On Thursday, 20 September 2018, the Ukrainian Institute of America and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation will be unveiling a multilingual plaque (English, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Yiddish) honouring Dr. Raphael Lemkin, the “father of the UN Genocide Convention,” specifically in reference to the speech he gave in New York City (20 September 1953) acknowledging the famine of 1932-33 as a Soviet genocide.
The “Sugar king” and multimillionaire philanthropist Lazar Brodsky built a beautiful synagogue in the center of Kyiv and opened it on the day of his 50th birthday—24 August 1898. After 120 years, the Jews of...
CHERNIVTSI, Ukraine – In the elegant, slightly faded lobby of the Hotel Bukovyna, a group of gray-haired, eccentrically-dressed academics sipped cognac and argued in Yiddish. The collective represented just a handful of the over 100 scholars, enthusiasts, and Jewish community advocates from 12 countries around the world that assembled earlier this month for the International Commemorative Conference of Yiddish Culture and Language in western Ukraine.
The Israeli Friends of Ukraine NGO, together with the Embassy of Ukraine to the State of Israel and UIA Airlines, conducted a rehabilitation and family camp for widows with children whose husbands died in the...
COLEBROOK, Conn. – Since 2011, the Bobriwka campsite in northwestern Connecticut has hosted a weeklong music workshop where children and parents have learned how to play the traditional Ukrainian instrument, the bandura. This year, in addition to the usual bandura lessons, choral rehearsals, nature walks, sports and outdoor activities, the children and parents at the “Bandura at Bobriwka” reunion were privileged to host a very special guest.
The Ukrainian port city of Odessa, once home to hundreds of thousands of Jews, is experiencing a ‘golden age’ - with modern Israel proving an unlikely inspiration. If you know where to look, the ghosts of Odessa’s Jewish past are everywhere, haunting and playful: in the pizza restaurant blaring “Hava Nagila” across from the Potemkin Steps; in the forshmak (chopped herring), tzimmes and gefilte fish served in the city’s oldest eating establishments; in the Jewish jokes and Yiddish words that pepper local patois; to the sign above an overgrown courtyard that reads “The State of Israel was born here.”
The U.S. is providing military aid to Israel, but in contrast to NATO countries, they have never sent their troops to our country. In an interview published on the Segodnia website, Dan Meridor, the president...
The 11th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies took place in Krakow on July 15–19, 2018. Among the participants of the Congress were 22 Ukrainian scholars (15 are the members of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies), who represented seven institutions from Ukraine (Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv) and three universities from abroad. Due to the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter’s support, three "Ukrainian" panels were organized for this Congress.
Summer is an active time for the descendants of various groups of foreign Jews to travel to towns and cities of Ukraine. What drives these people and what are they seeking on Ukrainian soil? In...
Providentially, UJE Board Member Berel Rodal and UJE Co-Director Alti Rodal participated in a ceremony on July 27, 2018 inaugurating a monument dedicated to the Jews murdered during the Holocaust in Velyki Mezhyrichi, a village...
Ukrainians and Jews have lived as neighbours for centuries, creating and sharing enduring cultures that continue to inform their identities today. Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE) is proud to present Part 1 of an integrated narrative of these two peoples in the belief that there is much to be gained by viewing their historical experience together, in all its complexity.
Since its launch in September 2022, the UJE Timeline has earned international recognition by winning eight international awards:
The 'Encounter' prize aims to build on the common experiences of Ukrainians and Jews over the centuries, expressed in literature and nonfiction. The Prize will be awarded annually to the most influential work in literature and nonfiction (in alternate years) that fosters Ukrainian-Jewish understanding, helping solidify Ukraine's place as a multi-ethnic society and giving truth to the motto, "Our stories are incomplete without each other."
The goal of the richly illustrated catalogue is to present an integrated narrative that looks at the experience of these two peoples together, in all its complexity — through periods of crisis, as well as long stretches of normal co-existence and multifaceted cultural interaction from antiquity to 1914.
