The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which has been delivering heating fuel, bedding, and clothing to Jewish communities across the former Soviet Union as part of its annual Winter Relief program, is expanding its efforts in Ukraine in response to a harsh winter as well as the country’s ongoing political and economic turmoil.
“THE life of the kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was short and sad… and few people mourned its passing.” So wrote Norman Davies in 1981 in his magisterial history of Poland.
LUGANSK, Ukraine — In an unheated synagogue with no running water, a dozen Jews are trying to keep warm as temperatures here veer toward the single digits.
An anonymous iron gate on a main city street in Lviv, Ukraine. A hefty blow from the shoulder of a neighbor, and we gain access to an inner courtyard of the residential building.
My meeting with Right Sector’s Borislav Bereza, newly elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, took place on a sunny Friday morning. We met at a table with a magnificent view of the Dnieper River on the third-floor food court of the Sky Mall in Kiev.
Ukraine’s 450-seat parliament elected on Thursday its first Jewish Speaker, as it convened for the first time since the embattled country’s elections in October.
Today, in an emotional and gripping ceremony at Yad Vashem, Petro and Kateryna Durniak from Ukraine were posthumously honored as Righteous among the Nations.
With his gray beard, AK-47 assault rifle and camouflage fatigues, Asher Joseph Cherkassky looks like an Eastern European version of Fidel Castro. But Cherkassky’s look is no attempt to emulate the Cuban revolutionary or any of his bearded associates. Rather, it is the result of his being an Orthodox Jew who is also a fighter in the Dnipro Battalion — a Ukrainian paramilitary force tasked with blocking any Russian advance from the east.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is set to travel to Prague in January to attend an event marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz.
You don't need to remind Ukrainian Jews of their long history of oppression at the hands of local authorities. In light of the past, how is the remaining 100,000-strong Jewish community faring in newly independent Ukraine, particularly in the wake of recent Maidan protests, renewed nationalism and war with separatists in the east? When it comes to such questions, views can be somewhat nuanced.
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.
