraine.

Q: Did Melnykists participate in the Massacre of Jews at Babi Yar, on September 29-30, 1941?

A: According to the testimony of Jewish survivors, after passing the first checkpoint on the way to the pits, there were guards who pushed them onward who spoke Ukrainian with a Galician accent. That means they were Melnykists. We also know that there were Melnykists among the people who sorted the victims’ clothing. One of them was Melnykist Stepan Fedak. We don’t have any information that Melnykists were among the shooters. The shooting was done by the Germans, Sonderkommandos.

It should be said that German policy toward the Melnikysts changed in 1942, and many of them, in the latter part of the war, were arrested and were themselves victims of German persecution.

Q: How did the myth of Melnyk as a hero develop among Ukrainians?

A: After World War II, many Melnykists left the territory of Ukraine for the diaspora, and there became more moderate. They embraced the idea of democracy. And they created an image of their leader, Melnyk, as a moderate, conservative person. And the Melnykists’ activity in killing Jews was passed over in silence. There was total whitewashing. People in Ukraine inherited this image of Melnyk, which has little to do with history. There is the ideological myth of the “heroic colonel”, and there is the real history based on documents. They are entirely different things.

Q: And the shift in Zelensky’s position, what does that signify?

A: I think the president, like most politicians, knows very little about who Melnyk was. We’d need to ask him directly. The problem is that the state decided to make these people into heroes when they could have selected alternative heroes. There were some liberal minded political figures in OUN-B and OUN-M, who were not antisemites. Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky of the Greek-Catholic Church, who has a complicated legacy, but who rescued Jews, would have been a much better national hero. But politicians want easy solutions, not complicated solutions. “A myth exists, let’s go with it.”

Q: What is the broader significance of this reinterment?

A: I’ll tell you, this war has thrown Ukraine back to the 1990s as far as the national historical discourse: we are back to the cult of problematic national heroes. Other East European societies went through this in the 1990s. Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, and Romania went through such a stage and outgrew it. In Romania, there are no Antonescu streets [in memory of the leader of Fascist Romania during World War II – DEF]. There used to be such streets in the 1990s, but now it’s unacceptable. Ukraine, because of Putin’s aggression, has regressed. Ukraine has been forced to mobilize, militarize, and mobilize its national myths, and it finds itself in this muck, unfortunately. It may be that in 20-30 years from now, Ukraine will reach the level of Romania in evaluating such historical figures. For now, Putin has demolished the efforts of Ukrainian and other scholars to establish a normal public dialogue on history and reconsider such personalities critically, without undermining the legitimacy of the foundations of the Ukrainian state. We are experiencing an ideological catastrophe, and I don’t know when we’ll get out of it.

The New Ukrainian Law Against Antisemitism – Everything You Wanted to Know (and More)

On April 14, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law criminalizing antisemitism. His signing drew a considerable amount of public attention in Ukraine and in Israel. Let’s look at the law itself and at the debate it sparked in the Ukrainian press.

The Law and What It Does

Actually, this new law isn’t new. It was passed by the Ukrainian parliament in February 2022, but was never signed by Zelensky until now. All it does is add a few words (“manifestations of antisemitism”) to the text of Article 161 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.

Article 161 lays out the penalties and punishments for “inciting national, regional, racial, or religious enmity and hatred”. Among specific acts falling into this category, it lists “humiliating national honor and dignity; or affronting citizens’ feelings in connection with their religious beliefs”. The words “manifestations of antisemitism” have now been added after “humiliating national honor and dignity”.

Under the law, acts of antisemitism will be punishable by a fine of between 3,400 and 8,500 hryvnia ($78-$193) or restrictions on the perpetrator’s liberty for three to five years. If the act was accompanied by violence, threats, or deception, the penalty rises to a fine between $193 and $386, and three to five years in prison. If the antisemitic act was organized by a group, the prison term is longer - between five and eight years.

This law is, in reality, a follow-up to its predecessor, passed in 2021, which outlawed antisemitism using the IHRA definition thereof. It banned the denial or justification of the Holocaust, calling for violence against Jews, spreading of antisemitic stereotypes, vandalism against Jewish institutions, cemeteries, and monuments. The new law simply applies the previous law to the criminal code.

Why Now? Political Considerations

The mystery surrounding the new law is: Why did it take four years and two months for Zelensky to sign it? (In fact, the Ukrainian constitution requires that the president either sign or veto a law within 15 days of its passage. But there are apparently many such languishing laws.) And why did Zelensky “remember” to sign it now, of all times? There has been a lot of speculation, but the three most compelling theories I’ve seen are: (a) to bring the legal status of antisemitism in Ukraine into accordance with the norms of the European Union; i.e. as part of Ukraine’s efforts to join the EU; (b) to improve Ukraine’s image in Israel, in both public opinion and government circles, with the hope of increasing defense cooperation with Israel. (The law was signed on Yom HaShoah.); (c) the president was reluctant to sign the law after the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it could have been used by Russia as evidence that there is an acute problem of antisemitism (and Nazism) in Ukraine. That propaganda line has been refuted successfully in the past several years, opening up the possibility of the signing.

Of course, all three considerations can be true.

The sponsor of the law in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), MP Maksim Burzhansky, from Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” faction, explained the need to amend Article 161 of the criminal code. “Explicit cases of antisemitism have previously been classified as acts of petty hooliganism”. As a result, perpetrators who have shouted antisemitic slogans or defaced Jewish institutions have gotten off with warnings or light fines. The offenses were not considered to fall under Article 161 of the criminal code. The new law corrects that, at least on paper. Now the question is one of enforcement…

Burzhansky stated that European officials were screening Ukrainian legislation to see if it conforms to European norms. “The Europeans simply didn’t notice this law. Now, we have everything, and everything is good, as far as the struggle with antisemitism is concerned, just like in other countries in Europe.” He also noted that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine is much lower than in European countries.

Israeli and Ukrainian Press Reaction

The most effusive reactions to the law came in the Israeli press. “Zelensky’s Dramatic Move: Antisemitism will No Longer Pass Without Punishment” wrote Ma’ariv. “Ukraine Intensifies its Struggle against Antisemitism” announced i24 television and the Israel Hayom daily. One commentator called it “a significant act that will echo across the international arena. This step represents a turning point for Ukraine.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar formally thanked President Zelensky for signing the legislation.

But in Ukraine, reaction was mixed. I will limit myself to the press and television, and not wade into the murky waters of social media.

The popular Ukrainian news-magazine “Focus” published an opinion piece praising the signing of the law by Oleg Vishnyakov, the Honorary Consul of Israel in Western Ukraine. He stressed that the law was further evidence to Europe and the world that Ukraine was truly committed to the rules of liberal democracy, and was willing to condemn antisemitism by name.

Vishnyakov was one of the few commentators who mentioned obliquely the history of antisemitism in Ukraine. “This land bears the burden of horrific tragedies.” He cited Babi Yar, the Holocaust, and the Soviet suppression of the memory of these events. “A modern state cannot exist within a logic of silence. When Ukraine formalizes the unacceptability of antisemitism, it effectively acknowledges that this history is an integral part of itself—not an external subject or someone else’s problem, but its own responsibility.”

This point was made much more explicit by popular political commentator Vitaly Portnikov (who is Jewish) on Espresso TV. “There were once millions of Jews in Ukraine. Today, there are almost no Jews in Ukraine. [..] It’s not just that they packed their bags and left. The vast majority of these people were killed. Waves of killings occurred in the Holocaust, in the Civil War, in the Khmelnytskyi uprising. There were massive killings of Jews by both neighbors and occupiers. From the perspective of responsibility toward historical memory […] the Ukrainian people should be interested in having legislation that puts an end to this history of mass extermination.” Bravo Portnikov.

But several commentators claimed that the law was discriminatory because it singled out antisemitism from other forms of hatred, thereby giving preference to Jews. There is no law against hostility toward the Roma, another historically vilified group. They also protested that there was no law in Ukraine against Ukrainophobia, which is a real problem in the country’s Russian-occupied territories. Officials suppressing Ukrainian identity should be criminally liable. And there is no law criminalizing the denial of the Holodomor (the Soviet perpetrated mass famine in Ukraine in 1932-33). Portnikov, for one, argued that such laws should indeed be passed, but that this did not negate the importance of passing a law on antisemitism.

The popular daily Ukrainska Pravda published an opinion piece by one Yuri Kasyanov in which he claimed that “this discriminatory law was adopted to protect an ethnically organized criminal group, the composition of which we all know from the NABU tapes.” He was referring to the criminal conspiracy to defraud Ukraine headed by Timur Mindich, an observant Jew and friend of Zelensky’s. But these are malicious canards: The criminal group was not ethnically organized – most of the defendants in it are Ukrainian – and the law against antisemitism passed in 2022, well before “Mindich-gate”. The law will not protect Mindich from prosecution.

There is much more public opposition to the law today, than there was in 2022 when it passed, or in 2021 when the predecessor bill passed. Much of this is political. Those Ukrainians who are fed up with Zelensky (more than a quarter of the electorate) criticize everything he does, and are eager to attribute to him selfish or cynical motives. Hence the supposition that this is a law to protect Mindich.

Most of those who were critical of the law said it was unnecessary. Antisemitism was low in Ukraine, lower than in European countries. Antisemitism is “almost nonexistent In Ukraine”, said one commentator.

Antisemites Chime In and a Half-Jew Responds

But in at least one print newspaper, criticism of the law turned into outright antisemitism. The newspaper “Republic” published an article entitled “Zelensky humiliated Ukrainians with the Law on Antisemitism”, and offered an image to complement its thesis.

“The fact is that Zelensky brutally humiliated Ukrainians. Or in other words, he demonstrated superiority over Ukrainians and openly, contrary to the Constitution, put Jews above them. He showed us our place. ‘You Ukrainians are inferior, you are worse than us, and you have no weight in Ukraine’, Zelensky essentially declared by signing the law on antisemitism among Ukrainians. [….] Previous cases of anti-Ukrainian manifestations, in particular with the menorah [the placing of a Chanukah menorah in Kyiv’s central square – DEF], do not seem to be random, but rather indicate a certain systematic behavior on the part of Jews as an ethnically organized group. Such behavior is called ‘Ukrainophobia’.”

The article serves as the best proof that the new measure criminalizing antisemitism was and is necessary.

In response to such comments, former Parliamentary Deputy Borislav Bereza wrote an angry article in the Novoe Vremia newspaper. Bereza is an interesting character: His father is Jewish, and as a teenager, he lived in Israel for two years. Many years later, he became a leader and the spokesperson for the militant Ukrainian Nationalist organization, “Right Sector”. Today he is an independent commentator; he uses his YouTube channel to pummel Zelensky, whom he despises.

But Bereza defended the new law. “I am observing a strange wave of lies and hysteria due to the fact that Zelensky signed a law on punishment for manifestations of antisemitism […] People are shouting that now it will not be possible to criticize Zelensky, because it will be antisemitism. No. This is a lie. If you criticize Zelensky for his populism, fake news, lies, and corrupt friends, as well as for the crimes he committed, then this does not fall under this law. But if you attack Zelensky for his nationality, then this is antisemitism.” […]

“Unfortunately, I see how anti-Semitism is growing. Zelensky is to blame for this. There is also a noticeable participation of the Russians, who are actively heating up this topic. And there is the tendency of many Ukrainians to look for simple solutions. All this provides the ground for the growth of antisemitism.” […]

“There is no need to generalize. Behind every crime is a surname, not a nationality. And I criticize Mindich not because he is Jewish, but because he is part of the corruption vertical. […]

“According to the new law, only antisemitism as an insult on the basis of nationality will be punished, not criticism of a person’s actions. And that’s why anti-Semites are seething.”

It’s been a long time since Ukrainian public opinion was so actively involved in the Jewish topic. The outburst of commentary put a wide range of opinions on display. It seems that the Portnikov-Bereza position enjoys the support of most Ukrainians. But the antisemitic minority must be followed with vigilance.

Presidential Passover

On Monday April 6, the fifth day of Passover, President Volodymyr Zelensky met with a group of Chabad rabbis from across Ukraine in honor of the holiday. Zelensky received two special gifts: a box of Shmurah Matzah produced in the city of Dnipro, and the recently published Pentateuch in Hebrew with Ukrainian translation.

The meeting was originally scheduled for before the Passover holiday, but Zelensky was abroad, in Jordan and Syria at the time.

The meeting was organized by the Chabad umbrella organization, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine, headed by Rabbi Mayer Stambler and Rabbi Raphael Rothman. Among the rabbis in attendance were Chief Rabbi Moshe Asman of the Brodsky Synagogue (who has strained relations with the Federation of Jewish Communities), Chief Chabad emissary in Kyiv Rabbi Yonatan Markowitz, and rabbis from Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Berdychiv, Poltava, Kremenchuk, and the chief Jewish military chaplain of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Also present was Kirill Budanov, head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.

Zelensky noted that Passover was the holiday of freedom, “for which the entire people of Ukraine is fighting. We are grateful to you for being part of this struggle. That you support our nation, our state. That you support your communities and all of our people.”

Rabbi Stambler claimed at the gathering that the Federation distributed Passover sets with matzot to 50,000 households in Ukraine, but I’d suggest that we take that number with a pinch of salt.

“How Antisemitic are Ukrainians?”:
An Update

The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducts annual surveys on xenophobia and antisemitism in Ukraine. The Institute just published the findings for its fall 2025 survey, and the results are mixed. Xenophobia and antisemitism are down from the previous year, but are still higher than they were in 2022 and 2023. When it comes to antisemitism in particular, there are a number of silver linings.

The Kyiv Institute uses the Bogardus scale, a common measure of social distance (=bias). Their survey asks informants whether they would accept the members of x – group as: 1. marrying into your family, 2. a good friend, 3. a neighbor, 4. A co-worker, 5. a resident of your country, 6. a visitor to your country, 7. exclude from entry to the country. Respondents can only give one answer. The assumption is that if you would accept someone as a member of your family, you would also accept them as a friend, neighbor etc. The lower a group’s Bogardus score, the less bias there is against them.

The survey was conducted in September-October 2025 by mobile phone and consisted of responses by 1,008 respondents above age 18, living in all regions of Ukrainian-controlled territory. (Russian-occupied territories were not included.)

In October 2025, the overall xenophobia rate was 4.2. The score for Jews (“Jews residing in Ukraine”) was lower, 3.9 . This antisemitism score was down from September 2024 when it was 4.2 - a peak figure in recent years. The year before that, in October 2023, the Bogardus scale for Jews was at a historical low, only 3.4 . So there’s been quite a bit of volatility in the Bogardus score regarding Jews in Ukraine in recent years. It is now in the middle, between recent highs and lows.

Jews are the third most accepted (“least distant”) group in Ukraine, after Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. In other words, being a Jew is the most acceptable non-Ukrainian ethnic identity in society.

For the first time ever, Jews surpassed Poles as an accepted group (i.e. with a lower Bogardus score). The Bogardus score for Poles – a group from a neighboring country that is an ally of Ukraine – was 4.1 . Ukrainians exhibit much more social distance (= bias) towards Belarusians living in Ukraine (4.5), Romanians (4.7), Russians living in Ukraine (4.8), Africans (5.2), and Roma (5.3). The highest score of all (6.5) was reserved for Russians who reside in Russia (obviously). While the level of xenophobia toward all these groups was stable compared to a year earlier, the score for Jews improved in 2025 compared to 2024 (by 0.3 points).

The analysts at the Kyiv International Institute explain the overall rise in xenophobia as the product of “diminished rallying around the flag, and the accumulation of war fatigue. Clearly, the worsening situation is also contributing to increased levels of interethnic intolerance.”

The breakdown of responses concerning Jews this year was as follows. Accept Jews as marrying into your family (1 point) – 21.6%, as a good friend (2 points) – 11.6%, as a neighbor (3) – 9.6%, as a co-worker (4) – 4.5%, as a resident of your country (5) – 24.2%, as visitors to Ukraine (6) -19.7% and exclude from entry to the country (7) – 8.8%.

One way to look at these figures is that 42.8% of Ukrainians would accept Jews as family members, close friends, and neighbors (the most positive answers), whereas 28.5% would not accept them as residents of Ukraine, or even as visitors (the most negative answers).

What Is Going on With Israeli Ukrainian Relations?

On the eve of Passover, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited several Gulf states, Jordan, and Syria to discuss security cooperation in the area of anti-drone defense against Iran. Ukraine has developed effective and inexpensive anti-drone interceptors and technologies, as well as tactical techniques to counter barrages of Russian drone attacks. Middle Eastern countries are now eager to benefit from the advances that Ukraine has made in this area. According to a recent statement by Zelensky, Ukrainian interceptors and electronic technologies have already been utilized by the gulf states to defend themselves against Iranian drones.

While visiting the region, Zelensky did not go to Israel, something that provoked a diplomatic furor. An unnamed Israeli official “involved in the matter” said to Ynet that the problems arranging a Zelensky visit, and before that a conversation with Netanyahu, were the Ukrainians’ fault. Zelensky, he said, chose not to visit Israel, perhaps to express his displeasure with it. A second anonymous official said that Israel did not need Ukrainian assistance in the area of anti-drone interception, because Israel’s technology in that area was more advanced. This statement implied that Jerusalem was not particularly interested in a Zelensky visit. Which was it? Perhaps both.

The second anonymous official charged that the Ukrainians always complained about the lack of Israeli military support, and that Zelensky felt Israel owed it to him because he was Jewish. This charge is both spurious and malicious.

The first unnamed official was calmer in his overall assessment of Ukrainian-Israeli relations. “There is currently no crisis, maybe there is a kind of competition for American arms and attention. We are simply moving along two parallel lines. The crisis was at the beginning of the war, when they expected Israeli arms and were disappointed. Each country is now busy with its own war, and can help the other very little.”

But the contention that that the Israeli war against Iran is unrelated to the Ukrainian war against Russia is less and less persuasive. The Russian support for Iran is much deeper and multi-faceted than most people realize, according to Arkady Milman, head of the Russia program at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies. It was recently disclosed that Russian intelligence provided Iran with a list of 55 critical energy infrastructure targets in Israel. The targeted sites were divided into three categories: critical production facilities, major urban and industrial energy hubs, and local infrastructure. The Russian document, shared by a source close to Ukrainian intelligence, encouraged the Iranians to target these sites because they could lead to the massive energy collapse of Israel. The Russians have also shared with Iran advanced drone technology developed during the course of its war against Ukraine. Russian parts have been found in downed Iranian drones in the Gulf states, according to Zelensky.

Milman claims that Russia’s preoccupation with its war in Ukraine has limited its ability to provide military support to Iran. Were it not for Ukraine’s constant attacks on it, Russia would be much more directly involved in the Iran conflict. This suggests that Ukraine is helping Israel strategically, by keeping Russia out of Iran’s war.

Milman concluded that Israeli policy toward Russia should be much tougher than it is: “We must do everything so that the Russians do not assist the Iranians. We should tell them [the Russians]: ‘We have no problem with assisting the Ukrainians. We have many interesting technologies that can hurt you.’ If Ukraine falls, that will be bad for Israel, because Russia will continue with its campaign of conquests. If Russia loses, that will be good for the Western world, including Israel. Russia won’t be able to be a partner of Iran’s, certainly not as much as it is today.”

But clearly Netanyahu and his officials reject this logic. It may well be that the explanation is simple: Netanyahu follows Donald Trump’s foreign policy to a tee. He recently even endorsed Viktor Orban! Since Trump has been solicitous toward Russia - he has actually relaxed oil sanctions against Russia, and blamed Zelensky for the lack of progress in negotiations - Netanyahu calculates that this is no time to warm up to Ukraine.

Ukrainian and Israeli? TV News Anchor Volodymyr Rabchun

Many Ukrainians know the name Volodymyr Rabchun as the anchor of the “News Today” program on 1+1 television. His short bio on Instagram and YouTube says: “Anchor, political scientist, Ukrainian and Israeli, in media since 2005”. Rabchun is probably the best-known Israeli in Ukrainian society. But his story is a little complicated. He recently shared details about his Jewish and Israeli identity in interviews with Vlada Nedak (Director of Project Kesher in Ukraine) and Ilya Axelrod (Comedian and TV host in Israel).

Rabchun, 40, was born in Zhytomyr. His parents didn’t tell him he was Jewish until he was about 10 years old. And while there were signs of Jewishness in the family, he didn’t pay attention to them. His grandmother baked matzah, but told him it was just flatbread, so he didn’t know what matzah was. His grandfather told him that his (the grandfather’s) mother had been killed, but not that she had been murdered by the Germans as part of a massacre of Jews in Zhytomyr.

When Rabchun was ten years old, a boy in summer camp called him “Zhidyonok” (Jew-Boy), perhaps based on his appearance. Rabchun didn’t know what the word meant and asked his parents. “It means you’re Jewish, and that’s true”. And that is when he began to look for information about being Jewish. He learned about Passover and matzah and said to himself: “I’ve seen that before”. He learned about the Holocaust, and his grandfather told him more about his great-grandmother.

One thing led to another: a youth-group sponsored by the Sokhnut (Jewish Agency), seminars for “madrikhim” (group leaders) etc. At age 16, he visited Israel for the first time, and then applied for a program to go to school in Israel. His parents didn’t object.

Rabchun ended up moving to Israel at age 17 and living there for the next 18 years. He attended the last years of high school in the Negev, went to Bar Ilan University, served in the Israeli military, and worked for a decade at the Russian-language channel 9, as a news editor, correspondent, news anchor and host. He modified his last name from “Rabchun” to the Hebrew “Rav-Tzion”

For one and a half years, Rabchun was Channel 9’s military correspondent and was sent to combat zones to cover developments. Once, while in Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, two Qasam rockets landed 200 meters away from his location, while he was live on the air. As a military correspondent, Rabchun developed an interest in arms systems and military technology, subjects that have been useful to him now, as a journalist in Kyiv.

In 2019, Rabchun decided he wanted to make a radical change in his life; he was “burnt out” from his job on Israeli-Russian TV. Israeli friends in Kyiv who had established a start-up company there invited him to join them. For Rabchun, moving to Ukraine after an 18-year hiatus was not a return, but a break and a new beginning. For a year, he worked in crypto and designed websites before deciding to return to television – Ukrainian television. He auditioned for the position of host on channel 1+1, and was given the job, despite the fact that his Ukrainian wasn’t perfect at the time. (Like most Ukrainian Jews, Rabchun grew up speaking Russian at home, and knew Ukrainian from school.)

On the morning of February 24, 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Rabchun went to the studio (he co-hosted the morning show “Your Day”) and broadcast live on the outbreak of the war. He believed it was essential to project an image of confidence and calm on the air, not of panic. It was important both for domestic morale and to show viewers in Russia that Ukraine was determined to fight. During the early months of the Russian invasion, Rabchun became the voice and face of Ukraine on Russian-language media in Israel (radio, television, newspapers). His reports from Kyiv helped form Israeli public opinion, particularly among the community of ‘olim from the former Soviet Union.

Rabchun is active in Israeli cultural life in Kyiv. He hosted a ten-episode podcast on Israeli society and politics, sponsored by Nativ, the Israeli Cultural Center in Kyiv. He speaks at Jewish events at the Kyiv JCC, Hillel, and Limmud. He was the master of ceremonies of a recent Chanukah concert sponsored by the Israeli embassy.

Rabchun isn’t willing to say that he will remain in Ukraine “forever”. When he moved to Israel, he also didn’t think that it was “forever”. He has visited Israel twice in the six years since moving to Ukraine, the last time being in the summer of 2025. He says he feels equally at home in both countries.

Netanyahu Wants to Talk with Zelensky About Iranian Drones

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to discuss cooperation on the interception of Iranian drones. Iran provided Russia with drone technology at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and since then, Russia has been producing Shahed-drones based on Iranian designs. Since the outburst of the US-Israeli war against Iran, three weeks ago, Russia has been providing Iran with satellite imagery on American troop locations, and advanced drone parts.

Over the course of its four-year war, Ukraine has accumulated extensive experience in intercepting Iranian-designed drones - and Israel is now interested in obtaining that information and technology.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevhen Korniychuk, recently stated that Israeli and Ukrainian intelligence agencies are working in close cooperation. In response to that announcement, an Iranian official declared that Iran considered the territory of Ukraine to be a legitimate military target. In a parallel development, Russia protested to Israel that some of its attacks on Iran were in proximity to a nuclear power-plant facility that housed Russian specialists. Russia warned Israel not to endanger Russian personnel.

In short, the boundaries between the two wars, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Iran have blurred to the point where they are no longer separate conflicts, said Ksenia Svetlova, an expert in Middle Eastern Affairs at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “To counter the axis of evil of Iran-Russia-North Korea, there must arise a strong counter-axis: the West, Ukraine, the Gulf states, and Israel.”

In the last year, Ukraine has designed and produced inexpensive and reliable anti-drone drones, which are much less costly than anti-drone missiles. (Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine downs drones for $10,000, while the US uses $4 million missiles.) Ukraine has also developed electronic anti-drone technologies. Last week, Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine had sent teams of experts to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Israel is now eager to be part of that process.

Zelensky, for his part, said in an interview with the I-24 Israeli television station that he was looking forward to the conversation with Netanyahu: “He has what I need, and I have what he needs. So, I’m ready for this dialogue.”

Aliyah from Russia Drops Significantly in 2025

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, there has been a sizeable wave of Aliyah (immigration to Israel) from Russia, driven by fear of growing political suppression and of the Russian military draft. In 2022, 43,584 people made Aliyah from Russia, more than five times as many as in the previous pre-war year. Since then, the number has been steadily dropping annually: 32,307 in 2023, 19,474 in 2024, and last year, in 2025, the number of ‘olim (immigrants) from Russia was only 8,531, less than half as many as in the previous year, and approximately the same level as before the war. This is surprising, since the conditions in Russia have not improved – the war and political suppression persist, military mobilization remains a possibility, and the state of the Russian economy is deteriorating.

The Jewish People’s Policy Institute estimates that there are currently 130,000 Jews in Russia and more than half a million other inhabitants who are entitled to make Aliyah to Israel, based on their Jewish roots or family relations.

The number of ‘olim from Ukraine since the outbreak of the war has also shrunk, but it had been much smaller to begin with, in part because men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving Ukraine. In 2025, only 920 people made aliyah from Ukraine, significantly less than before the war.

Israeli opposition politicians have accused the government of discouraging Aliyah from Russia and Ukraine, and focusing exclusively on immigration from Western countries such as the US and France. Member of Knesset Gilad Kariv (“The Democrats”), chairman of the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, accused the government of “restricting immigration from the Commonwealth of Independent States and closing the gates to immigration from Ethiopia”. Knesset Member Vladimir Beliak (“Yesh Atid”) claimed that the restrictions were “for political and electoral reasons”, presumably referring to objections from Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties to admitting non-Jews as immigrants.

The Fourth Anniversary of the War Is Marked Across the Jewish World

This week, the Russian war against Ukraine passed its four-year mark. The war has now lasted longer than the Soviet “Great Patriotic War” (June 1941-May 1945), and has cost Russia many more fatalities (325,000 soldiers) than all previous conflicts since World War II combined.

The anniversary was marked globally, and Jewish participation in various forums and formats was noteworthy. Let’s start with the United Nations: On Tuesday, Israel voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution that condemned the Russian invasion and called for an immediate cease-fire. The vote was noteworthy because the United States, Israel’s chief benefactor, abstained, claiming that the resolution “includes language that is likely to distract from ongoing negotiations.” The final vote was 107 in favor, 12 against, 51 abstentions. The Israeli action indicates a diplomatic shift to a more pro-Ukrainian position. The change is understandable. Just a few days earlier, Russia signed an arms deal with Iran, committing itself to send anti-air defense missile-systems to Tehran. In other words, Ukraine’s arch-enemy will provide new arms to Israel’s arch-enemy.

Israel’s president Isaac Herzog followed up two days later, by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “express solidarity with the suffering of the Ukrainian people and condolences over the loss of life.” Zelensky in turn thanked Herzog for Israel’s UN vote.

In Kyiv, the grim anniversary was observed with a televised prayer service at St. Sophia’s Cathedral, attended by President Zelensky and European leaders, including Ursula Von der Leyen. Representatives of four religious groups offered prayers, and Chief Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich read Psalm 35 in Ukrainian. (“Strive O Lord with them that strive against me; Fight against them that fight against me.”) A similar multi-confessional service, with the participation of local rabbi Mendel Glitzenshtein, was held in Chernivtsi.

Later in the day, Rabbi Bleich’s synagogue in the Podol section of Kyiv held a special prayer service “for peace, for Ukraine, and for the security of our people.”

In Jerusalem, special prayers were conducted at the Kotel, the Western Wall, on February 22. At the service, sponsored by “Israeli Friends of Ukraine”, participants unfurled a 30-meter Ukrainian banner in front of the wall. And on February 24, “Israeli Friends” held a rally in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, with candles in memory of Ukraine’s victims. Approximately 100 people attended.

In Washington D.C. there was a rally for Ukraine in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which was addressed by Mark Levin, CEO of the National Coalition for Eurasian Jewry, among others.

The American Jewish organizational world issued statements on the occasion of the anniversary. The strongest was by the American Jewish Committee, writing together with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. “History has taught us that indifference enables tyranny. Today, that lesson compels us to speak with one voice: the international community must remain steadfast in its support for Ukraine.” AJC held an on-line conversation with Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishyna two days after the anniversary, on February 26.

The World Jewish Congress, which has been largely silent on the war in deference to the sensitivities of the Russian Jewish community, chimed in on Facebook. They posted a message and video that WJC was supporting and would continue to support the Ukrainian Jewish community.

Much more substantive was the statement and impact report issued by the Jewish Federations of North America on the occasion of the four-year anniversary. The 141 Jewish Federations finance work in Ukraine through three partner organizations: the JDC, the Jewish Agency, and ORT International. Together, these organizations have raised over $100 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine. The Federations stated that these funds have assisted over 500,000 people, including more than 55,000 vulnerable Ukrainian Jews.

The statement concludes: “Despite the unprecedented work we’ve done so far, the need remains. We cannot afford to stop.”

Conservative Judaism in Odesa: A Conversation With Vova Vaksman

Q: Tell us about yourself, your life.

A: I was born in Odessa in 1981, on October 17, the same date as another famous Jewish Odessite, Vladimir Jabotinsky. My father was born in Odessa in 1941 and survived the war in hiding as a baby. As I recall, my parents were Jewish, but totally assimilated. My grandmother ate matzah on Passover, but my parents didn’t - and warned us not to, because the KGB would come and arrest us. I was even briefly a pioneer in the Communist Youth League.

Q: How did you become involved in Jewish life?

A: I was sixteen years old [i.e. in 1997] when a friend of mine invited me to attend a summer camp sponsored by the Sokhnut (Jewish Agency). I liked it and started going to other events. I attended the “Lekhet” program which trained Sokhnut “madrichim” (counsellors). And I started showing up in synagogues in Odessa: I went to the Chabad Synagogue, the “Lithuanian” non-Hasidic Orthodox Synagogue, the Reform congregation. I started getting part-time “Jewish jobs”, working for the Sokhnut, for Hillel and others. I acquired my Jewish knowledge gradually through seminars, classes, and reading.

Q: What was your formal education?

A: I received a degree in economics from Odesa Polytechnical Institute, and I studied philosophy as a corresponding student at Kyiv Humanities University.

Q: How did you become affiliated with Conservative (Masorti) Judaism?

A: In 2013, I met Rabbi Reuven Stamov, then the newly arrived Conservative Rabbi of Kyiv. He drew me into the movement. I attended a week-long Conservative Seminar in Berdichev, and decided afterwards that this was the right kind of Judaism for me. I helped found the Conservative community in Odesa in 2014. We purchased a facility of our own in 2019.

Q: Describe the community and its activity.

A: I am chairman of the community; my wife Chana is executive director. We also have a cantor and a gabbai who are paid for their work. Our main activity is shabbat services: On Friday night, between 30 and 50 people attend kabbalat shabbat. On Saturday evening, we have mincha, Torah reading, se’udah shelishit and Havadalah. Besides the services, the community runs an active youth group, “Noam”, with twenty kids, and offers educational programs, such as Shabbatons and seminars. But most of all, we provide people with a feeling of Jewish community.

Q: Who are your members?

A: Unlike the Chabad community, we accept anyone who can make Aliyah based on the Israeli Law of Return. [Anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, or who is married to a Jew - DEF.] I think our great strength as a community has been our warm and friendly atmosphere. We don’t scold someone if they take out their phone during shabbat services.

Q: How has Jewish religious life in Odesa changed since the beginning of the war?

A: Two of the four main communities are no longer here. At the beginning of the war, the “Lithuanian” community left on an organized basis, in buses, to Romania, and they continue to function as a community there. The rabbi and leader of the Reform community left for Germany. The Reform movement still owns a building here, and rents it out as office space. Since 2022, we and Chabad are the only Jewish religious communities.

Q: Why did your community not go the way of the two others?

A: Chanah and I never envisioned leaving Odesa, and we persuaded some other people to stay as well. Many of our members left for Western Ukraine or abroad, and some of them have subsequently returned to Odesa. But in truth, the composition of our community has changed. Those who left have been “replaced” by newcomers, people who fled to Odesa from places further East, closer to the front (Kherson, Kharkiv, Mariupol.)

Q: How has the war changed your activities?

A: Our facility serves as an “impenetrability center” for our community and others. Recently, there have been extended electricity black-outs and disruptions of heating. People now gather at our community for light and heat – we have our own generator – for hot water, safety, and mutual support. Several of our members are serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as fighters at the front, drone operators, or in support services. One of them is a fighter for the “Azov” Corps.

Q: Do you cooperate with other local Jewish organizations?

A: Yes, mainly with the Israel Cultural Center and with the Sokhnut. As a matter of fact, next shabbat we are having a Shabbaton which is funded and co-organized by the Sokhnut. We’ll spend the weekend in Mukachevo, in far Western Ukraine. It’s a 14-hour trip by train, but it’ll be safe and pleasant.

Matvey Vaisberg: A Ukrainian Jewish Artist

On January 26, the Day of Ukrainian Unity, President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded the title “Distinguished Artist of Ukraine” to Matvey Vaisberg. Vaisberg, born in Kyiv in 1958, is one of the most highly regarded names in Ukrainian visual arts. He graduated from the Kyiv Polygraphic Institute in 1985 and started his career as a book illustrator. (In illustration, he says, you could make drawings of Dante’s devil while having in mind Brezhnev.) During Perestroika, he turned to painting. His main artistic influences were Georges Rouault and Chaim Sutin, and he helped develop the concept of the artistic “arriere-garde”, of which he is a representative. He considers both mimetism and abstractionism to be foreign to his artistic taste. Critics consider much of his work to be expressionist.

Vaisberg is named after his grandfather, the Yiddish poet Motl Hartsman (1908-1943), and lives in the same house as the latter did before the war. His family upbringing was entirely secular - his father was a professional chess player and his mother an art historian, He claims to have experienced little antisemitism as a teenager in his Communist Youth League summer camp. (He ascribes that to the fact that his prestige as an aspiring artist compensated for his being Jewish.)

Jewish themes have occupied a prominent place in Vaisberg’s work since the beginning of his career. As a young man during Perestroika, he painted a series of portraits of Jewish writers, most of them from Kyiv: Dovid Hofshtein, Itzik Feffer, Leib Kvitko, Peretz Markish, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, and Osip Mandelstam. (They were exhibited at the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkley in 2014.) In the 1990s, he composed two series of paintings on Biblical themes – “The Book of Job” and “Scenes from the Tanakh”. He has also illustrated books by Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Grigorii Kanovich, and Joseph Roth.

Vaisberg’s work on the Holocaust has been extensive and varied. His first full-fledged exhibit on the subject was the 2018 “Bird over Birkenau”, following a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Death camp.

In 2023, a year after the beginning of the Russian invasion, Vaisberg was commissioned by the Babi Yar Memorial Complex to compose three large murals for outdoor display between the mass murder site and the former Jewish cemetery. The murals were unveiled in May 2023: A Menorah, The Angel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and a Star of David with the Ukrainian Trident.

And now in January-February 2026, an exhibit of Vaisberg’s work, mainly on the Holocaust, is on display at the Ukrainian House in central Kyiv. The exhibit opening, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, was a major cultural event in Kyiv, with participation by renowned Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan and other cultural luminaries. As part of the program, the Ukrainian National Military Choir performed Chanah Senesh’s poem “Eli, Eli”.

During the last decade, Vaisberg has painted more on contemporary themes. His 2014 exhibition “The Wall” was dedicated to images of the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity, in which he participated first-hand. The exhibit traveled abroad and was displayed at the Museum of the Berlin Wall, the European House in London, and the Polish parliament.

In late 2022, Vaisberg published an album of graphic images related to the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, entitled “Travelogue”. His images were published together with texts by Zhadan. The basis for the album was Vaisberg’s personal experience. In late February 2022, he and his family left Ukraine for Poland, and from there to Munich, Germany, in a harrowing two week journey. Many of the paintings in “Travelogue” were authored in Munich.

Vaisberg returned to Kyiv three months later, in May 2022, and has been living in the city ever since. He now sees his 2022 work as an expression of anxiety and worry, and quotes one of his teachers as saying that“the significant artist is always in a state of anxiety”.

Kyiv Community Update

The energy crisis in Kyiv persists. For the vast majority of residents, there are 4-5 hours of electricity per day. Heating varies by block and by neighborhood, but in all, close to a quarter of the city’s apartment buildings remain without heat. I checked in with local Jewish institutions to see how they are responding to the situation.

Chabad Simcha Community (Rabbi Mordechai Levenhertz).

The Simcha-ORT School remained open without interruption, even when all Kyiv public schools were closed. This was a great help to parents, who could send their children to a place that had heat, light, food, and a daily structure. The Simcha community has worked on extracting and resettling the most extreme cases of need – the elderly who are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings with no heat. The latter have been placed temporarily in hotel rooms. The synagogue continues to provide hot lunches on-site.

Kyiv JCC (Anna Nagorska).

The JCC has resumed in-person activity, with heat from an independent generator. There was a full complement of youth programming on Sunday February 8: Jewscool - a group-tutoring program, Kohavim - activity for young children, Yahad for young teens, and Lo Domim for teens. Earlier in the week, a group of children and teens visited the Kyiv Hesed (Jewish senior citizens center), and presented its clients with gifts in honor of Tu Bi’shvat.

ORT School 141, Kyiv (Mila Finkelshtein).

The ORT school reopened after the two-week vacation ordered by the mayor, and uses its own generator for heat and light. ORT even began providing space to a neighboring school that was damaged by the attacks, and several of the latter’s classes now meet in its building. The most difficult situation is that of the ORT kindergarten, which has a separate facility. There is no heat, and there won’t be any for the foreseeable future. The building temperature is 14 degrees centigrade (57 Fahrenheit), which is not safe for children. The kindergarten is closed.

Ukraine’s Number Two Jewish Official:
Iryna Mudra, Deputy Head of the President’s Office

I spoke recently with Iryna Mudra, the second highest government official of Jewish background in Ukraine (after President Volodymyr Zelensky). As Deputy Head of the President’s Office for Legal Affairs, her responsibilities include both domestic and international affairs: the legal support of the president’s office, coordination of national efforts for judicial reform, international efforts to establish a special tribunal for the crime of aggression, and creating mechanisms for compensation and reparations to Ukraine, i.e. the transfer of Russian assets to rebuild the country.

Born in Drohobych, in the L’viv region of Western Ukraine, Mudra attended the Faculty of Law of the Ivan Franko National University in L’viv. She worked in the legal departments of foreign and Ukrainian banks, and was appointed Deputy Minister of Justice in May 2022. She became Deputy Head of the President’s office in March 2024.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Tell me about your family background – your parents, where you grew up, when you became aware of your Jewish identity.

A: I was born in 1975 in Western Ukraine, in Drohobych. I became aware of my Jewish identity almost at birth. My grandmother was Jewish, my mother’s mother, Basya Gershonovna Strasser, and she told me a great deal about her family. My great-grandfather was a rabbi. All my grandmother’s family was killed in a local Babi Yar. She was 21 years old when the war started and served at the frontline in 1941. She stayed alive. Her brothers and sisters, mother and father, all of them were killed. So I knew from the beginning that I was Jewish.

Q: Did you experience antisemitism in Soviet times, as a child? Or were you just aware of it?

A: As a kid, I was told that “you should keep silent that you are Jewish, otherwise there might be bad consequences for the family.” My grandmother’s husband was Russian, from Kaliningrad, and he served as the head of the district [Branch of the Communist] Party [in Drohobych]. So it was not safe to say that the family was Jewish.

Things changed dramatically in the 1990s, when Jews were engaged in repatriation to Israel. My mother applied and left for Israel in 1999. She lives today in Rishon LeZiyon. She left alone, I stayed in Kyiv, got married in 2000, and had a child. My daughter moved to Israel when she was 13 years old and attended high school there. After that, she attended university in the United States. My daughter has Israeli citizenship and speaks fluent Hebrew. She is studying at the University of South Florida and is advocating for Israel there. She wore the pin [in support of the Israeli hostages].

Q: I first read about you because you put a mezuzah on the door to your office. How did that happen and why?

A: Rabbi Yonatan Markovich [Chabad Rabbi of Kyiv] visited my office. We spoke a lot about Israel. And he noted that there was no mezuzah here, and he said: “Next time I come to you, I will bring a mezuzah and do the special ritual.” From that time on, a Mezuzah is on my door. He and Rebbitsn Inna visit me from time to time. Our family also celebrates all Jewish holidays.

Q: Does your Jewishness ever come up with colleagues, either Ukrainian colleagues or foreign colleagues, as a topic of conversation?

A: All the time when I meet new people [from abroad], I mention that I’m Jewish, and I’m interested in learning about the life of Jews and Israelis abroad. I am also very close friends with Evgen Korniychuk, the Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel. We speak often, and he informs me about what is happening in Israel. My Jewish ties help me in my work, help me establish new relations over the world.

Q: Do Ukrainian colleagues accept your Jewishness as a natural fact of life?

A: Yes, you know that Ukraine today is the least antisemitic country in Europe. Our rabbis, Moshe Asman, Yonatan Markovich always say that Ukraine is the safest country for Jews on the European continent. Everyone knows that I’m Jewish, and that’s OK.

Q: What are your ties with the American Jewish Community?

A: When I visit New York, I visit with Rabbi [David] Niederman [Executive Director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg], and know him very well. I spoke as keynote speaker at a meeting of the American Jewish Committee. [The AJC Global Forum, New York, April 29, 2025]. I must say that the Jewish Community in America is very helpful to Ukraine in international diplomacy.

Q: Do you think that your Jewish identity is connected to your legal work, your work for justice, or do you consider them separate things?

A: There might be a direct connection. The struggle for justice is what unites the people of Israel and the people of Ukraine. We are today in very similar situations, fighting for justice. The tragedy of October 7, 2023 was so comparable to our situation in Ukraine: women, children, deported children, detention, torture, violence, sexual violence. That event convinced me to fight even harder for justice. I have a very strong sense of justice for my people, both in Ukraine and Israel. I consider the people of Israel also my people.

Q: I’d like to ask you a sensitive question. The central figure in the recent corruption scandal, Mr. Mindich, is visibly, obviously Jewish. Do you think there is a problem with antisemitism because of this?

A: No. Of course, there might be some minor cases when people say: “These Jews are everywhere; they are the biggest corruptionists.” But no, it’s not on the national level. I personally did not hear anything like that. And I would not connect the case to the Jewish identity of the main actor in the case. We say very loudly, starting with the President and the head of the Office of the President [Kirill Budanov – DEF], that we have zero tolerance for corruption. Corrupt people are of different ethnic identities, not only Jewish.

Q: Thank you, Ms. Mudra. Good luck to you in your important work.

Kyiv Holocaust Survivor Freezes to Death in Apartment

In the last two newsletters, we covered the effects of the crisis in Kyiv, with many houses left without heat, electricity or water, on Jewish life in the city. Last week, the effects were concretized in the story of a single Holocaust survivor.

The shocking story was first reported by Novaya Gazeta Evropa, a highly regarded Russian emigre newspaper. An eighty-eight year old woman, Evgenia Mikhailovna Bezfamilnaya, died from the cold in her unheated apartment in the Podil section of Kyiv. She lived alone and had no children or relatives.

Neighbors reported that “Baba Zhenya”, as they called her, was born in Kyiv, and somehow avoided being sent to Babi Yar. Instead, she ended up in an orphanage, where the staff named her “Bezfamilnaya”, “without family name”.

Bezfamilnaya spoke Yiddish and Russian, and attended the local Poldil synagogue two blocks from her apartment. Neighbors helped deliver food to her, and kept an eye on her. They last saw her in early January.

On January 13, the multi-story apartment building started to receive some heating after several days of absolute cold. As a result, a pipe broke and water leaked from Baba Zhenya’s apartment to neighboring apartments. Neighbors called the police, who broke into her apartment through the balcony. When they entered, they found the floor covered with ice, and Baba Zhenya Bezfamilnaya lying frozen in bed. The official cause of death recorded by the Kyiv authorities was heart failure.

Novaya Gazeta reported the story on International Holocaust Memorial Day, and the journalist concluded by saying that Puitinist Russia was continuing and developing the methods of the Nazis in murdering innocent civilians.

Zelensky’s Remarks at Babi Yar on International Holocaust Memorial Day

As in past years, President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust at Babi Yar on International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27. He was flanked by top government officials (Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and head of the presidential administration Kyril Budanov), at least 8 rabbis, and 50 foreign diplomats.

In recent years, Zelensky has used the occasion of International Holocaust Memorial Day to warn of Russian fascism and the murder of innocent civilians by the Putin regime. The Holocaust became the pretext to speak about the current war against Russia. This year, Zelensky struck, in my opinion, a better balance, referring to the millions of Jewish victims and speaking about the need to combat antisemitism. The relevant passage read as follows:

“In this place, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, as part of the Holocaust of European Jewry in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered. The world has a duty to remember the promise of ‘Never Again’ and to uphold it. These are not empty words — when antisemitism is spreading across the world, we must ensure that this promise is truly kept. We must act against antisemitism.”

He then pivoted to the broader theme:

“If we do not gather, if we do not remember the victims – first and foremost the victims of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, during Babyn Yar, where more than 100,000 people were killed and tortured – and millions of people around the world – if we do not do this, then fascism has a chance to be born, to be reborn in one country or another, and to wage war against humanity.”

“The Situation is Catastrophic”: Kyiv Jewish Leaders on Life in a City Without Heat, Light and Sometimes Water

The situation in Kyiv this past week deteriorated. There were additional Russian drone and missile attacks on energy infrastructure on Tuesday January 20. As of Thursday night, 25% of the residential buildings in Kyiv were still without heat. Earlier, the number had been as high as 50%. Mayor Vitaly Klitchko reported that 600,000 residents of Kyiv have left the city. (Experts dispute whether this is a third or a quarter of the city’s recent population.) If water is not restored soon to the buildings without service, there may a Bonafide humanitarian catastrophe.

The city’s Jewish Community has been struggling with the situation. I contacted a number of community leaders to hear from them about how they are managing.

Rabbi Motti Levenhertz, Head of the Chabad Simcha Community, left bank Kyiv (Wednesday, January 21)

Note: The Neighborhood of the Simcha community is one of the worst hit sections of Kyiv.

“The situation is very hard. We’ve had several days without electricity, water or heat. There are Jews who sleep at home at night, when its -16 or -17 degrees Celsius outdoors, wearing two coats, sweaters and several blankets. It’s an unbelievable situation.

Still, we have people who come every morning, and we have a daily minyan. We try to operate our generator, but it breaks down because of the cold. Our school (The Chabad-ORT Simcha School) is open, even though all other schools in Kyiv are closed. The school uses its own generator.

We’ve begun to receive people daily to serve them hot lunches at the synagogue - people who don’t have electricity or even gas to cook. Families with children come to us; we also send out meals to the elderly. These are the hardest days we’ve experienced since the beginning of the war.

It seems the world is less interested. I didn’t receive calls from concerned people from abroad, other than from you. That’s a little strange. The situation is catastrophic.”

David Mil’man, Assistant to Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Asman of the Brodsky Central Synagogue; Jewish Military Chaplain in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (Wednesday January 21)

Note: The Brodsky Synagogue, in downtown Kyiv on the right bank of the Dnieper, continues to function without disruptions.

“It’s a difficult situation, but we are holding up. Two of our Mitzvah Tanks travel to different parts of the city on a daily basis, to give people an opportunity to warm up, to charge their phones, and to speak by internet. (Each Mitzvah Tank has a star-link connection.) We transported several of our elderly congregants to Anatevka [a Jewish refugee center outside of Kyiv, which serves as a satellite community – DEF]. Anatevka has its own electricity and heat. In Kyiv, young Jews are helping the elderly. They carry food and water to apartments on higher floors, since the elevators don’t work. We also deliver medicines, blankets and winter clothes.”

Short video on Mitzvah Tank in Kyiv

Video of a grateful boy in Kyiv in the Chabad Mitzvah Tank

Mila Finkelshtein, Director of ORT in Kyiv, on ORT School 141 (Wednesday January 21)

“The mayor of Kyiv ordered all schools closed this week, for an extended vacation. Schools are scheduled to re-open on February 1. Our building does not have heat, and many of the students and their families have left Kyiv.”

Anna Nagorska, Program Director, JCC Khalom, Kyiv (Friday January 23)

“We had to suspend all our in-person activities and programs. There is no heat in the JCC facility, and it’s very cold outside. We do have our own generator, and there is electricity at the JCC. Many of the clients who use our programs and services have left the city. We would love to renew our children’s programs, because the children are off from school. But without heat, that’s not possible.

We may try to do something next week, because our clients want to see each other, to meet with each other.

The Khesed [center for senior citizens] is in a similar situation. No in-person programming, and the elderly are not as interested in on-line programming.

I am sitting in my office now in my winter coat. I come to work mainly because there is electricity here, and it’s a bit warmer here than in my apartment.

It’s very hard, but we are strong.”

Chief Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Asman, Kyiv. (Facebook Video, Wednesday January 21)

“I am in Kyiv… where old folks, children and women are living in unheated homes. It’s terrible. And I recalled the memories that my father told me. My father went through the entire siege of Leningrad as a boy. He told me about all the horrors of that blockade: terrible hunger, daily bombings. But besides that, there was terrible cold in the winter. People died not only of hunger, but of cold. I never thought I would see such living pictures in my life. Those whose slogan is that they have come here to ‘de-Nazify Ukraine’ are actually acting like the German Fascist occupiers. The Germans destroyed the infrastructure of Leningrad so that people would die of hunger and cold.

Our volunteers see it. There are old grandfathers and grandmothers on the twentieth floor without a functioning elevator, without water in the building, they can’t leave to buy food. The Russians are intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure, are intentionally killing people. […] What they are doing is a crime against humanity. I want to say to them: ‘If you still have any human feelings. […] You are freezing people to death you are dooming people to death.’ I am proud that I am here, with the heroic Ukrainian people. […]”.

Rabbi Moshe Reuven Asman in Kyiv this week

Donations may be sent to the following addresses:

Chabad Simcha Community: https://fjc-fsu.org/centers/kiev-simcha/

Brodsky Central Synagogue: https://jewishukraine.info/donate

ORT Ukraine: https://ort.org/donate/

Kyiv JCC Halom: https://donate.jdc.org/give/

The Kyiv Jewish Community After the Latest Russian Mega-Attack

On Thursday night January 8 and early Friday morning January 9, Kyiv suffered the single most serious drone and missile attack in the four-year history of the war. The attack was concentrated on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River (which divides the city), and hit energy infrastructure – electrical stations, heating supply facilities and distribution sites for water. The impact on the city was widespread. Besides four fatalities, nearly half of Kyiv’s apartment buildings were left without heat in the freezing cold of winter. And 417,000 households were disconnected from electricity. After the attack, Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitchko suggested that Kyiv residents who could leave the city for a few days should do so, because restoring heating, electricity and water would take time.

There were follow-up attacks in the ensuing nights, mainly on energy facilities. Widespread electricity and heating problems persisted on Wednesday. The disruption of heating came at the worst possible time, during a severe cold snap in Kyiv, with daily temperatures of -15 Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). The freezing cold also hampered repair operations. On Wednesday, President Zelensky declared a state of emergency in the energy sector, with particular attention to Kyiv.

I contacted the heads of several Jewish institutions in Kyiv, to check how they were faring, both individually and institutionally.

The ORT School

Mila Finkelshtein, the Executive Director of ORT in Ukraine, updated me on ORT school 141 in Kyiv which has more than 1,000 students between preschool and grade 11. A third of the students have some Jewish family- background, and all students study Hebrew and Jewish tradition. The school has its own electrical generator, installed early in the war. It also has a full basement-level shelter, in case of aerial attack. In those respects, it was ideally prepared to resume activity.

The ORT school is located on the city’s heavily-hit left bank. It was closed on Friday, the day after the attack, but reopened on Monday. There was no public electricity in the vicinity, but the school generator worked. Over the weekend, the open question was whether there would be heating and water. Fortunately, both were restored on early Monday morning.

The problems continued into the week. The school’s emergency generator expended itself and on Tuesday, there was no electricity at school. Power was restored on Wednesday.

I heard from a number of educators that parents were eager for their children to return to school, because the children are safer and better cared for there. At home, most kids don’t have electricity or heat, but at school they do. At home there is no large underground bomb-shelter; at school there is.

The Chabad-Simcha Community

The Chabad-Simcha community is also located on the left bank of the Dnieper. It features a synagogue, a religious day school with 150 students, various Torah classes, youth activities, and a meal program for elderly Jews.

Chabad-Simcha had a frightening night on Thursday night. “The explosions just didn’t stop and everything shook”, said Rabbi Simcha Levenharts, one of the Chabad emissaries at the community. He reported that the synagogue’s bomb-shelter, one of the few bonafide shelters in the neighborhood, filled up with neighbors, mainly non-Jewish ones. People stayed there for the night and could smell the smoke of nearby fires.

I spoke with Rabbi Mordechai Levenharts, the head of the Chabad-Simcha community, and his wife Dvora. After the attack, they moved from their apartment, located half an hour from the synagogue, into his office in the synagogue building, because the office has electricity and heat. The synagogue mikveh has showers with hot water, which are now being used by both men and women from the community (at different hours). Their son, Rabbi Simcha, left Kyiv with his wife and children for Poltava, where his in-laws live, 350 kilometers away, because their Kyiv apartment was simply unlivable.

The synagogue continues to have a daily minyan, but it now meets in the shelter.

Right-Bank Synagogues

On the right (western) bank of the Dnieper, things were calmer. The Brodsky Synagogue in downtown Kyiv lost electricity, heat and water on Thursday night, according to Chaplain David Milman. But during the course of the day on Friday, all three utilities were restored. By the time of Shabbat services, things were back to normal, and attendance was not affected. The Masorti Congregation in Kyiv (“Congregation Masoret”), also on the right (western) bank of the city, never lost power, heat, or water, and held its Friday night services as usual. The head of the community, Maksim Mielnykov, was non-plussed. “After all, this wasn’t the first attack on Kyiv.”

Cultural Institutions

I corresponded with Tanya Batanova, who heads the Judaica department of the Vernadsky library, the Ukrainian National Library. She reported that the library was closed on Friday, the day of the drone strike, but mainly because of the freezing cold, and icing on the streets. The National Library reopened to the public on Monday, with heat and water, but no electricity. Staff and readers worked using the sunlight that shone in through the windows. The Judaica department even had a visitor on Monday, a researcher writing a book on the history of the town of Monastrishcha, who was looking for information on its Jews.

Leonid Finberg, head of the Center for the Study of the History and Culture of East European Jewry, and Director of the Dukh i litera publishing house, informed me that his staff reports to work in person on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On the other days, work is remote. The Center and publishing house are located in the Podil district, on the right (western) bank, in basement level offices which are considered safe.

Finberg’s main issue has to do with sleep-deprived staff, since aerial attacks occur mainly in the middle of the night. He offers his staff flexible working hours, and several of them use the morning hours to catch up on lost sleep from the night-time.

Video on translations of Yiddish literature to Ukrainian, published by Dukh I litera.

Rolling black outs are a fact of life in Kyiv. With a weakened electrical grid, the authorities schedule the supply of electricity by neighborhood and by type of building – businesses in the daytime and homes in the evenings. But not all homes have electricity every evening, and certainly not all evening. This means that many people are now going from a darkened workplace to a darkened home in the aftermath of the attack.

An important challenge is keeping one’s phone charged. If necessary, you can go to a nearby café or “invincibility point” which have their own generators. If there is no heat in your home, one option is to boil a pot of hot water on your stove. The gas supply has not been disrupted.

In general, society has shown a remarkable degree of resilience. Kyiv’s intense cultural life goes on, and it is very hard to get tickets for the theatre and concerts. My wife’s Ukrainian friend said that because life is uncertain, she goes to the theatre as much as possible. It’s a distraction from the problems and adds meaning and content to her life. In the few rare cases when there was an aerial alarm during a performance (i.e. between 7 and 9:30 PM), the show was stopped, and the audience went to the metro station for shelter. They could exchange their tickets for a future performance.

Israeli POWs and MIAs in the Russia-Ukraine War

According to the Ukrainian Military, at least 12 individuals with Israeli citizenship, who have fought in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, are Prisoners of War or Missing in Action.

Many citizens of Israel with Ukrainian background volunteered for the war between February 24, 2022 and October 7, 2023, when Israel was attacked by Hamas. While the number of Israelis fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces declined dramatically after October 7, as those volunteers returned home to serve in the IDF, there are still Israelis fighting in Ukraine today.

But it is difficult to determine their number. Many of them have both citizenships, and don’t inform the Ukrainian authorities that they are also Israelis. Many don’t inform the Israeli Embassy in Kyiv that they are in Ukraine, let alone fighting in the war. Israeli Ambassador Mikhael Brodsky complained in an interview that the Embassy sometimes learns about the Israeli fighter only after he is killed in action, and his family back home contacts the Embassy for assistance in transferring the body for burial.

A Ukrainian delegation visited Israel in December to bring attention to the problem of Ukrainian captives and Prisoners of War at large. They highlighted the fact that some of those captives are in fact Israelis.

Making the Ukrainian Corruption Scandal More “Jewish”

The corruption scandal in Ukraine continues to be the focus of public attention and outrage, more than a month and a half after the story broke. The scheme allegedly involved kickbacks from the state energy company and various defense companies to a group headed by Timur Mindich, a close associate of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mindich is an observant Jew from Dnipro, and has Israeli citizenship. On the eve of his arrest, he fled to Israel. Mindich’s close friend Alexander Tsukerman, the scheme’s alleged money-launderer, also fled to Israel.

The National Anti-Corruption Agency (NABU), which is independent from the Ukrainian government, has published hours of recordings of telephone conversations between the suspects, who used code-names to refer to each other. NABU estimates that the total amount of kickbacks in the scheme came to $100 million. Among those involved in the operation were former Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko (dismissed, but not arrested) Energy Minister Svetlana Hrynchuk (dismissed, but not arrested), the Executive Director of the “Energoatom” energy company, Dmitry Basov (arrested), and Former Vice Prime-Minister Alexei Chernishev (arrested). A central figure is allegedly Igor Mironyuk, a senior advisor to both Energy Ministers (arrested). Rustem Umerov, the current head of Ukraine’s National Security Council and formerly Defense Minister, has also been implicated in the affair, based on recordings, but has not been charged.

But it is Mindich who has attracted the greatest attention, and that’s understandable. He was President Zelensky’s friend and business partner in the 2010s, and that relationship probably played a major role in his securing access to companies and officials.

The scandal has already had political consequences for Zelensky. A poll was released last week indicating that only 19% of Ukrainians believe President Zelensky did not know about or did not participate in the corruption scheme. (39% believe he was part of the scheme, 29% believe he knew of it.) Most Ukrainians believe Zelensky should bear legal and political responsibility for the corruption scheme. Only 30% believe he should be able to run for reelection.

The latest sensation around the scandal has to do with the Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, which sent its journalist Mikhail Tkach to Israel to locate Mindich and Tsukerman and interview them. Tkach and his cameraman spent two and a half weeks staking out various locations in Tel Aviv and Herzliya, and talking to unnamed sources. At one point, they were stopped on a Tel Aviv Highway and physically roughed up by three unknown Russian speaking men, in an apparent attempt to intimidate them. In the end, Tkach, the journalist, found the suspects and had lengthy on-camera interviews with them – with Tsukerman on a Tel Aviv street, and with Mindich on the Herzliya beach. His video reportages have garnered millions of eiews of Youtube.

I have to admit. I found Tkach’s videos reportages to be mainly hype and noise, with a coating of anti-Jewish insinuations. The videos are replete with dramatic, menacing music, as if in a spy thriller. Israel is presented as a perilous, Oriental city from a James Bond story. There are lots of images of Tkach sitting in his car taking photos (of what is not always clear). And there are a solid 20 minutes on the Philosophy men’s clothing store in Tel Aviv, which is, according to Tkach’s anonymous source, a front for a money-laundering operation. No evidence was provided, just insinuations that the men taking shopping bags out of the store were not carrying men’s clothing.

But I’m not here to critique shallow, shabby journalism. I want to draw attention to the Jewish themes in the video-reportages, and to their use of anti-Jewish tropes.

* * *

Of course, when two visibly observant Jews are implicated in criminal activity, and flee to Israel, it is impossible to avoid or overlook their Jewishness. But the pieces cross over into ethnic stereotyping and gratuitous Judaization of criminality.

The segment on the “Philosophy” store is stunning with its line-up of Jewish businessmen from Ukraine and Russia who visit the store, allegedly for money-laundering, but have no relationship whatsoever to Mindich and Tsukerman and the corruption scandal: former Russian-Jewish Oligarch Mikhail Chorney has lived in Israel for 30 years. Noone has mentioned Ukrainian businessman Alexander Spector in connection with the Mindich case , or former Deputy in the Ukrainian parliament Dmitry Shentsev. (Video from 32 to 36 minutes). Eventually, the store is visited by Alexander Tsukerman, and his brother Mikhail. We can’t know if these visitors came over the course of a day, a week or two weeks; Tkach doesn’t give dates. The overall intent of the segment is clear – there are a lot of crooked Jewish businessmen from Russia and Ukraine in Israel. Mindich and Tsukerman are just the latest arrivals in a large wave. Tkach’s story is no longer about Mindich; it’s about crooked Jews.

At this point, there may be another legitimate question. Why is Tkach so interested in the Jewish suspects in the case, but not in the non-Jewish suspects who still live in Ukraine? Why didn’t he try to track down former ministers Hrynchuk and Haloshenko? Why not stop Rustem Umerov in front of his home and ask him questions? How about talking with people who knew and worked with Mironyuk and Basov, who are by all accounts central to the case? Could it be because they don’t fit into the convenient stereotype of “crooked Jewish businessmen?”

Tkach peppers his interview with Tsukerman with gratuitous Jewish questions: Instead of asking “Have you ever met President Zelensky?”, he asks “Have you ever met President Zelensky for shabbat and holidays?” (at 56 minutes). This Judaizes Zelensky, an utterly secular person. (He hasn’t attended a single synagogue service in his entire presidency.) Tkach asks Tsukerman whether he’s been in contact with Vadim Rabinovich, a pro-Russian businessman and politician who fled to Israel several years ago (at 63 minutes). There is no connection between Rabinovich and the corruption scandal other than in the mind of a prejudiced person. The “bad Jews” must be connected with each other.

Tkach is a relatively young man (37 years old). I’m not sure he is aware that he is adopting and spreading the myth of Jewish criminality. Sometimes I thought that his use of anti-Jewish stereotyping was a journalistic technique to make a rather empty story more exciting.

The problem isn’t only with Tkach, but with a segment of Ukrainian society, which believes that the scandal is about a cabal of Jews. Halyschenko, Hrynchuk, Chernishev, Basov, Mironyuk are all lost in the picture. The Ukrainian internet is full of antisemitic comments surrounding the scandal. Responsible Ukrainian commentators usually respond to this phenomenon by claiming that the comments are posted by Russian bots to “generate” antisemitism artificially. This is probably true to some extent, but it’s also a convenient way to avoid confronting the real antisemitism that exists in Ukrainian society.

In the beach-side interview, Mindich breaks the image of “villain” very effectively. He comes across as sympathetic, intelligent and charming. (People I’ve spoken with who know Mindich stress his charm.) He presents himself as the victim of a media campaign, someone whose life has been ruined by partial and distorted disclosures. He comes across as sincerely shocked and upset when Tkach tells him about the assault by three men on the Tel Aviv highway. By the end of the interview, Mindich calls Mikhail Tkach by the familiar “Mish” (even more endearing than “Misha”).

For me the interview culminates when Tkach asks Mindich (at 23:30 ) about the specifics of his travel from Ukraine to Israel. Mindich, presumably thinking about his reported stay in Poland over shabbat, replies:

“I don’t want to get into details. There is a lot of antisemitism around this case.” Indeed, there is.

Elderly Jew in Kherson Killed in Russian Shelling

An 84 year old congregant of the synagogue in Kherson, Evgeny Bonder, died from wounds that he sustained from a Russian drone attack on December 26. Bonder was hit by fragments of an intercepted Russian drone, was taken to hospital, but, given his age and frail physical condition, could not be rescued.

Kherson, where Bonder lived, is a front-line city in Southern Ukraine where artillery fire and shellings are almost a daily occurrence. Most Jews have left Kherson, but a few hundred elderly and infirm Jews have stayed behind. A “Khesed”, sponsored by JDC and World Jewish Relief, continues to provide food and medicine to shut-in seniors, and the synagogue continues to function. This past October, a Russian shell ripped through the roof of the synagogue. Fortunately, there were no casualties.

Chief Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Asman noted that Bondar “survived the Second World War and the Nazis, who systematically hunted and killed Jews. But he did not survive the Russian ‘liberators’.” A local Kherson newspaper added the following observation: “In spite of the constant shellings, fear, and danger, the Jewish community continues to live, pray, and support each other. They retain their human dignity and faith in life even in the very darkest of times.”

A New Jewish Political Prisoner in Russia

22 year old Leonid Katz has been held in a Moscow prison since late September, and was formally charged with “State Treason” in early December 2025. Katz’s criminal offense was sending a donation to a fund that supports Ukrainian children. He awaits trial for the crime, which carries a minimal sentence of eight years imprisonment. The Russian human rights organization “Memorial” has recognized Katz as a political prisoner.

Katz is a student of mathematics with a BA from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He was admitted to a mathematics graduate program in Paris, and was arrested while en route to the airport. Katz’s friends report that he was interrogated by FSB officers who applied electrical current to his body and other forms of physical torture.

The Russian special services collect information on donations to Ukrainian causes, and then build cases against the donors, fabricating and forging evidence to convict them of serious offenses.

I wrote to Katz two weeks ago, using the PrisonMail service (https://prisonmail.online/), and received a reply from him this week. To enable the letter to pass through censorship, I did not mention his criminal case or anything political. But I did wish him a happy Chanukah. Katz replied that while he is of Jewish background, he is not religious, and is “criminally ignorant” of Jewish history and culture. He has a number of books on Jewish subjects, and hopes to read them in prison.

Other “veteran” Jewish political prisoners in Russia are activist Mikhail Kriger, who repeatedly protested against the war in Ukraine, and is serving a seven year sentence for “Justifying Terrorism” , and playwright Zhenya Berkovitz who is serving a six year prison-camp sentence, allegedly for justifying terrorism in her play “Finist The Bright Falcon”.

News Round-Up

Diplomatic Quarrel Between Ukraine and Israel

This week featured a diplomatic clash between Ukraine and Israel, with allegations and condemnations flying in both directions.

It began on Monday (December 8), when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a political speech to the Knesset boasting about his conduct of international relations. He spoke of his ties with US President Donald Trump, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (who recently visited Israel). Then he added: “We maintain constant contact with another world power – Russia. I communicate regularly with President Putin, and this long-standing personal relationship helps protect Israel’s vital interests, including efforts to prevent interference along our northern border.”

Netanyahu’s taking credit for communicating regularly with Putin and having a “long-standing personal relationship” with him, was too much for Ukrainian Ambassador Yevgen Korniychuk. In an interview with Y-Net the next day, he let loose: “I’m not here to advise your prime minister on what to say, but I want to remind you that Russia, this so-called ‘great power,’ has been waging a brutal war against Ukraine for nearly four years. They are killing women and children, slaughtering civilians and creating severe humanitarian and legal issues. I was surprised by Netanyahu’s remarks, especially considering what Israel endured on October 7. One must stand on the right, moral side of history. […] If ties with Russia are so good, why are Russian arms ending up with Hezbollah? […] Israelis must not forget October 7 - who supported Hamas and Hezbollah and who didn’t.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not react kindly to Korniychuk’s statement, and summoned him on Wednesday for a reprimand. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry declared that Deputy Director-General for Eurasian Affairs Yuval Fuchs “made it clear to the ambassador that his remarks were absolutely unacceptable and deviated from diplomatic protocol.”

I’d like to offer a couple of observations about this spat. Netanyahu’s publicly touting his “longstanding personal relationship” with Putin should be seen in the context of the current political moment. The US Trump administration has been drawing closer to Russia, pressing for the adoption of a “peace plan” that most observers believe is overwhelmingly advantageous to Putin, and pursuing prospective business deals with Russia. Netanyahu, by referring to Russia as a “great power”, and not as an aggressor, was following the lead of the US administration in normalizing the Putin regime. Nentanyahu’s comments may in fact have been included in his speech in order to curry favor with Trump.

Also noteworthy here is the personality of Ambassador Korniychuk, who is something of a loose cannon. This was not the first time he deviated from diplomatic protocol. In June 2023 (before the October 7 attacks), Korniychuk was reprimanded for an embassy post on social media, stating that “the Embassy […] emphasizes with regret that the current Israeli government has opted for a path of close cooperation with the Russian Federation.” In August of that year, he threatened to ban Hasidic pilgrims to Uman, if Israel implemented a planned deportation of Ukrainian refugees. In the end, neither threat was implemented. While relations between the two countries improved considerably after October 7, Korniychuk is still prone to provocative statements. Some believe that he has been assigned the role of “bad cop”, while other Ukrainian politicians, such as Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, and head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov, have been more laudatory about Ukrainian-Israeli relations.

The Synagogue Arson in Sadiger (Sadhora): The Event and Its Interpretations

As reported in our last newsletter, the historic Hasidic synagogue in Sadiger (Sadhora), near Chernivtsi, Ukraine, was attacked by an arsonist on November 27.

Here are the known facts about the attack: The perpetrator gathered together all the religious books in the center of the sanctuary – siddurim, humashim, etc. – and set them on fire. The blaze destroyed the bimah (central prayer platform), but was extinguished rather quickly by police. There was no major structural damage to the building, and the Torah scrolls were not in the sanctuary at the time. Since the synagogue is used only occasionally, by visiting groups of Hasidism and religious tourists, there were no congregants inside at the time of the fire. The alleged perpetrator was arrested shortly afterwards.

The Kloiz Kadisha (as the synagogue is called by Hasidim) was built in 1842, by Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn after he fled Tsarist Russia and settled in Sadiger, then in the Austrian Empire. For four generations, the rebbes of the Sadiger dynasty held court there, and scholars consider the “kloiz” to be one the largest and most magnificent synagogues in the Hasidic world.

Under Soviet rule, the building was used as a factory, and later stood abandoned. A major restoration project, funded by George Rohr and his father Sammy Rohr, was completed in the mid-2010s. The renewed synagogue, with its restored interior and gleaming exterior brickwork, was rededicated in 2016.

As the Jerusalem Post noted, the fire touched not only the local community but also a global network of Hasidim and heritage activists who invested heavily in preserving the remnants of Jewish life in the Chernivtsi region.

This past week, a group of Sadigerer Hasidism from Israel, led by their Rebbe, Rabbi Modechai Sholom Yosef Fridman, visited Sadhora, to collect the remains of the holy books and bury them in the old Jewish cemetery. The Rebbe recited psalms, and a cantor recited the memorial prayer ‘el male rahamim. The Hasidism vowed to raise funds to restore the holy site.

There are three versions or interpretations of the arson itself. The Ukrainian press has emphasized that the perpetrator was mentally disturbed, and that a month ago he was found attempting to set fire to a church. But there are some gaps in this narrative. What is the name of the apprehended person, what is known about him, and which church did he attempt to set on fire? These gaps lead one to consider that perhaps the authorities are using this narrative to deny that antisemitism played any role in the arson.

This version of events has been embraced by Ukrainian Jewish leaders. The Chief Rabbi of Cherrnivtsi, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Glitzenshtein, was quoted as stressing that this was not an antisemitic incident. “In Chernivtsi, we do not feel antisemitism. There is extensive security around Jewish institutions, and efforts are made to neutralize any sign of antisemitism. All residents here live in brotherhood and peace.”

The Israeli press has usually stated unequivocally that the fire was an antisemitic attack. It quoted a local Jewish resident of Sadhora named Moshe Kreiz: “The antisemite burnt our ancient, glorious synagogue. He did not steal anything. He could have stolen the charity box that was full of money, but he didn’t. The only thing that interested him was to harm us Jews. He came to make a pogrom like on Kristallnacht.”

Of course, these two interpretations don’t necessarily contradict each other. It is possible that the attacker was a mentally disturbed person who harbored antisemitic animus.

Finally, the Russian press gave wide coverage to the event, and connected it to an antisemitic incident in Kyiv in October, when a group of three teenagers made Nazi salutes in front of a synagogue, and sprayed tear gas on a congregant. This connection implied that the fire in Sadhora was part of a wave of neo-Nazi attacks in Ukraine. The coverage was intended to buttress the Russian narrative that neo-Nazism is rampant in Ukraine.

The Fourth War-Time Chanukah in Ukraine

Chanukah was marked and celebrated at the highest levels of government on Sunday evening, as it has been since the full-scale war began. President Zelensky was abroad, in Berlin, for talks with American envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and consequently offered his Chanukah greetings online. The candle lighting at the House of Government was performed this year by Prime Minister Yulia Svidirenko, in the presence of the leaders of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine.

Svidirenko’s Chanukah message opened by taking note of the tragic terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia. Then, as in past war-time messages by Zelensky, she connected the struggle of the Maccabees with that of Ukraine, “fighting for freedom, truth, and light”, for “the liberation of the country from the enemy and its restoration”. The message also stressed the value placed on ethnic and cultural diversity. “It is important for us that all national communities that consider Ukraine their home have equal and dignified opportunities to develop their cultures and traditions, while preserving their own identity.”

Following the closed-door state ceremony, there was a public candle-lighting in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), attended by Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitchko (who has noted on many occasions that his paternal grandmother was Jewish), diplomats from various countries (Argentina, Canada, Great Britain, France, Bulgaria), and members of the Jewish community.

In Odesa, the public candle lighting took place after a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack and an extensive blackout in the city, which left many residents without heat and water. Because of the difficult security situation in the city, the symbolic Menorah lighting took place during the day-time on Sunday. One local news portal noted: “It is symbolic that the holiday of Chanukah reminds everyone about the victory of light against darkness in hard times, when enemy attacks are forcing Odesites to endure darkness and difficulty.” Rabbi Mendi Wolf (son of chief rabbi Avraham Wolf), said in his remarks: “I don’t have any light at home, my generator ran out the day before yesterday. But if a light is burning inside of us, it is able to light up everything around us.”

Public Chanukah lightings also took place in Chernivtsi, Dnipro, Uzhhorod, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Berdychiv (where the Menorah stood next to the municipal Christmas tree), Kharkiv (with the attendance of mayor Ihor Terekhov), Kremenchuk, and presumably a few other cities that I missed.

A variety of public institutions and figures issued greetings or notices in honor of the holiday, including the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the State Service for Religious Affairs, the Ukrainian Evangelical Church, the Head of the National Security Council Rustem Umerov (who is Crimean Tatar and Muslim), and the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Top Ukrainian-Jewish Leader Discusses the Current Situation:
A Conversation with Rabbi Meir Stambler

Rabbi Meir Stambler is chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine, a Chabad-run agency which is the most influential Jewish organization in the country. The Federation’s influence derives from two sources: First, Chabad has an extensive presence on the ground, with emissaries and rabbis in more than 25 locales in Ukraine. And second, government structures recognize the Federation as representing Ukrainian Jewry, and work closely with it, and not with the other Jewish umbrella organizations (The Ukrainian Jewish Confederation, the Va’ad of Ukraine, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine).

Rabbi Stambler, 52, was born in Brooklyn, and grew up Kfar Chabad in Israel. He has lived in Dnipro, Ukraine for the last thirty years, at first as part of the group of emissaries under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kamenezki. In 1999, Stambler helped found the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine, and has been its chairman ever since.

Below are portions of my conversation with Stambler, held (in English) on November 27, edited for space and clarity.

Q: I’d like to begin with a very specific question, about the operation of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine. Does the Federation distribute funds to it member communities? If so, is there some kind of formula for funding them?

A: If the community has a rabbi, or a Lubavitch shaliakh, they take responsibility. We don’t finance the communities. They have the local rabbi and a local board. For these communities, we help to represent them toward the government, if they need some Jewish matter taken care of. Let’s say a religious Jew has to take an admissions exam on Shavuos, we write a letter to solve the problem. We do things like that for all the communities. And we distribute literature and supplies to all communities. We just brought in two containers of Menorahs for Chanukah from China; we bring in Matzah. Instead of every community trying to get these things on their own, we get them for everybody. We print a lot of literature now in Ukrainian [the Federation recently published a siddur and chumash in Ukrainian – DEF]. We also employ the Jewish Military Chaplain, Yakov Sinyakov. He works for all of Ukrainian Jewry, for Jews on the front from all communities.

Q: Going back to your work with the government. The example you gave was of a specific intervention. An individual Jew has a specific problem. Do you do broader things?

A: That’s only a small part. We’re involved with making laws, such as the law against antisemitism. [The Ukrainian Rada passed a law on antisemitism in 2022, and is now considering establishing a government coordinator on antisemitism – DEF]. Laws on religious freedom. The government knows we are pretty powerful. We have different contacts in different countries and that’s why they respect us. The president happens to be Jewish now, but this respect existed earlier as well.

Q: Ukrainian Jewish leaders are so eager to dispel the stereotype about Ukrainian antisemitism, and the Russian charges of Ukrainian Nazism, that they always say “things are good, things are good”. Is there anything the government could do in a broad way to make the situation better? Or is the situation ideal, and you don’t need further action by the government?

A: The situation really is good, especially if you see what is going on in other countries. We feel very comfortable, we are respected by the government and local non-Jews. I travel a lot across the country, I feel comfortable, no bodyguards. Since the beginning of the war, people even admire us. But you always have to be careful. We’re not in Eretz Yisroel. There are always antisemites. It’s the nature of Esav to hate Yankev.

A shul in Sadigura (Sadhora), near Chernivtsi, was burnt just a few hours ago. The beautiful Chasidishe shul. Someone walked in about 5 PM, and now it’s 8 PM. The authorities made sure to let me know right away. I want to show you that the government is working very hard. I know what they’re doing, because we have constant meetings with them. They check the internet [for antisemitism – DEF], they arrest people if needed. They caught the person in Sadhora right away. I can’t say he’s an antisemite because a month ago, they have him on camera trying to make a fire in a church. He’s a soldier that was on the front, a person that is very sick, probably mentally ill.

We’re going to have many cases like that now. We understand that there are millions of people who were fighting, who have guns, and for them spilling blood is part of life. Killing a person is for them normal. The situation over here is not easy. If someone sees a Jew who is dressed well, who has a generator at home to provide electricity, they get jealous.

There are electricity shutdowns all the time. I’ll tell you something. My family and I have a generator here at home, but I don’t always use the generator. Only when I really need it. I don’t think it’s right. Right now, all the houses outside are dark, and only we have light. You have to be aware. Someone can get jealous, be very upset with their life and just kill someone. And I’m not sure it’s antisemitism.

We have to change things a bit. If you go into most shuls in Ukraine, there’s an old man at the door, the superintendent, who serves as “security”. In Russia, there are metal detectors, there are cameras and serious guards. We have to change our style of life. And we’re talking about this. It’s no one’s fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, I’ts our neighbors’, the Russians’ fault [for starting the war – DEF], but not Ukraine’s. It’s not the government, antisemitism or the history. This is something we feel very responsible to deal with.

Q: Speaking of antisemitism, I’ve noticed an increase of antisemitic comments because of the Mindich corruption scandal. People writing that the Jews are stealing from Ukraine: Mindich, Tsukerman, Kolomoisky, Zelensky. Have you noticed this?

A: It’s a very hard question. Even though it’s not right as a Jewish leader to say I’d expect something like that - I would expect it. We’re monitoring the situation, but I don’t see anything special happening around it. There’s an eybershter [God] who takes care of us. And there’s a more logical explanation - people love Zelensky and admire him, he saved Ukraine. And I actually think this gives many good points to Jews over here.

The situation is very uncomfortable. I know both Mindich and Tsukerman very well. I happened to be Mindich’s teacher in yeshiva, more than twenty years ago. Mindich and Tsukerman are frume yidn, they are shomer shabbat. And by the way, the SBU [Security Services of Ukraine] is working hard to prevent publication of pictures of Mindich with a yarmulka. In Russia, it’s the opposite. They show pictures of them with yarmulkas, to show that the thieves are Jewish, and to build antisemitism. In Russia they showed an old video from years ago, when a journalist stopped Mindich on the street on shabbes, and he says: “I can’t talk, it’s shabbat”. The Ukrainians feel a responsibility to prevent antisemitism, and the Russians enjoy creating antisemitism.

Q: I don’t see any antisemitism on this topic in the mainstream Ukrainian press, but when I look at the comments by readers that come after the articles, I see dozens of antisemitic comments.

A: We have people monitoring that. And I have meetings with the SBU about these things. They tell me that many of the comments are by Russian bots. It’s the Russians’ agenda to show that there is antisemitism in Ukraine, it serves their propaganda purposes. They claim they are fighting Nazis. So we have to be careful about the comments, and check where they are coming from.

Q: And it’s possible that this corruption scandal could go all the way to the top, to Zelensky.

A: Its hard for me to believe, but I can’t say it doesn’t cross my mind sometimes.

Q: How do you relate to your colleagues, fellow Chabad Shlukhim in Russia? Let me give you a recent concrete example:

The Chabad rabbi of Russian-occupied Sevastopol, in Crimea, Rabbi Benjamin Wolf, posted on Russian social media (November 9): “During the last ten years, life has become uneasy for Jews in Western Europe. Let’s say it openly… antisemitism has now exploded openly… I propose to those Jews who want to live in calm and earn a living to move to Sevastopol and invest in this region. I met personally with the governor of Sevastopol about this… and he supported my proposal.”

The Russian press picked up the post, publicized it, and added another quote from the rabbi, saying: “I’ve lived in Sevastopol for more than twenty years. And I can say that until 2014 [when the Russians occupied Crimea – DEF], I felt very uneasy. Eighteen years ago, I was even beaten up on the street. For many years, I walked on the street with a bodyguard. But when Sevastopol became Russian, I didn’t need a bodyguard anymore. I walk the streets calmly.”

Rabbi Benjamin Wolf’s bother, Avraham Wolf, is the rabbi of Ukrainian Odesa, and his other brother, Yosef Yitzchak Wolf, is the rabbi of Ukrainian Kherson. How do you react to your Chabad colleague, who is the brother of your Ukrainian Chabad colleagues, talking this way?

A: This is a very, very difficult topic. It hurts me to see such things. The things that he writes are wrong. But it’s hard for us to understand what such a rabbi goes through. I’ve been here since the 90s and I used to travel to Russia a lot, until 2014. I’m sure, I’m positive, that people told him what to say and how to say. If he wouldn’t have done it, he would have been kicked out. They’ve kicked out rabbis every second year. I don’t know what I would have done in his place. Thank God I’m not in his place. I can’t say it’s right, but I understand. He has a responsibility for yidn [Jews] in Russia.

The government talks to them very clearly: This is what you have to say. Sometimes the rabbi gets the text of his own speech, he just has to say that it’s OK. I saw it personally before 2014 with different rabbis. I won’t share names.

It’s not easy. Some of the Russian rabbis are my former classmates, we used to be very friendly together. And I notice that when they see me in Crown Heights, they cross the street. Maybe they are afraid that a picture of us together will reach the FSB [Russian security services]. I know that some of the rabbis who are in Russia wipe clean their phone before they enter. Because the officials check the phone, and might see my number. And they’ll ask him “Who is this guy? What’s your connection?”

Q: But can’t people accuse you of doing the same thing as them? The Ukrainian rabbis support Ukraine and the Russian rabbis support Russia. They both want to have good ties with their government, and they say what the government wants them to say.

A: Many people have told me directly, or talked behind my back, that we Lubavitcher shlukhim should not deal with politics at all. It’s dangerous, it’s against our shlikhus [mission]. We have to be connected with all Jews, and if you take a political position, you lose a certain part of the community.

But in our situation now, it’s not politics. We are part of the country. We see how people die every day. We see buildings destroyed, whole cities destroyed. As leaders, we cannot be silent about it. It’s not politics, and it doesn’t come from the government. We are facing aggressive terror that is being inflicted on local communities, and we must say what we feel. We are leaders and people are waiting to hear something from us. We must shout it out. If a leader doesn’t discuss the situation over here, it means you don’t care, or worse, khas vesholem {God forbid], you are part of it.

The Ukrainian Corruption Scandal and the Jews

Ukraine is now embroiled in the worst corruption scandal in its modern history; one that threatens Volodymyr Zelensky’s political future and the continuation of European financial support to the country. And two of the scandal’s central defendants are active members of the Jewish community, who are believed to be hiding in Israel.

The corruption scheme involves kickbacks from contractors in the energy sphere to a group of government officials and private businessmen, amounting to theft of $100 million. Millions of Ukrainians are now experiencing electricity blackouts and heating shortages, and the fact that officials and businessmen were stealing tens of millions of dollars of public funds intended to repair energy stations has aroused tremendous public anger.

One of the central figures in the kickback scheme is Timur Mindich, President Zelensky’s personal friend and co-owner of the latter’s Kvartal 95 television production company. The scheme was discovered and investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), which functions independently from other government agencies, such as the general prosecutor and security services, under European supervision. NABU has scores of hours of telephone recordings to substantiate its charges and has published some of them. The Zelensky administration tried to neuter NABU’s independence this past July, in part because of the investigation into Mindich et. al., but Zelensky was forced to back down after public outcry in Ukraine and Europe.

* * *

This is not a Jewish scandal per se. Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk, who have been dismissed and sanctioned because of the case, are not Jewish. Neither are several other accused figures. But the alleged mastermind behind the plot was Mindich, who has numerous ties to Israel and organized Jewish life in Ukraine. And his closest co-conspirator was allegedly Alexander Tsukerman, with a similar background and ties.

Timur Mindich was born in Soviet Dnipropetrovsk in 1979. As a young man, he dated the daughter of Ukrainian-Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, and although the couple broke up, the relationship with Kolomoisky grew into an array of business partnerships. Kolomoisky is now in prison for money-laundering and fraud, and is also under indictment in the US. He is the most reviled oligarch in Ukraine.

Mindich has known Volodymyr Zelensky since approximately 2002, and their business partnership in the Kvartal 95 production studio goes back to 2013. After Zelensky’s election as president, Mindich visited the office of the presidential administration several times. Zelensky celebrated his birthday in 2021 (two years after his election as president) in Mindich’s apartment in Kyiv. There are unconfirmed rumors that Mindich serves as Zelensky’s “wallet” and maintains funds on his behalf. It is possible that the corruption scandal may go all the way to the top.

Mindich holds both Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship. He married Ekaterina Verber, the heiress to a Russian luxury retail empire, in the old city of Jerusalem in 2010. Mindich’s Israeli passport enabled him to flee Ukraine on November 10, just hours before the Corruption Bureau raided his home in Kyiv. (Ukrainian men under age 60 cannot, as a rule, leave the country.) This leads many to suspect that someone in the government tipped him off. Mindich took a taxi to Poland, where he was assisted by the local branch of Chabad Lubavitch, according to Ukrainian parliamentary deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko. From there he took a charter flight to Israel.

The indictment against Mindich records his Israeli citizenship only. As a rule, Israel does not extradite its citizens to foreign countries.

The suspect has a range of Jewish associations and ties. According to a Jewish leader I spoke with, who has known Mindich for twenty-five years, he grew up in the Dnipro Jewish community, and worked as the organizer and producer of major Jewish communal events: Purim banquets, Passover seders etc. “He is a traditional Jew who has shabbat dinner at home.” Mindich has served as chairman of the board of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, and is a member of its Executive Committee. Other members of the organization’s leadership are Kolomoisky (president), and Chabad rabbis Meir Stambler and Shmuel Kaminezki.

The fact that Mindich, Tsukerman, Kolomoisky and Zelensky are all Jewish is hard to overlook in a country where people are sensitive to ethnic backgrounds. And the antisemitic segment of society has jumped on this scandal to blame the Jews - mainly on social media. “There are a lot of representatives of Israel in power in Ukraine, no?” “A bunch of Jews put a cancer on this country, and they are still laughing at us from the ‘Kvartal 95’ headquarters.” Etc., etc. I’ve seen dozens of antisemitic comments wherever there is online discussion of the scandal. Not in mainstream media reports, but in the comments to those reports, and on Facebook, Threads, Instagram.

The chief antisemite on Ukrainian media, military commentator Roman Svitan, let loose on the air with a textbook diatribe. (Forgive the long quote.)

“I’ve been saying for years that there is an international criminal organization – Zionist, Chabadist, ethnic. It is an Israeli international criminal organization. […] They have contingents in many countries, mostly with Israeli passports. […] The Abramovichs , Rotenbergs, etc. An Israeli gang that rules Moscow. Moscow is a base of theirs. They have another base in Ukraine. And they definitely have such a base in the United States. We see it in the Witkoffs and Kushnirs. […] These Israeli nobodies control our ministries through the ministers. […] This is called a loss of sovereignty. External rule. […]

I met such an Israeli when I was a prisoner of war in Donetsk in 2014. We called him Dr. Mengele. Yurii Levich, an Israeli, who performed experiments on Ukrainians in Donetsk. […] We must understand who our enemies are. Besides the Russians and Chinese, the Israelis are our enemies. We should deport them from our territory. […] This is a job for our counter-intelligence. […]

The people should pressure the Rada to replace the entire Cabinet of Ministers, Shmyhal 1 and Shmyhal 2 [Defense Minister and former Prime-Minister Denys Shmyhal], and send them to Pokrovsk [i.e. to the front DEF]. Bring into the cabinet people with military training, people with Ukrainian passports – only Ukrainian passports. Ukrainians should be in charge and not Israelis. Otherwise, things will end up bad for the Israelis. And that is a gentle warning. Ukrainian history remembers many problems connected with Israelis. So it would be better for them if they packed their bags themselves and left for Israel.”

Clearly, Svitan used the term “Israelis” to mean Jews, and the final sentences are a veiled threat of pogroms.

Svitan’s broadcast has to date had 177,000 views on YouTube, and 976 comments – most of them thanking him for telling the truth.

Ukrainian society is angry. It is tired of the endless cycles of war and corruption. People are lashing out – at Zelensky (who ran for president in 2019 on an anti-corruption platform), at the political system, at the oligarchs. Some are lashing out at the Jews.

The political commentator Vitaly Portnikov, who is probably the most highly regarded proudly-Jewish figure in Ukrainian public life, has been unrelenting in his criticism of Zelensky. He believes the scandal is the product of two larger political events: First, Zelensky’s amateurism in government and politics, leading him to appoint friends and show business associates to high-ranking positions. And second, his consolidation of centralized, single-party rule in both the parliament (where Zelensky’s party has an absolute majority) in the government (which is elected by the parliament). When the war broke out in 2022, Portnikov argues, Zelensky should have proposed the formation of a multi-party national unity government. Instead, there are Zelensky-cronies everywhere and no system of checks and balances. A formula for corruption.

But a good number of Ukrainians have no patience for such sophisticated explanations, and don’t even notice that some of Zelensky’s sharpest critics are Jewish. For them it is simple: the Jews – as represented by Mindich, Tsukerman, Zelensky and Kolomoisky - are to blame for stealing Ukraine blind.

The Kharkiv Jewish Community Adapts to the “New Normal”

Kharkiv is one of a handful of Ukrainian cities with a sizeable Jewish community. Before the war, the other such cities were Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. With war-time displacement and flight westward, Lviv now needs to be added to that list.

But Kharkiv is different from the others because it is located less than twenty miles from the Russian border, and is the object of frequent shelling, and of drone, bomb, and missile attacks. On October 13, a local hospital was hit by Russian glider bombs, killing four, injuring dozens, and forcing the evacuation of all patients. On October 25, the Russians hit a kindergarten, killing one person, and injuring 10.

We are talking about a large city – the current population is estimated at 1.4 million (down 8% from pre-war numbers). The city occupies 140 square miles and has a metro system with 30 stations.

The historic Kharkiv Choral synagogue, built 1909-1913, is located in the city center. The Jewish Cultural Center and Khesed are 2.5 miles north of the synagogue, in the Shevchkenkovskij District, which features universities and cultural institutions. The third main Jewish institution, the Sha’alavim Day-School is 5 miles southeast of the synagogue, in the residential Slobidsky District.

I decided to check in with a few local Jewish leaders to see how the Kharkiv community is faring in this challenging time.

Artem Okun, Director of Beit Dan, Jewish Community Center, Kharkiv

Q: Tell us something about you personally.

A: I’m 35 years old. I was born in Mirgorod, near Poltava. I studied in Poltava, and worked for the local Jewish community. Then I made Aliyah to Israel and lived there for four years. After Israel, I returned to Ukraine and moved to Kharkiv.

Q: Since when have you been director of the Jewish Community Center? What is the size of the staff?

A: I became director in April 2023, more than a year after the war began. It’s important to understand that the previous staff of Beit Dan left the city in the early months of the war, and all activity shifted to online. In April 2023, we hired an entirely new staff, and resumed in-person activity. We now have a staff of 16 people, and the average age of our staff members is 25.

Q: Can you explain what the JCC does and what its relationship is to the Khesed?

A: The Khesed is a social service agency for elderly and vulnerable Jews. The JCC is the central base for Jewish life in Kharkiv, as a non-religious community. For religious activity, there is the Chabad house. We service people between age 0 and 60. After age 60, people are serviced by the Khesed. Both agencies are funded by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). We share a building, but our focuses are different.

There are three main directions of activity of the JCC. First, we sponsor programs related to Judaism: holiday celebrations, educational programs on Jewish subjects. Second, we provide educational programs and clubs for youth. We sponsor a kindergarten with 16 children, children’s and youth clubs – chess, Tai-Kwando, painting, dance, etc. 120 young people attend our clubs. Now, one of our biggest programs is supplementary education. Most schools in Kharkiv are remote. We provide a setting for kids to do their homework under the supervision of tutors who can help them. About 30-40 children attend daily. Third, our largest program is the volunteer center. We provide volunteers to the Khesed - to visit elderly Jews, and to the city – to help with emergency services, and to many others.

Q: How many people are affiliated with the JCC and Khesed?

A; The JCC has 2,000 members, and the Khesed serves 5,000 people.

Q: And these people are all Jewish?

A: All are Jewish according to the law of return [i.e. at least one Jewish grandparent or married to someone with at least one Jewish grandparent – DEF]. To receive JDC sponsored services, one must meet these criteria – that’s a requirement since 2024. To attend our summer camps for instance, one must provide documentation of Jewish roots. Other programs, such as the youth clubs, are offered on a for-fee basis and are self-financing. They are open to all, regardless of background, with no documentation required.

Q: How does the JCC deal with issues of safety in war-time?

A: Thanks to funding from the JDC, we were able to upgrade our basement level to a full-fledged bomb-shelter. Whenever there is an alarm or danger, our activity goes down to the basement level. We have our own generators, and we can provide electricity for a full week in case of a blackout. During one week-long blackout in Kharkiv, our JCC served as a humanitarian center for the vicinity. We had electricity, others did not. People came to charge their gadgets, drink tea and coffee, and do laundry.

Q: What would you do if you had more funding? Say $50,000?

A: I would arrange bus and van transportation to bring people to the JCC from distant neighborhoods in the city and suburbs. It’s difficult for some people to get here, because of aerial alarms, because of disruptions to public transportation or bad connections. We could attract more people to our programs if we had our own transportation.

Q: Is your entire funding from the JDC?

A: No, as I mentioned, some of our activity is self-financing. And we do have other partners – JCC Global, the Jewish Federation of Atlanta, World Jewish Relief in London, the Dutch Humanitarian Fund.

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: From afar, it can look like the situation in Kharkiv is dire. I want people to know that there are difficulties, but there is life. We have programs, plans, and activities. We have young people and families. We are ready for any eventuality, and we are moving forward.

Rabbi Moshe Moskovich, Chabad Rabbi in Kharkiv

Rabbi Moskovich was born and raised in Venezuela in an Orthodox, but non-Hasidic family. His mother-tongue is Spanish. He moved to the United States to learn at the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio, a Lithuanian yeshiva. In his late twenties, he was drawn into the orbit of Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and spent several years learning in the kolel at 770 Eastern Parkway. He has been the rabbi of Kharkiv for the last thirty years. [for an earlier conversation with Rabbi Moskovich, see newsletter no. 23, June 4, 2024]

Q: Rabbi Moskovich, how many Jews are there in Kharkiv?

A: I think there are 10,000 Jews. In general the city is packed.

Q: What is synagogue attendance like on shabbes?

A: On shabbes morning, about 100 people come. On Friday night, it’s much less. People are afraid to go out at night. Most of the shelling is at night. Most of the people stay for kiddush and lunch. Among them there are elderly and poor people - people who have nothing. At kiddush we have a custom of making a lecha’im (a toast) in honor of the soldiers from our community who are fighting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We mention each one of them by name.

Q: What is the safety situation like, and how does your community react to it?

A: The shellings vary. There are periods when it is very frequent, and times when it is not frequent. Two weeks ago, a shell fell a block away from our boys’ school, and blew out all the windows. The ground shook. All the kids went down to the shelter.

Q: How did the recent holidays pass?

A: The shul was packed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Shahed drones fell in our part of the city on the second night of Rosh Hashanah. On sukkos, we had a concert and celebration in the sukkah. The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, came and spoke. He comes every year, on sukkot and chanukah.

Q: Is your family with you in Kharkiv?

A: My wife is with me, as is our eleven year old daughter. Most of our children are in Eretz Israel. One married son, with his wife and baby, returned here to Kharkiv and helps me with my work.

Q: Does your community distribute humanitarian aid? To whom?

A: Humanitarian aid is the biggest part of our budget. The Ba’al Shem Tov says that helping a Jew in gashmiyes (material matters) is the biggest mitzvah, because it can also lead to helping him in rukhniyes (spiritual matters). We distribute 1,000 packages per month with food, medicine, basic items – officially to members of the Jewish community, unofficially to anyone who asks or wants.

After major shellings, we have a group that goes to the site of the bombing, and distributes humanitarian aid to local residents, Ukrainians. It’s important that we show that the Jewish community helps everyone, not only Jews.

Q: What other kind of people do you help?

A: last week, I went to the Kharkiv prison to visit Jews who are in prison. One of them was close to accepting Islam when I met with him, strengthened him, and he is now drawing closer to Judaism. Another one of them is serving a life sentence. It’s a real rakhmonus [pity] on those Jews in prison. I don’t go too often because it’s bureaucratically hard to get into the prison.

Q; You mentioned earlier that you have a boys’ school. Tell us more about it.

A: We have two schools – a boys’ school with 35 students, and a girls’ school with 50 students. Both schools are fourth to eleventh grades. For secular studies, the students are divided by grades. For limude koidesh [religious studies], we combine kids from several grades into bigger groups. Officially, the schools are online. Unofficially, we teach in person. The city knows that we meet in person. Both buildings have shelters. We are very strict that kids go to the shelter when there is an alarm or a bombing during the school day.

Q: What is the secular curriculum like and what is the language of instruction?

A: The secular studies follow the state curriculum. The only difference is that we don’t teach texts that refer to Christianity. The secular studies are taught in Ukrainian, by professional teachers, Jews and non-Jews. The religious studies are taught in Russian. We don’t have rabbis or religious studies teachers who can teach in Ukrainian.

Q: There are other rabbis who teach in the school?

A: There are two other Chabad rabbis from Israel who work with me. They teach in the school.

Q: What do you do for yourself, for your own morale, and spiritual growth?

A: I learn Torah. I learn Likute Torah and Torah Or [works by the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, 1745-1812], I study the Talmudic Tractate of Kidushin, and the Code of Maimonides. I have a study partner online, who is the rabbi of Riga [Latvia]. But mostly I learn on my own.

Oleg Krasny, head of the Kharkiv Community for Conservative Judaism

Q: Tell us briefly your personal story.

A: I was born and raised in Kharkiv. I lived in Israel for a total of twelve years, in two “installments”, eight years and later four years. From Israel, I returned to Kharkiv, and when the war broke out, my family and I left for Chernivtsi. This past September, we returned to Kharkiv after a three-year absence, to build the Conservative Jewish community here.

Q: What is the focus of your work?

A: Now, my main work is at the modern Jewish day school Sha’alavim, where I am in charge of religious life. The school has 270 students who are Jewish according to the Law of Return. I supervise daily Shaharit tefilot (morning services), the Friday kabbalat shabbat (welcoming the Sabbath), and holiday celebrations. On sukkot, all 270 students said the blessings over lulav and etrog.

Q: What Jewish ritual do the children connect with most?

A: Definitely Kabbalat Shabbat. They like picking a shabbat papa and shabbat mama; they like the “game” of being silent between washing their hands and eating challah.

Q: Does your community have its own synagogue?

A: No, not yet. We’ve just begun rebuilding a community after the great exodus of 2022-23. We do have a youth group, which belongs to the “NOAM” movement [global youth movement of Conservative Judaism], and which meets on a weekly basis – after school in Sha’alavim. 10-15 kids between age 10 and 17 come each week. They also attend Shabbatons and Camp Ramah with the other Ukrainian “NOAM” groups - in Odesa, Chernivtsi, and Kyiv. My wife Viktoria is director of NOAM in Kharkiv and for all of Ukraine.

Q: Are you a rabbi?

A: Not yet. I am a rabbinical student at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, and hope to finish in two more years. Currently, our rabbi is Iryna Gritsevskaya of Schechter, who lives in Israel and visits us periodically.

Q: What are your impressions of Kharkiv after three years’ absence?

A: We don’t live in our old apartment, because it’s in a dangerous neighborhood that’s been hit many times. And our old apartment is on the fifth, top, floor of the building, which is considered even more dangerous. So we’re renting in another area.

The city is packed and busy. Cafes are open, there are traffic jams. I’m impressed that after a shelling attack, the city works hard to clean up debris and replace broken glass immediately, so that life can return to normal. But even when there aren’t shellings, there are problems. GPS often doesn’t work in the city, and there are local blackouts.

Q: It sounds like you work mainly with children and youth. Are you working with other populations?

A: Our group provides humanitarian aid to older Jews in need. We get their names from the Khesed, which has the most exhaustive list of Jews in the city, and which knows which ones are in the most desperate need. The amount of humanitarian aid coming in from abroad has decreased in the last year. The Jews we’ve met are very grateful for the help.

The food packages include items that are too expensive for these people to buy in a store – coffee, tuna fish. And items of Jewish significance. Before Rosh Hashanah we included apples and honey.

https://www.facebook.com/61574653416160/videos/1458673105427145

Oleg Krasny delivers humanitarian aid to Jews in Kharkiv

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: I’m not particularly afraid here, perhaps thanks to the fact that I lived in Israel for many years. I know the city and what areas to avoid. I feel very satisfied that I’m able to help fellow Jews, and help Jewish children feel attached to Judaism.

Last Minute: Podol Synagogue Damaged by Russian Drone

Russian drones attacked the Podol (Ukrainian: Podil) section of Kyiv on early Thursday morning October 23, inflicting moderate damage on the historic Podol synagogue. A residential apartment building a block away suffered major damage. There were injuries but no fatalities.

Video taken by Chief Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Asman displays broken windows, and debris of the drone in the synagogue courtyard. One metallic piece of the projectile lodged in the outer wall of the yeshiva-building, adjacent to the synagogue. The attack took place in the middle of the night, and there were no congregants present at the time.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Podol was a poor, densely Jewish neighborhood, the Kyiv equivalent of the Lower East Side. The “Rosenberg Synagogue” was constructed in 1894-95. For most of the period of Soviet rule, it was the only functioning synagogue in Kyiv. Since the 1990s, the synagogue’s community has been headed by Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, who, like Rabbi Asman, claims the title of Chief Rabbi. Recently, the community is led by Rabbi Bleich’s son Rabbi Avrumi Bleich.

Torah and Haftarot Published in Ukrainian

The Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine recently published the Torah and Haftarot in Ukrainian translation for the very first time. The volume was published on the eve of the Simhat Torah festival and the beginning of the new Torah-reading cycle. It represents a further step in the translation of central Jewish religious texts into Ukrainian, a process that has intensified since the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022. Many Jews have since then spurned the Russian language in favor of Ukrainian. Until 2022, Jews were overwhelmingly Russian speakers.

The volume was published in Kharkiv, in the printing plant owned by Mikhail Shifrin, who first met Chabad rabbis in 2022, when he fled Ukraine to a Jewish refugee camp along lake Balaton in Hungary. Shifrin decided then that if and when he returned to Kharkiv, he would use his print facility to publish Jewish religious literature. And he has. Shifrin contributed a third of the funding for the project, with a second third contributed by his friend Mark Vinersky. The final third of funding was provided by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine.

I spoke with Rabbi Levy Engelsman, an Israeli Chabad Chasid who lives in Dnipro, and who supervised the project on behalf of the Federation of Jewish Communities. Engelsman shared some interesting details on the process of translation. The sponsors could not find anyone suitable and qualified to compose a new Torah translation from the original – someone with deep knowledge of both Biblical Hebrew and modern literary Ukrainian. They therefore hired translators who worked from existing Jewish translations of the Torah in English and Russian. The translators did not consult the original Hebrew or Christian translations of the Pentateuch. Their Ukrainian text was subsequently reviewed and corrected by two Chabad rabbis who are fluent in Ukrainian – Rabbi Levi Zeligson (Cologne, Germany), and Rabbi Moshe Forlander (Austria). The latter attended Ukrainian language schools in his youth.

Rabbi Engelsman, the project supervisor, mentioned two specific translation issues that arose. One was on how to translate the word “king” in Biblical narratives. Older translations had used the word “Tsar”, but this was considered inappropriate and even offensive to Ukrainian ears. So “korol’” was chosen instead. There were also difficulties on how to translate the names of God “Adonai” and “Elohim”. The former was usually translated as Господь or Господь Бог (the Lord God), and the latter as усеси́льний (the Almighty).

While this is the first Jewish edition of the Torah in Ukrainian, three different siddurim (Jewish prayerbooks) have appeared in Ukrainian in the last few years, published by the Federation (Chabad), Masorti (Conservative), and Reform movements. There are also two different Ukrainian Passover hagadahs – one Chabad and one modern / secular, published by the Jewish women’s organization “Project Kesher”.

Culture-Round Up in War Time

There is a rich array of Jewish cultural events in Ukrainian cities, despite the fact that many of the cities are under frequent missile and drone attacks. Under the stressful circumstances of bombardment, cultural activity is a form of resistance to Russia’s attempt to demoralize Ukrainian society.

The events listed below took place between October 15 and 24, 2025:

• Sholem Aleichem Square in Pereyaslav. Municipal authorities have begun work on the creation of a Sholem Aleichem square in the author’s native city. The square, located opposite the former site of the Pereyaslav main synagogue, will feature a park with benches and trees. The city’s Sholem Aleichem monument will be moved to the new square. To initiate the construction project, 32 red maple trees were planted, and a ceremony was held, with remarks by the mayor of Pereyaslav and the head of the local Jewish culture society.

• Days of Jewish Culture in Odesa. October 19-26 are designated as the “Days of Jewish Culture in Odesa”. Among the featured events are a concert of Jewish music, the film “Zone of Interest”, a tour of the museum of Jewish history in Odesa “Migdal Shorashim”, two theatre plays on Jewish themes, an evening on Vladimir Jabotinsky, and much more.

• Stumbling Stones in Kyiv: The German Embassy in Kyiv has a program to install “stumbling stones” in the city. Unlike in Germany, the stones are not to mark the addresses of Jews who perished in the Holocaust, but of righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews. Three such stones were inaugurated in 2025, to commemorate Ukrainians who rescued Jews from Babi Yar.

• Jewish Audio-Tour of Vinnitsa. The municipality of Vinnitsa (in the Podolia region of Ukraine) inaugurated an audio tour of the city’s historically Jewish “Yerusalimka” district. The tour is named “In the Footsteps of ‘the Hasidic Lad’”, and incorporates selections from Isaac Joel Linetsky’s classic 19^th century satire “The Hasidic Lad” (also known as “The Polish Lad”). Linetsky was a native of Vinnitsa. The audio-tour stops at seven locations, which have stands with artwork and QR codes providing additional information. The organizers consider the audio-tour to be a multi-genre journey into Jewish culture, including dramatic recitations, klezmer music, art, and history.

• Art Exhibit in Kharkiv. The Jewish Community Center in Kharkiv opened an exhibit by Ukrainian-Israeli artist Albert-Leyzer Feldman, called “The Roofs of Our Town”. The exhibit consists of colorful scenes of shtetl life. “The exhibition combines expressionism, symbolism and nostalgia”, a local review noted. Feldman’s work has appeared throughout Ukraine, including, most recently, at the Sholem Aleichem Museum in Kyiv.

  

  ---

  Antisemitic Attack in Kyiv

The Obolon Synagogue in Kyiv was the object of an antisemitic attack on Friday night October 10 and Saturday October 11. On Friday night a group of teenagers approached the synagogue, made Nazi salutes and called out antisemitic slogans. The youngsters returned on Saturday afternoon, again with Nazi salutes and antisemitic catcalls. This time, a congregant went out to confront them. Two of the assailants sprayed tear gas on the congregant, who was subsequently taken to hospital for burns on his eyes and facial skin.

After shabbat, the Obolon synagogue issued an emotional statement on social media: “This was an intentional, brutal and prepared antisemitic act. […] What happened should not happen in the civilized world!”

The Obolon synagogue is a medium size structure inside a courtyard and is not visible from the street. No one wanders past it by accident. The assailants must indeed have prepared their attack.

On Sunday morning, Rabbi Shlomo Gopin issued a second statement thanking the many bloggers, public figures, and media representatives for their expressions of sympathy and support. He thanked Ukrainian law enforcement and stated that “to solve the problem, it needs to be highlighted, not silenced.”

On Monday, October 13, the Kyiv police announced that it had arrested three adolescents age 15 and 16, who were students in local schools, based on security camera video from the scene. The youngsters were charged with part 4 of Article 296 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: “gross violation of public order based on obvious disrespect for society”; a crime that carries a maximum four-year prison sentence.

As Rabbi Gopin pointed out, the attack was unusual because of its use of physical violence, in the form of tear gas from close range. Most incidents are of defacing and graffiti.

There have been no “pro-Palestinian” attacks on Jewish institutions in Ukraine during the last two years – not even inscriptions of “free Palestine” on synagogue walls. The incidents that have occurred have expressed classical, straight-forward ethnic hatred of Jews, most of the time with Nazi slogans.

More on Antisemitism in Russia: An Exchange with Lev Gudkov

In the previous issue, I shared data and commentary on the most recent survey on antisemitism in Russia. The survey, sponsored by the Russian Jewish Congress, showed that negative attitudes toward Jews had risen. Between 20-22% of respondents believe that there is a Zionist conspiracy by Jews to dominate the world, 25% think Jews should not reside in Russia, and 40% believe there should be restrictions on Jews occupying high ranking positions in Russia.

I asked Lev Gudkov, Director of the Levada Center, Russia’s foremost independent sociological research institute, to respond to the article. Gudkov is the senior expert on xenophobia and antisemitism in Russia. What follows is our exchange of messages. (For readers in Russia: Gudkov is listed as a foreign agent by the Russian Ministry of Justice.)

Gudkov

I generally agree with you and have no serious objections to your position or comments. The overall level of antisemitism in Russia has indeed risen.

I would only note that it is driven by the general rise in isolationism and, consequently, xenophobia. Today’s Russian nationalism - I would call it “secondary” imperial nationalism - is defensive, conservative, and not mobilizing in nature. It is a specific expression of the failure of yet another attempt to modernize the country, a neurotic reaction to disappointment in the reforms of the 1990s and to the efforts to become a “normal society.”

Today’s Russian nationalism is characterized by an anti-Western ideology and demagoguery, which is why public opinion in Russia as a whole is not directed against Jews. This does not mean that some segments of the Russian population do not display hostility toward Jews and Israel on social media - Orthodox Christians, Muslims, radical nationalists of various stripes: Russian, Chechen, Dagestani, etc. But overall, the Russian population is indifferent to anything related to Jews, in part because 80-85% of Russians have never encountered Jews in their lives.

Seventy percent of Jews live in just four major cities. Therefore, the antisemitism of the majority of the population has a “virtual” character. The Caucasus, however, is a different story, with its spread of radical Islam and strong ties to the Arab world.

Fishman

Thank you for reminding us that the rise of antisemitism in Russia is more an expression of the broader rise of nationalism and xenophobia than anything else. Most Russians have never met Jews and are not focused on them.

I am sure, as you suggest - and as the data suggests - that antisemitic attitudes, and anti-Western / anti-Ukrainian attitudes are following similar trajectories. Like most attitudes, antisemitism is largely latent and not organized. Thank God for that.

I would only respond that myths about Jews run rather deeply in most societies and can flourish even in the absence of real-life interaction with Jews. Under certain circumstances such attitudes can be activated - either on an interpersonal level or in public life. There have been, during the course of history, many cases of “antisemitism without Jews” - where Jews (or “Zionists”) serve as a convenient scapegoat for the ills of society, even when they are almost absent. Poland in 1968 is a useful example.

That is not happening in Russia today, but the potential of such an eruption exists among 25% of the population.

I appreciate your pointing out that the antisemitic “constituency” is actually made up of several subgroups - Orthodox Christians, radical Russian nationalists, and Islamist radicals in Chechnya, Dagestan etc. But the first two groups overlap and seem to enjoy support among the governing elite (Dugin, Malofeev, Prokhanov). Yes, Zionists are not among Russia’s top avowed enemies (right now, Ukrainians and Europeans are presented as such), but if Israel openly provided Ukraine with arms, that could change rapidly.

Notes:

Aleksandr Dugin: Russian ultra-nationalist intellectual, reportedly closed to Vladimir Putin. In 2024, he suggested that Zionists perpetrated the terrorist attacks in Moscow, and that the Torah and Talmud commanded Netanyahu to kill innocents.

Konstantin Malofeev: Monarchist, head of the Tsargrad Media Group, which publishes anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic articles. Close to the Kremin and to the Russian Orthodox church.

Alexander Prokhanov: Editor in chief of the far-right newspaper “Zavtra”. Friend and supporter of Hamas. Recently honored with a medal by Putin.

Gudkov

I completely agree with you. Antisemitism in Russia can move from a latent state to an “activated” one, but only under one condition: if it becomes part of state domestic policy (state antisemitism, as it was during the Soviet era), if it becomes an instrument of official propaganda, if it is integrated into the educational system, personnel selection, and so on. We have written about this in our earlier research reports. So far, this hasn’t happened, and Jews have held and continue to hold very important positions in Putin’s inner circle. I’ve never followed such appointments, but colleagues from the Russian Jewish Congress have repeatedly mentioned to me high-profile Jewish names in high-ranking government positions, including prime ministers (Fradkov, Mishustin).

The figures you mentioned—Dugin, Malofeev, Prokhanov—are not allowed to exercise real power and are better known in the West than in Russia. Putin’s administration keeps them on a “short leash.”

But you’re also right about the reproduction of anti-Jewish and Judeophobic stereotypes on the everyday level - and this simply astounds me as a researcher. My colleague Alexei Levinson is inclined to explain this by saying that Jews act as a distorting mirror for Russians, negatively highlighting their “national virtues”.

Fishman:

I am not astonished by the persistence of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Russia, even in the absence of full-blown state antisemitism. While the Putin regime has put severe restrictions on freedom of speech, it still permits a range of opinions and group discourses, ones which it considers to be in its interests. One of them is the antisemitic discourse of Russian Orthodox and nationalist extremists, who constitute a pro-war, anti-Ukrainian constituency. The regime needs the political support and military participation of such people.

Just last week I read an article on a legal and reasonably well-known Orthodox website based in St. Petersburg that stated:

“[Israel] was created artificially and by force on Arab land. It is a political Zionist project in which many world powers are involved – powers which are under harsh Zionist control. […] The main interest of this chosen people is world domination. From among these chosen ones will arise a world ruler who will give the chosen ones all wealth and all power. That ruler is the anti-Christ. […] We, based on our Russian Orthodox mission, conduct an implacable spiritual war against the anti-Christ in our souls and on our land.”

This is not the official state position, but it is a tolerated minority position in Russia - while the expression of liberal democratic views is not tolerated. And every once in a while, Putin feeds the beast, as he did in December 2024, when he said that the people destroying the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine “are ethnic Jews”.

The Putin regime is under stress and in a survival mode. If it decides that its interests are served by increasing the prominence of anti-Jewish or “anti-Zionist” rhetoric in public space, it will do so. The main silver lining I can find is that fomenting or sanctioning anti-Jewish violence is not in the regime’s interest.

Ukrainians For Torah

I stumbled upon an unexpected phenomenon: A community of ethnic Ukrainians of various faiths who study the parsha of the week and Torah on a regular basis. The group, “Abraham’s Tent” (Shat’er Avrama) is based in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. It has existed since 2016 and meets in its own facility. I spoke with Oksana Lebedeva, the director of Abraham’s Tent, by Whatsap on October 9 to learn more. Ms. Lebedeva is a Gestalt psychotherapist by profession. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What is “Abraham’s Tent”?

A: “Abraham’s Tent” is an open space for people of all religions who want to study Torah. We have 365 people on our mailing list. We meet weekly on Sundays at 11 AM to study the parsha of the week with a teacher. The teachers are all Jewish, the participants are not.

Q: Is the goal of the organization to prepare people for giyur, conversion to Judaism?

A: No, absolutely not. We call ourselves “Bnei Noakh”, children of Noah. Some of our members wear a cross and go to church, some attend synagogue on shabbat without converting to Judaism, most do not practice any religion. A few have converted to Judaism, but they are exceptions. All have found self-realization and closeness to God through studying Torah. We are open to all.

Q: Do you conduct religious services?

A: No. Our space is for study of Torah and community, not for prayer. We do observe some Judaic rituals. This year we built our own sukkah, with guidance from Yakov Sinyakov, the Jewish military chaplain who lives in Dnipro.

A lesson in the sukkah of “Abraham’s Tent”, October 6, 2025. Noone in the audience is Jewish

Q: When did you join the organization and how?

A: I visited for the first time in January 2022, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion. I liked the atmosphere, I felt calm, I felt God. I had not gone to church beforehand. Others who joined had the same experience – it changed their lives. We saw the wisdom of the Torah.

Q: Do you have a relationship with the Dnipro Jewish community?

A: Of course. Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki [the chief rabbi of Dnipro] supports our organization. We go to some Jewish communal events, such as the communal Menorah lighting on Chanukah. Our teachers are from the Jewish community, and our building is a former synagogue in the center of Dnipro, which we obtained with assistance from the Jewish community.

Q: How have friends and relatives of your members reacted to your unconventional spiritual choice?

A: My husband has been very supportive. When I started attending, he saw that I changed, that I was happier, with more energy. He is now fighting at the front, but when he comes home for the weekend, he goes with me to the Torah lesson. I take my children with me as well. In general, entire families come to our lessons – grandparents, parents and teenage children.

Q: Is there other activity?

A: There are spin-off groups – a women’s club, a men’s club, and a youth group. Some people go only to the club, and not to the Torah class. We are a community. We raise funds, we repair the building, we support each other.

Q: Who are your teachers?

A: The main teachers are Yakov Sinyakov, the Jewish military chaplain; David Dukhovnii, who is the head of our organization; Shlomo Dov Ber Promyslovsky, who besides being a learned Jew is a Gestalt psychologist; and Yosef Dov Belyaev, a leader of the Dnipro Jewish Community.

* * *

I checked in with military chaplain Yakov Sinyakov, who is the main teacher at “Abraham’s Tent”. He is enthusiastic about the group. Sinyakov is a one-man Jewish mission to the Gentiles. In the military, he teaches, prayers, and provides pastoral counselling to Ukrainian soldiers of various faiths, only a small minority of whom are Jewish. He also operates a Youtube channel with a similar objective to “Abraham’s Tent”. Hundreds of non-Jewish Ukrainians from across the country listen in to his Torah lessons, on Pirke Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”), the Tanya (the classical treatise of Chabad Hasidism), and other subjects in Judaism. He says that there are barely a handful of Jews among his viewers.

This year, Sinyakov spoke about the High Holidays to the “Avraham’s Tent” community on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, in the afternoon. A packed hall of over 100 people attended. On Yom Kippur, a group from “Abraham’s Tent” visited the synagogue and were seated there as a group. He confirmed that Dnipro chief rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki is a great supporter of the community.

Given the difficult chapters in the history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, this is a truly remarkable phenomenon: Ukrainians for Torah.

Antisemitism in Russia: What the Data Shows

How antisemitic are Russians? My working hypothesis has been that antisemitic attitudes have grown in Russia during the last few years – first in response to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which led to the outburst of shrill Russian nationalism and xenophobia, and then again in response to the 2023 Israeli war in Gaza, which led to a revival of Soviet-style anti-Zionism, with Israel as the new Nazi Germany. It turns out that the data shows I’ve been half right: antisemitism is up, but not dramatically, in part because it was already quite high beforehand. But anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism are up in a more pronounced way.

The Russian Jewish Congress sponsored an in-depth survey on attitudes toward Jews in Russia that was conducted about a year ago, September to November 2024. The Congress didn’t post the results online, and I received a copy of the study from its former president Yuri Kanner after requesting a copy several times. It seems the RJC (Russian Jewish Congress) is not interested in the wide dissemination of the findings.

Publication of the findings was also delayed for another reason. Originally, the survey was conducted and supervised by Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, Russia’s finest independent sociological research institute. But on February 15, 2025, Gudkov was declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice. The RJC did not want to be affiliated with a foreign agent and therefore transferred analysis of the data to Mythos Productions, an organization about which there is very little information online. The report does not refer to Gudkov’s work, even when citing the results of his previous surveys on antisemitism in Russia.

Upon receiving the report, I checked with Gudkov, and he confirmed that its numbers are accurate.

* * *

Let’s start with the broadest possible picture. The survey asked its 1,653 respondents how they felt about various ethnic groups: Did they relate to them “with liking, interest, easily, or with no special feeling” (four possible responses) or “with irritation, dislike, mistrust or fear” (four possible responses). 21% of respondents viewed Jews with the negative attitudes. The ethnic groups that fared best were Tatars (10% negative) and Chinese (11% negative). The groups that fared worst were Roma (57%) and Ukrainians (44%). Jews were in the broad middle from this perspective. [p. 9]

But if one looks at the percentage of respondents who gave a positive response (i.e. they related to Jews “with liking, interest, easily, or with no special feeling”) in historical perspective, the picture changes somewhat. There has been a noticeable drop in positive responses. 90% gave the positive responses regarding Jews back in 2020, 88% gave such responses in 2022, but only 74% in 2024. That’s a significant drop. There were similar drops in positive attitudes toward certain other groups - Roma, Ukrainians, and Chechens. So it’s fair to say that the proportion of Russian society which is xenophobic and antisemitic has grown since 2022. [p. 11]

The growth of Russian nationalism and xenophobia is also evident from certain other responses. 38% agreed with the statement that “Russians in Russia must have certain advantages over all others”. 49% believe that a person’s “ethnic nationality should be taken into account for holding public posts in the government of Russia”. [p. 15]

But let’s get back to the Jews. The picture is not rosy when respondents are asked to rank Jews on the Bogardus scale. The Bogardus scale asks respondents whether they are ready to have members of a social group 1- as part of their family, 2 – as friends, 3 - as neighbors, 4 – as colleagues at work,

5 - as residents of Russia, 6 – as temporary visitors to Russia, 7 – not allow into Russia at all. (There was also a response ‘undecided’). Respondents can choose only one reply. This methodology assumes that if someone would accept a Jew as a member of their family, they would certainly accept a Jew as a neighbor or coworker. And vice versa. If someone would not allow a Jew to reside in Russia, they would certainly not want to have a Jew as a coworker or neighbor.

25% of respondents in the fall of 2024 would either not allow Jews into Russia at all or only allow them as temporary visitors. An additional 26% would allow Jews to live in Russia but did not want to have any personal contact with them, even as coworkers. The silver lining to this unfavorable picture is that the percentage of Russians who have a low tolerance for Jews (51%) is virtually unchanged from 2020. [pp. 13, 22]

The most alarming finding was regarding Jews in positions of power. Asked “Do you think it is necessary to monitor how many executive positions are held by Jews and limit the number of Jews in executive positions?” 40% or respondents agreed, 48% disagreed and 12% were undecided. The percentage who agreed with the need to limit the number of Jews in executive positions was the highest since surveys began in 1992. (I presume the word for executive was ispolnitel’nii, which is usually associated with high-ranking government positions.) [p. 27]

The reason this finding matters is as follows: If a Russian political figure ever decided to advance such an agenda, quotas on Jews in government, he would find a high level of support and sympathy in society.

Certain anti-Jewish stereotypes are quite strong. “Money and profit are more important for Jews than human relations”: 49% agreed, 30% disagreed, 22% were undecided. “Jews avoid physical work”: 51% agreed, 30% disagreed, 19% were undecided. On the other hand, certain positive images persist: “Jews are well-bred, cultured people”: 73% agreed, 11% disagreed, 16% were undecided. “In most cases, a Jew is a family person, loves children”: 67% agreed, 8% disagreed, 25% undecided. [p. 26] Most of these stereotypes are distinctly East European, with deep historical roots. (I doubt an American survey would even ask if Jews avoided physical labor or are family people.)

A firm plurality of Russians have a negative view of Zionism. When given a multiple-choice question on the definition of Zionism, the single largest response was that Zionism was the “policy aimed at establishing Jewish dominance in the entire world”. 20% chose that definition, a stunningly high number for a blatantly antisemitic view. An additional 9% believe that Zionism is “the ideology justifying Israeli’s aggression in the Middle East.” 31% are undecided – they could not choose a definition of Zionism among the five options offered by the survey. 17% chose the answer that Zionism is “the Jews’ movement for return to their historical homeland, strengthening the state of the Jews”. [p. 35]

The conspiratorial response on Zionism was not a fluke. When participants were asked separately whether there existed a world Zionist conspiracy for Jews to dominate other nations, 22% responded “yes”. That was the highest percentage of such responses since the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2020, it was 16%. 31% of respondents in the current survey didn’t know whether such a conspiracy existed, i.e. many of them wouldn’t rule it out. [p. 36]

As one might expect, the attitude toward Israel has deteriorated. (Reminder: the survey was taken a year ago, in the fall of 2024, shortly before the US election.) 14% of respondents view Israel with suspicion, and 8% view it negatively, with animosity. The majority, 56% view Israel “cooly, like any other country”. But the combined negative responses (with suspicion plus negatively, with animosity) came to 22% in the 2024 survey, compared to 8% in 2020. That is a big jump and can be in part be laid at the doorstep of official state propaganda [p. 37].

In short, about one quarter of Russians are hard core antisemites. They oppose Jews residing in Russia (answers 6 and 7 on the Bogardus scale) and believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. They view Israel with suspicion and animosity. The size of the antisemitic camp rises to 40% if one includes those who believe that there is a need for restrictions on Jews assuming positions of power in Russia.

Just about all indicators rose. Sometimes the increase was statistically significant, sometimes it was not. But virtually no indicators dropped. In other words, on no questions were the responses less antisemitic than in the past.

It’s a shame that we don’t have an analogous in-depth study on attitudes toward Jews in Ukraine. My impression is that the results would be much more favorable.