Ukrainian Jewish Heritage is a radio series of vignettes highlighting the significant Jewish contribution to Ukraine’s cultural heritage and nation-building efforts over the centuries. The vignettes are presented in English and explore a variety of…
Ukrainian folk songs and Hasidic music. Mutual borrowings between the Ukrainian and Yiddish languages. Striking similarities in the architecture of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues and Ukrainian wooden churches. A fascinating new book, The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural…
Welcome to Ukrainian Jewish Heritage on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio. I’m Peter Bejger. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. An astonishing new film called Shimon’s Returns proves the point in a…
The Western Ukrainian town of Brody is on my mind today. This historic town has always been in the minds of several generations of Jewish traders, writers, rabbis, and immigrants to the New World. Boris…
There is a classic expression that asserts “when cannons roar the muses fall silent.” In times of distress and upheaval, creativity and art may falter. However, there are always those artists who quietly and stubbornly…
[Editor’s Note: Oksana Lyniv is considered one of the world’s great female conductors. She frequently conducts at opera houses, symphony orchestras, and music festivals—including the Bavarian State Opera and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu—throughout Europe….
Welcome to Ukrainian Jewish Heritage on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio. I’m Peter Bejger. The Kyiv of his youth was very different from today’s busy capital of Ukraine. The city was greener, and quieter. Life…
Passover is a festival of freedom. It commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt over 3000 years ago. The timeless and universal message of this holiday is that slaves can go free, and the future…
In nineteenth century Ukraine, Jewish boys were being spirited from their families to serve the tsar, Hasidism was sweeping Jewish practice from Kyiv and Chornobyl through central Europe, and a Jewish girl became a controversial…
Welcome to Ukrainian Jewish Heritage on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio. I’m Peter Bejger. Leszek Allerhand vividly remembers that day in the summer of 1941, when he was a ten-year-old boy. The Germans had recently…
Welcome to Ukrainian Jewish Heritage on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio. I’m Peter Bejger. It was always a very scenic area of forests and ravines. A very pleasant green zone on the edge of the…