{"id":37624,"date":"2026-06-10T14:54:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/?p=37624"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:54:58","slug":"the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-part-5-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-part-5-4\/","title":{"rendered":"\"The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions\": Part 5.4"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter was founded in 2008 with the goal of building stronger relations between Ukrainians and Jews, two peoples who, for centuries, lived side by side on the territory of what is modern-day Ukraine. Since then, in keeping with its motto, \"Our stories are incomplete without each other,\" UJE has sponsored conferences, round-table discussions and research, as well as translations and publication of works the organization anticipates will promote a deeper understanding between the two peoples and an appreciation of their respective cultures.<\/p>\n

We offer for the first time the book\u00a0The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions\u00a0<\/em>in an eBook format.<\/p>\n

The book is a collection of essays that examine the interaction between the Ukrainian and Jewish cultures from the seventeenth century onwards. Written by leading experts from Ukraine, Israel, and other countries, the book presents a broad perspective on parallels and cross-cultural influences in various domains \u2014 including the visual arts, folklore, music, literature, and language. Several essays also focus on mutual representation \u2014 for example, perceptions of the \"Other\" as expressed in literary works or art history.<\/p>\n

The richly illustrated volume contains a wealth of new information on these little-explored topics. The book appears as volume 25 in the series\u00a0Jews and Slavs,<\/em>\u00a0published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1993. In several previous volumes, considerable attention is given to the defining role of the Old Testament in Ukrainian literature and art and to the depiction of Jewish life in Ukraine in the works of Nikolai Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Vladimir Korolenko, and other writers.<\/p>\n

This collection of essays was co-edited by Wolf Moskovich, Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Alti Rodal, Co-Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, who also wrote the introduction to the volume. It was published in 2016 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

5.4<\/span><\/h1>\n

Click\u00a0here for a pdf\u00a0<\/a>of the entire book.<\/p>\n

Modern Jewish Museums in Ukraine<\/h2>\n

Leonid Finberg (Jewish Studies Center, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/strong>The emergence of Jewish museums is a fresh stage in the development of Jewish community life in Ukraine \u2014 a development that began a little more than twenty years ago with the renovation of synagogues and the creation of schools and kindergartens, Jewish cultural societies and structures for social assistance, youth associations, newspapers, and Jewish studies centres. The task of museums in the effort to revive ethnic communities is to preserve the memory of their history. After the collapse of the Communist regime, this was especially needed and continues to be needed \u2014 for the Jews in this country, their non-Jewish neighbours, and visitors to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

These new museums are being created almost a century after their first predecessors were established. In the beginning of the last century museums were set up by Mendele Moykher-Sforim in Odessa, the Kultur-Lige (Culture League) in Kyiv, and in Lviv. The fate of these earlier museums was as tragic as the fate of the country at large in the twentieth century. Thus, for instance, the Kultur-Lige museum was mentioned only once in the Proletarskaia Pravda <\/em>(Proletarian Truth) newspaper, which stated the following: \"The museum also boasts the works of the newest artists (Picasso, Lentulov, Exter, Chagall\u2026), Jan Brueghel paintings, and a collection of Japanese prints.\"i<\/sup><\/a> [1]<\/a> Where these works are now remains unknown. Some museums were more \"lucky\" \u2014 we can learn about those who robbed them or ruined their displays, as well as the names of their keepers. Those were traumatic years. The civil war took 1.5 million souls. The collectivization and industrialization with the famine took over four million. The repressions of the late 1930s took about a million, while the Second World War took eight million. The legal proceedings against Jewish doctors and \"cosmopolitans\" also took their toll, followed by the more liberal \"thaw\" years \u2014 the more liberal \"vegetarian\" years in the words of the writer Nadezhda Mandelstam, though not liberal enough to open the borders or the special archives. In short, the notion of time was divided into \"before the war, during the war, and after the war\" (as stated by Arkadii Belinkov) and there was no other time.<\/p>\n

In the late 1980s, those who lived long enough (or survived) saw new times. Communism died, having crippled three generations of Soviet people, and leaving as its legacy the rivers and soil poisoned, and what's more terrifying, scarred souls.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s a new stage of post-communist life began, with all its controversies. Back then, with the first steps of setting up ethnic and religious community structures, we were already dreaming about museums, knowing full well what an important role they play in highly developed societies. There were certainly no resources or appropriate exhibition spaces for them at the time, just a dream. And years of meticulous work were needed to collect artefacts of the Jewish historical heritage and culture in order for the first Jewish museums to be born.<\/p>\n

Conferences in the series under the modest name \"Odessa and Jewish Civilization\" have been convened in Odessa since November 2002. A narrower approach would not have satisfied Odessa. This may explain why the first Jewish museum in Ukraine was opened in 2002 in this city. Working in cooperation with the Migdal Center, its creators emphasized that they were filling a significant gap resulting from a neglect of the history of the Jews of Odessa in that city's state-run museums (not that Jewish history had much coverage in any of the other state-run or private museums in the country). According to the creators of this new museum, Odessa in the second half of the nineteenth century was the third most important centre of Jewish life in the world after New York and Warsaw. Living in Odessa in the decades around the turn of the century were the pioneers of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and the leaders of the Jewish national movement, including the writers and poets Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Hayim Nahman Bialik, and Shaul Tchernichovsky; historian Simon Dubnow; the forerunners of the Zionist movement Mosheh Leib Lilienblum and Lev (Leon) Pinsker, and Zionists Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, Asher Ginzberg (Ahad Ha-Am), Menachem Mendel Ussishkin, Meir Dizengoff, and others. And then, in the 1910s, the phenomenon of Jewish cinematography emerged, together with outstanding Russian writers of Jewish background such as Isaac Babel and others. The Odessa Museum occupies around 160 square meters and holds approximately seven thousand items, including documents, photographs, books, newspapers, leaflets, religious and household items, musical instruments, and works of art. Around one thousand items are on display. It has several thousand visitors a year. Tours are organized, and books and brochures are published. The Museum is also one of the sponsors of the above-mentioned \"Odessa and Jewish Civilization\" conference series.<\/p>\n

Most of the Museum's display items are gifts from current or former residents of Odessa. The Museum exists due to the support of international charity funds, first and foremost, the Joint. Given the structure of its displays and the nature of its organization, the Odessa Jewish Museum falls into the category of local lore museums of the mid-twentieth century. Unfortunately, a lack of funds prevents the Museum from being enhanced by new multimedia display technologies.<\/p>\n

Several factors contribute to the Museum's success. An important subjective factor is that its director Mikhail Rashkovetsky is an art critic and experienced professional who cares for his museum and lovingly collects its artefacts. Another factor is that the Museum is helped by the activities of the Migdal Center, which for decades has been the main organizer of Jewish community life in Odessa. The Museum also works closely with members of the Jewish community in organizing lectures, exhibitions and festivals, and promoting programs of cooperation with schools and with college students.<\/p>\n

The Chernivtsi Museum of the History and Culture of Bukovinian Jews was created in 2008, thanks to Josef Zissels, a Jewish community leader of Ukraine and Chernivtsi. His initiative, energy, and to some extent his personal money, helped to create this Museum. Conceptually, the Museum is in the category of regional museums, as its purpose is to tell the story of the life of the Jews of Bukovina, focusing on the period when one could still speak of a real community there \u2014 that is, before the Holocaust. The Museum's space is not very large (around sixty square metres). As it tries, within this small space, to cover Bukovina's Jewish history beginning in the seventeenth century, the Museum has gone beyond its physical premises by designing a booklet as a short guide to the history, religion, literature, arts, and theatre of this world-famous city where, according to the writer Rose Ausl\u00e4nder, \"even the fish can be silent in five languages.\"<\/p>\n

The Museum exhibits reflect the fact that the city of Chernivtsi and its outskirts are closely related to the glorious history of Hasidism. It is said that the Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, visited here and that Avraham Yehoshu'a Heschel from Apta (Opatov) preached here. In 1845, the village of Sadagora (Sadhora) near Chernivtsi (today within the city limits) became the residence of Rabbi Yisra'el Friedman from Ruzhin (Ruzhyn), the founder of the Ruzhin-Sadagora Hasidic dynasty. Several other famous dynasties began in Bukovina: the Vizhnits dynasty founded by Menahem Mendel Hager, who became head of the Jewish community in Vizhnytsia; and the Boyan dynasty, whose first rabbi was the grandson of Rabbi Yisra'el Friedman from Ruzhin.<\/p>\n

In the late nineteenth century, Jews began to play a more significant role in the life of Chernivtsi. They became bankers, factory owners, oil producers, and railroad builders. Early in the twentieth century, three quarters of all the taxes collected in Chernivtsi came from the Jews. In 1905\u20137, the mayor of the city was Dr. Eduard Reiss, and in 1913-15 this position belonged to another Jew \u2014 Dr. Salo Weisselberger. The Franz-Josef University had five Jewish rectors from 1891 through 1914. Jewish people made up more than a half of the university lecturers, 58 percent of doctors, and 76 percent of lawyers in the city.<\/p>\n

Many of these facts are reflected in the Museum's narrative, as is the story of the city's charitable institutions for helping the poor, the sick, and the old. The Chernivtsi Jewish Orphanage was regarded as one of the most orderly in Europe. Another aspect relates to the internationally acclaimed cultural figures that hail from Chernivtsi \u2014 such as the writers Karl Emil Franzos, Paul Celan, and Rose Ausl\u00e4nder; and the Yiddish authors Itsik Manger and Eliezer Shteynbarg. Jewish artists, theatres, choirs, and a school for cantors also existed in Chernivtsi. One of the most outstanding cantors in the world, Josef (Yossele) Rosenblatt, was born in this city.<\/p>\n

Special attention should be (and is) given to the historical conference on the Yiddish language that took place in Chernivtsi in 1908. In fact, Chernivtsi's Jewish Museum was opened in conjunction with a conference that marked the one hundredth anniversary of the 1908 conference. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Jewish Museum in Chernivtsi is relatively new and is seeking effective new outreach activities. One such activity, regarded as a model to emulate, is one of the best virtual Jewish museums, created by Galina Kharaz and called \"Jewish Life of Bukovina from the end of the Eighteenth Century to the 1940s.\" The website for the Museum can be viewed at http:\/\/muzejew.org.ua\/Index-En.html.<\/a> An ambitious project planned for Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk) was to create a museum of Jewish history and culture in Ukraine. It would occupy around four thousand square metres in the centre of the city next to the synagogue. It is supported by funding from local businessmen, the influential Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, and the educational organization \"Tkumah.\"<\/p>\n

The concept of the Museum is based on the following goals:<\/p>\n