{"id":38001,"date":"2026-07-08T17:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/?p=38001"},"modified":"2026-07-08T17:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:38:08","slug":"the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-abstracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-abstracts\/","title":{"rendered":"\"The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions\": Abstracts"},"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

Abstracts<\/span><\/h1>\n

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

Introduction<\/h2>\n

Setting the context: Terminology, regional diversity, and the Ukrainian-Jewish encounter<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Robert Magocsi (University of Toronto)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The accurate and sensitive use of terminology, and taking into account the diversity of experience in different regions and under different political regimes and dominant cultures, are critical to avoiding distortive generalizations regarding the Ukrainian-Jewish encounter. As for terminology, it is helpful to use the term \"ethnic Ukrainians\" to refer to members of the Ukrainian ethnic group as distinct from \"citizens of Ukraine,\" which refers to the country's entire population regardless of ethno-linguistic or national background; and \"Ukrainian Jews\" or \"Jews from Ukraine\" to refer to Jews who have resided at some point in history on the territory of present-day Ukraine. As for regional factors, Jews from the Pale of Settlement, including the estimated two million who emigrated to North America between 1897 and 1917, described themselves as Jews from Russia, or from a particular town, or as adherents of a particular Hasidic group. Their experience was different from that of Jews who resided after the 1770s within the Habsburg-ruled Austro-Hungarian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina and the region of Carpathian Rus'. After World War I, Jews on the territory of present-day Ukraine found themselves in four new states: Polish-ruled Galicia, Romanian-ruled Bukovina, democratic Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, each with its own restrictions, opportunities, and rights, as well as languages and distinctive cultural expression. To deal with the profusion of variant place names that resulted, it is recommended that place names, whether towns or historic regions, reflect usage in the country where they are located today. It is also important to avoid stereotypes (e.g., relating the Galitsianer<\/em>), generalizations (e.g., that all Jewish experience in eastern Europe was one of unmitigated tragedy), or omissions (e.g., the failure to mention the impact of the Ukrainian language on Yiddish).<\/p>\n

Part 1 \u2014 representation, parallels, and interaction in religious art and architecture<\/h2>\n

1.1<\/span><\/strong>
\nAllegories of Divine providence in Christian and Jewish art in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ukrainian lands<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ilia Rodov (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Jews and Christians derived metaphors for divine providence and protection from the same biblical sources \u2014 in particular references to being carried to God on eagles' wings and the eagle protecting her young. In a departure from biblical discourse, both Ukrainian and Jewish artists rendered the symbolic eagle as double-headed. This image can be traced to eleventh-century Byzantium and was adopted in the emblems of the two empires flanking the Ukrainian lands: the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs and the Muscovite Tsardom. The double-headed eagle became a pivotal symbol in the propaganda for the political and religious alliance of Khmelnytsky's Cossack Hetmanate and the Tsardom of Russia in 1654. It was then reinterpreted in the context of the struggle of Ukrainian Cossacks against the Catholics and appeared in engravings by Kyivan monks, religious paintings, and the interior design of several Orthodox churches. At the same time, symbols of the protecting eagle and the concept of sheltering \"under the wings of the divine presence\" became common idioms in the Jewish chronicles of the Khmelnytsky persecutions that had traumatized Jewish communities in the region. In this context, the double-headed eagle seemed particularly well suited to signify God's rule over the entire world, the tempering of divine justice with divine mercy, and the hope for redemption. After the Orthodox Church won its struggle for dominance in Ukrainian lands following their integration into the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century, the symbol of the double-headed eagle disappeared from Ukrainian ecclesiastic art, but continued to be a prevalent symbol of divine protection in Jewish religious and folk art in Ukraine and surrounding lands until the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

1.2<\/strong><\/span>
\nUkrainian and Jewish Influences in the art and architecture of pre-modern wooden synagogues, 1600\u20131800<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas C. Hubka (<\/em><\/strong>University of Wisconsin\u2013Milwaukee<\/em><\/strong><\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The exterior architecture of eighteenth-century Polish\/Ukrainian wooden synagogues was predominantly a product of its eastern European Polish\/Ukrainian context, or \"Polish\/Ukrainian in an unmistakably Jewish way.\" However, the interior wall paintings reflect a complex ensemble of two sets of contrasting artistic sources or influences: (1) an older strata of late-medieval Ashkenazi artistic traditions imported from Franco-Germanic lands and further developed for hundreds of years in eastern Europe, which retained pre-modern motifs prevalent in medieval Ashkenazi illuminated manuscript art (e.g., animal figures); and (2) a broad range of influences that reflect the multicultural environment of Jews in Poland\/Ukraine, as well as the extensive travel and trading networks between Jewish diaspora communities throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The diverse influences include Sephardic\/Islamic sources; Italian\/Baroque stylistic influences of the Polish and Ukrainian nobility and the Catholic Church; Ukrainian and eastern European folk\/vernacular decorative motifs; and international decorative art sources, such as adorned fine textiles and carpets favoured by the Polish and Ukrainian nobility. While the liturgical aspects of the synagogue wall paintings remained relatively isolated from pre-1800 Gentile artistic development, the artistic totality of these paintings represents a selective distillation of many local and international Ukrainian, Polish, and eastern European sources, reflecting the unique multicultural Jewish diaspora experience.<\/p>\n

1.3<\/strong>
\nThe synagogue wall paintings in Novoselytsia, Ukraine<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Boris Khaimovich (Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The synagogue murals in Novoselytsia, which have survived in their pristine form under a layer of plaster, illustrate a remarkable blending of three sources of influence: Jewish religious folk art; the palatial style associated with the descendants of the Ruzhin Hasidic dynasty in Boyan and Sadagora in the Chernivtsi region; and the folk art of the ambient Ukrainian and Moldovan culture. The master who painted the Novoselytsia synagogue murals most likely followed a distinctive regional tradition. The composition he produced is multilayered and thoroughly thought out, unlike the decorative panels or illustrative \"pictures\" that are not unified by a common idea, such as those found on the walls of many synagogues in today's Poland and Romania. It also differs from the ornamentation of the wooden eighteenth-century synagogues of southern Galicia. The composition comprises spectacular nature scenes and symbolic depictions from Jewish antiquity and medieval Jewish artistic traditions, including biblical themes, the signs of the Zodiac, and images aligned with the religious calendar cycle. The palatial style of Boyan\/Sadagora Hasidism is evident in the elaborate d\u00e9cor of azure and purple tones and the splendour of the composition. The images featured in this composition also reflect the strong connection that the Ruzhin Hasidim and their descendants felt for the Land of Israel. The most vivid decorative elements, however, were borrowed from the folk art of the ambient Ukrainian and Moldovan culture \u2014 including the use of contrasting red and blue hues, multicoloured geometric patterns, floral bouquets, luscious still life of ripe fruit with decanters of yellow Carpathian wine, the characteristic iconography of animals such as deer, lion, and eagle, and swallows flying in the blue sky.<\/p>\n

1.4<\/strong>
\nThe Israelite Hospital in Lemberg\/Lw\u00f3w\/Lviv, 1898\u20131912: \"Jewish\" architecture by an \"international\" team<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sergey Kravtsov (Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Both the architectural style of the Israelite Hospital and the \"international\" team responsible for its construction reflect the multiethnic character of turn-of-the-century Lviv. Built in 1898\u20131903 on a plot that had been in Jewish hands for five centuries, the hospital served Jews and non-Jews alike. It is used today as a maternity hospital and is described as \"the most sumptuous Jewish landmark\" in the current Lviv cityscape. Its overall synthetic style (\"Moorish,\" \"Romanesque oriental,\" \"Romantic Historicism,\" with cupolas or \"oriental\" domes) was attuned to the diverse identities of its varied clients. This novel style, characteristic of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was also adopted for the construction of the Ruthenian National Institute in Lviv to serve the needs of the Ukrainian community. The initiative and funding for the ambitious hospital project came from the Jewish philanthropist Maurycy Lazarus and his wife R\u00f3\u017ca Marja (n\u00e9e Jolles). The contractor hired was the firm of Ivan Levynsky \u2014 a Ukrainian patriot and an outstanding architect who also worked on Lviv's Opera House and the new Railway Station. The project design was prepared by Levynsky's Polish employee Kazimierz Mok\u0142owski, an ethnographer, architectural historian, and member of the Social Democratic Party of Galicia. A new ambulatory wing was commissioned in 1912 from the architectural firm of Micha\u0142 Ulam \u2014 a successful Jewish architect and industrialist born in Lviv and the son-in-law of the Progressive Chief Rabbi of Lviv \u2014 and designed by Ulam's Polish associate Roman Feli\u0144ski.<\/p>\n

Part 2 \u2014 Secular art and cinema<\/h2>\n

2.1<\/strong>
\nTeachers and pupils: Ukrainian avant-gardists Exter and Bohomazov and the Kyiv circle of Jewish Cubo-Futurists, 1918\u201320<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Dmytro Horbachov (Karpenko-Kary National University, Kyiv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The creative artistic milieu in Kyiv in 1918\u201320, and in particular the Exter-Rabinovich Art Studio, inspired artists of both Jewish and ethnic Ukrainian background to become pioneers of the avant-garde movement. In this studio, young Jewish artists from the Kultur-Lige studied Cubo-Futurism and Abstractionism with Alexandra Exter and Oleksandr Bohomazov, alongside young artists of ethnic Ukrainian background. A review by the Kultur-Lige artist Nisn Shifrin of two art exhibitions in Kyiv in 1920 reflects the strong influence of Exter and Bohomazov on the Kultur-Lige artists. It is also noteworthy that the catalogues of the Kultur-Lige were printed simultaneously in Ukraine's three official languages of Ukrainian, Russian, and Yiddish. In the Exter studio artists learned key elements of modern painting, in particular the rejection of \"literalness\" and narrativity in favour of abstract plastic conception, as well as innovative approaches to theatre set design. The result was a world-renowned cohort of artists (including Mark Epshtein, El Lissitzky, and Issachar Ber Rybak) and theatre set designers (including Nisn Shifrin who worked at the Berezil theatre headed by Les Kurbas, and Boris Aronson, later a stage designer on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera). The author describes how \u2014 on one of his trips to Moscow in the 1960s in search of Ukrainian art (as Head Custodian of the Ukrainian Art Museum) \u2014 he discovered about a thousand of Epshtein's drawings and paintings; and alludes to the Soviet authorities' negative attitude at that time to abstract art, as well as towards Jews.<\/p>\n

2.2<\/strong>
\nParallels in Ukrainian and Jewish \"National Styles\" in Art in the First Third of the Twentieth Century<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Vita Susak (Lviv National Gallery of Art)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the creation of \"national styles\" in art, which built on the contemporary penchant for historicism and eclecticism, even while searching for a new art style. At the same time, art was responding to a certain social demand by peoples who were in the process of active nation-building. The Jewish and Ukrainian \"national styles\" took shape under similar socio-historical conditions, around the same time, and in the same geographic places. An important feature they shared was the assertion of their particular ethnic culture in the light of restrictions imposed by empires and dominant nations. Artistic \"schools\" emerged for both the Ukrainian and Jewish \"national styles\" (for example, Boichukism and the Kultur-Lige) and there was a degree of interaction between their artists and similarities in their works. In both the Ukrainian and the Jewish cases, ideologues for the creation of national styles were convinced that these should be founded on form rather than on themes, and that form should be derived from the nation's heritage \u2014 in particular folk art \u2014 while reflecting contemporary reality. Attitudes toward the architects of the \"national projects\" were ambivalent at the time and the avant-garde criticized them. Nonetheless, these phenomena, which illustrate clear parallels and similarities in Ukrainian and Jewish art, have found their place in art history of the twentieth century \u2014 the century in which both peoples attained statehood.<\/p>\n

2.3<\/strong>
\nOleksandr Dovzhenko and Jewish Mythology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Serhii Trymbach (President, Filmmakers' Union of Ukraine, Kyiv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>In the films and texts of Oleksandr Dovzhenko one can find numerous fragments inspired by mythology, including Jewish mythology. In this regard, he continued a trend in Ukrainian tradition adopted by Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and others. Especially prevalent is the use of clear allusions to Jewish biblical stories, in particular eschatological and messianic themes, and the application of these themes to the contemporary Ukrainian experience. Dovzhenko's approach may be explained in part by his connections with the avant-garde movement, which drew extensively from mythology, including from the Jewish tradition. Eschatological and messianic themes resonated for Dovzhenko because he was profoundly affected by the speed of radical changes in the social order, the tragic Ukrainian experience in the 1930s, and World War II, as well as by a sense that Ukraine had a historic mission. In the film Earth <\/em>(1930), propaganda about the advantages of the collective economy gave way to mythologies about the farming cycle (e.g., the impregnation of Mother Earth) and redemption. In this and other works, Dovzhenko blended Slavic pagan cosmogony with elements of Christian-Jewish mythology, as well as new features coming from Bolshevik ideology. Despite the dissonance of these disparate sources, Dovzhenko painted a grand mythological picture of national revival within the context of an apocalyptic worldview and highlighted the power of art to uplift humankind.<\/p>\n

Part 3 \u2014 Cross-cultural influences in language and music<\/h2>\n

3.1<\/strong>
\nAspects of Ukrainian-Yiddish Language Contact<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Wolf Moskovich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The close contact between Ukrainian and Yiddish over the last five centuries left an indelible imprint on all levels of the Yiddish language and also contributed many Yiddish loanwords and loan translations to the Ukrainian language \u2014 dialects and sociolects, in particular. The Yiddish language is permeated with hundreds of borrowed and calqued Ukrainian words and expressions. There is also the phenomenon of synergetic influence of Yiddish and Ukrainian on a third language, particularly in the form of regional and urban dialects. For example, in Odessa Ukrainian words and expressions entered the urban Russian speech (called Odessan jargon) often through the mediation of Yiddish. A similar scenario played out in multiethnic Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), where the phenomenon of Bukovinian German was characterized by a supplementary admixture of localisms taken from both Yiddish and Ukrainian. Ukrainian influence is also evident in Jewish surnames, many of which are identical with Ukrainian surnames. Other Jewish surnames were created by combining Yiddish stems with Ukrainian suffixes. For example, the suffix -enko was common among Jews in the Kyivan region and the suffix -iuk among Jews in Galicia.<\/p>\n

Also noteworthy is the fact that around seventy percent of surnames of Ukrainian Jews derive from the names of towns or villages in Ukraine. Jewish folk music in Ukraine also shows the clear influence of Ukrainian, as is evident in a number of bilingual Ukrainian\u2013Yiddish songs.<\/p>\n

3.2<\/strong>
\nUkrainian Influence on Hasidic Music<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Lyudmila Sholokhova (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>In Eastern Europe, Jewish music was strongly influenced by the music of the surrounding peoples. This was especially the case for Hasidic music, as Hasidism emphasized the power of music in connecting with the divine and advanced the Jewish mystical concept of redeeming or rescuing scattered holy sparks, including those trapped in \"worldly tunes.\" As a result, Slavic \u2014 and in particular, Ukrainian \u2014 musical elements were absorbed into both the melodies and the lyrics of Hasidic songs. In addition to adopting East Slavic melodies, the Hasidim also created new ones using similar melody types or blended these with Jewish liturgical modes \u2014 for example, combining the \"Pastekhl\" (shepherd's flute tune) with elements of the synagogue recitative. That is why Hasidic tunes (nigunim<\/em>) often sound like a blend of several typical Slavic melody types, creatively transformed into a Jewish music style. The Hasidim also adapted numerous Ukrainian song lyrics to their own Hasidic melodies and introduced Slavic expressions to their songs \u2014 either to create a humorous effect, or more often as an innovative way of conveying a religious message to Hasidic adherents. Techniques in the integration of \"slavisms\" included wordplays that transformed Ukrainian words to suit a Jewish (Yiddish) context; the use of loshn-koydesh <\/em>(Hebrew holy language) in conjunction with Ukrainian words; and endowing original Ukrainian texts with added mystical connotations beyond the literal meaning of the words.<\/p>\n

Part 4 \u2014 Representation of \"the other\" in literature, popular culture, and personal narratives<\/h2>\n

4.1<\/strong>
\nPerceptions of the Jew in Ukrainian Literature<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Myroslav Shkandrij (University of Manitoba)<\/em><\/span>
\n<\/strong>An investigation of Ukrainian literature produced over the last two centuries illuminates not only how negative stereotypes of Jews were generated, but also how these were challenged and transformed. Depictions of Jews as exploitative orendars <\/em>(leaseholders) and tavern-keepers were dominant from the 1830s to the 1880s. In the twentieth century the dominant negative images were the communist commissar and the Chekist. Such stereotypes influenced popular attitudes and later served as ideological tools \u2014 for example, reappearing in popular dramas and ideological antisemitic writing in the late 1930s and early 1940s; and in the antisemitic publications of MAUP (a non-governmental college that became a centre of institutionalized antisemitism) in 2005\u201306. However, there is also a tradition of empathetic depiction of Jews in Ukrainian literature \u2014 for example, in popular plays of the 1890s and in pre-1917 modernist literature. This positive stance continued in works published during the revolutionary years and the period of Ukrainian statehood when Jews were seen as allies of Ukrainians \u2014 a rapprochement that ended following the wave of pogroms in 1919. Co-operation between Ukrainian and Jewish writers and intellectuals continued in Soviet Ukraine during the 1920s, as each group developed its own cultural movement. Several twentieth-century Jewish writers (Hrytsko Kernerenko, Raisa Troianker, Leonid Pervomaisky, and Moisei Fishbein) gave expression to both their Jewish and Ukrainian identities. While the Holocaust and Jewish particularisms were taboo subjects in postwar Soviet literature, these themes have emerged in Ukrainian literature since independence, as writers try to dismantle stereotypes and fashion an inclusive cultural identity.<\/p>\n

4.2<\/strong>
\nBetween the marketplace and enlightenment: Gogol and Rabinovich's Ukrainian memory space<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Amelia Glaser (University of California in San Diego)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The literary influence that the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol had on one of his readers, the celebrated Ukrainian-born Yiddish humourist Solomon Rabinovich (Sholem Aleichem) is remarkable \u2014 both for the commonalities it reveals and the inevitably different perspectives they had on Jews in the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement. Both reach out to wider audiences but focus on the provincial Ukrainian marketplace or fair as a place of collective memory, where various ethnic groups interact and where dangers lurk. Both use humour to mask these dangers, and share the \"tears through laughter\" trope. However, Jews crop up around the margins of Gogol's stories, mostly as negative caricatures \u2014 as crafty marketplace experts and professional intervenors who profit against all odds. Rabinovich reworked Gogol's themes for a Jewish audience, creating characters that are at times a foil to Gogol's antisemitic stereotypes, for example, depicting them as failures at trade. Both writers react to the perceived soul-destroying commercialism, materialism, and dangerous influences of the marketplace and express ambivalence and fear about the impact of the enlightenment and the outside world. However, while Gogol's marketplace is ridden with dangers that threaten the Slavic spirit and which are attributed in part to the presence of Jews, for Rabinovich the Ukrainian marketplace is depicted as a site of increasingly frequent physical danger to Jews and a spur to emigration.<\/p>\n

4.3<\/strong>
\nThe image of \"the Other\" in World War II memoirs of Lviv citizens<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ola Hnatiuk (Warsaw University)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Using a variety of sources, the article examines inter-ethnic relations in the year 1939 \u2014 in particular between Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews \u2014 as remembered by representative members of these three ethnic groups. The analysis focuses on three issues: perspectives on the war, attitudes toward the intrusion of the Red Army, and images of the Red Army soldier. Citations backing the different perceptions indicate that these depend on the cultural identity of the authors and the stereotypes through which they perceived the other ethnic groups. Perceptions include: the Polish conviction that the other ethnic minorities behaved disloyally to the Polish state; the shared Polish\/Ukrainian view that Jews collaborated most closely with the Bolshevik regime and happily greeted the arrival of Red Army; and the view on the part of Jews (and some Poles and Ukrainians) that Jews were subjected to the same propaganda and Sovietization experience as other ethnic groups. In analysing each citation, one should examine the circumstances in which it was said; what propaganda purposes it served, and the group with which the author was identifying at the time (whether through the lens of Ukrainian or Polish nationalistic discourse, or official Soviet propaganda). Similarly, images of the Soviet soldier vary \u2014 from brave and fearless to weak and farcical. An overall conclusion is that the more dramatic the experience that the individual had, the stronger was the tendency to describe their own specific experience as dominating the particular ethnic group's narrative of heroes and martyrs. In such a narrative, the author's individual suffering acquires foremost prominence, while \"the Other\" is accused of causing all the sorrows \u2014 and who is designated \"the Other\" certainly depends on the identity of the author.<\/p>\n

4.4<\/strong>
\nUkrainian-Jewish relations as depicted in narrative accounts of former Carpatho-Rusyn Jews in Israel<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ilana Rosen (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Narratives told by former Carpatho-Rusyn Jewish Holocaust survivors, who are now senior Israelis, reveal much about how non-Jews from that region are remembered by their Jewish past neighbours. While Hungarians loom large in these narratives and Czechs feature mainly as government officials, their everyday neighbours were more often Ukrainians \u2014 also referred to as Rusyns and Ruthenians. These goyim <\/em>(Gentiles) are remembered as rural, traditional, and religious, and in some instances as exceptionally devoted and familiar with Jewish religious traditions (for example, the devoted Gentile governess who teaches the children Jewish customs and prayers, or the Gentile woman neighbour who is more earnest about Passover religious practices than her Jewish neighbour). Though more preoccupied with their inner and communal life than with external realities, Carpatho-Rusyn Jews were aware of and interacted with the non-Jews around them, in particular local villagers. They were also aware, however, of charged issues such as the blood libel and differences in religion, which they viewed with curiosity, and at times with fear and repulsion. Nonetheless, even charged encounters are remembered with humour. Also conveyed in these narratives is the sense of deliberate self-segregation on the part of the Jewish narrators, though it should be taken into account that these narratives provide one-sided depictions of a life that ended disastrously some fifty years before the narration.<\/p>\n

Part 5 \u2014 The study, preservation, commemoration, and revival of interest in the Ukrainian-Jewish cultural heritage<\/h2>\n

5.1<\/strong>
\nDeparture and comeback: Ethnographic expeditions to shtetls in Podolia and Volhynia in 1912\/1914, the 1980s, and 2004\u20132008<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Valerii Dymshits (Center Petersburg Judaica, St. Petersburg, Russia)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>This article compares and contrasts three sets of ethnographic expeditions, beginning with the one led by S. An-sky in 1912\u201314, which focused on the folklore, music, and collective memory of Jews in the Pale of Settlement, largely in southwestern Ukraine. The second, undertaken by a group of young enthusiasts from Petersburg beginning in the late 1980s, deliberately followed An-sky's route, also pursuing social and cultural objectives, but lacking the erudition, professional training, or knowledge of Yiddish. While An-sky was interested in the life of contemporary Jewish communities, the Petersburg group was looking at remnants of the past in shtetls <\/em>where hardly any Jews remained. By the time of the expeditions in the mid-2000s, the Petersburg group was joined by researchers from Moscow and had acquired knowledge in Jewish history and culture, as well as professional expertise. The timing, however, coincided with the passing of the last generation that remembered the pre-revolutionary era and still knew Yiddish, as well as the near disappearance of remaining Jewish communities following mass emigration in the 1990s. They turned, therefore, to interviewing the Ukrainian population to capture memories retained of former Jewish neighbours. Like An-sky, they explored Slavic folklore and the subject of inter-ethnic relations, in particular, the role and place of Jews in Ukrainian folklore and in the everyday life, religious beliefs, and cultural notions of the Ukrainian population, as well as mutual influences and shared traditions. The most recent expeditions have resulted in a significant oral history audio archive and a series of publications.<\/p>\n

5.2<\/strong>
\nTraditional Jewish art and Ukrainian art historians: Collection, preservation and research in the Czarist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Periods<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Benyamin Lukin (Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem)<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/strong>This paper outlines the main stages of the exploration of traditional Jewish art by Ukrainian art historians from the 1910s through the 1930s and beyond. Among the first was Hryhorii Pavlutsky, an outstanding researcher of wooden architecture in Ukraine, whose view that Jewish art and architecture derived from oriental art traditions over-influenced subsequent perspectives. Until stifled in the 1930s, Soviet Ukrainianization policies inspired a surge of professional interest in folk art, museums, and research, including the field of Judaica, engaging personalities such as Danylo Shcherbakivsky, Pavlo Zholtovsky, and George Loukomsky. The results include photograph collections (including carved tombstones and the exteriors and interiors of synagogues), artefact collections (such as manuscripts and synagogue textiles), and art history publications. While their achievements in describing the objects of Jewish traditional art are deservedly acknowledged, their work has also been criticized for a tendency to generalize, the uncritical repetition of conclusions reached by previous generations of researchers, and the lack of knowledge of Jewish tradition or the relevant context for research. More significantly, however, their documentation of Jewish art and architecture has provided a valuable record of the world of Jewish creativity that was destroyed in the Holocaust. It should also be mentioned that Jewish art research in independent Ukraine over the past twenty years has built on their work, resulting in further discovery, description and cataloguing of Jewish monuments, museum exhibits, and collections of Judaica, as well as related archival documents.<\/p>\n

5.3<\/strong>
\nJudaica at the Lviv Museum of Ethnography and Arts and Crafts: History, contents, and the current situation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Roman Chmelyk (Museum of Ethnography and Arts and Crafts, Lviv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of various historical and ethnographic museums on the territory of contemporary Ukraine. By the turn of the century, several Lviv museums were also assembling Jewish ethnographic and artistic items. Private collectors such as Maximilian Goldstein had a significant impact, and measures were undertaken also within the Lviv Jewish community to study, preserve, and popularize Jewish culture. In 1933 a large-scale exhibition of Jewish culture at the Lviv Museum of Artistic Crafts provided the impetus for the creation of the Jewish Museum of Galicia in 1934. This museum was closed under the Soviet occupation in 1939. After the German occupation in 1941, the Goldstein collection was transferred to the repository of the Museum of Artistic Crafts. The Museum's Judaica collection was substantially enlarged following the creation of the Lviv Museum of Ethnography and Artistic Crafts in 1951 and the efforts of art historian Pavlo Zholtovsky. Today the Museum holds an immense Judaica collection that encompasses ritual objects from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, as well as items of everyday usage and art works. Under Soviet rule, there was little interest in the collection. Since Ukraine's independence, state institutions began to popularize the cultural heritage of Ukraine's national minorities. In the 1990s, the Museum organized exhibitions in Lviv, Moscow, Kyiv, Krak\u00f3w, and Tel Aviv (where the exhibition encountered a property claim, which did not succeed). In the 2000s the Museum cooperated in exhibits of Galician Judaica in several eastern Ukrainian cities, Germany, Austria, and especially in Poland.<\/p>\n

5.4<\/strong>
\nModern Jewish museums in Ukraine<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Leonid Finberg (Jewish Studies Center, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>New Jewish museums have been established in several cities in Ukraine since Ukrainian independence. This article describes these museums in some detail, including their content, the background to their creation, the personalities involved, and the challenges they faced. Also embedded in the account are reflective observations on the role of museums in society and, in particular, of Jewish museums in post-Holocaust, post-Soviet Ukraine. The first such museum, categorized as a local lore museum, is Odessa's Jewish Museum. Functioning since 2002 and linked organizationally to the city's contemporary community, this museum draws on the rich story of turn-of-the-century Odessa as a centre of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and Jewish nationalism. The Jewish Museum of Chernivtsi, created in 2008 at the initiative of Jewish community leader Josef Zissels, has a regional focus, telling the story of the Jews of Bukovina up to World War II. Its outreach activities include a history booklet and virtual museum. The ambitious project to create in Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk) a museum of Ukrainian Jewish history and culture seeks to raise awareness among the wider Ukrainian public about the Jewish religious heritage and culture, Jewish history in Ukraine as part of Ukrainian history (with special attention to the Second World War period), Jewish artistic expression, and contemporary Jewish life in Ukraine. Also described are the Holocaust Museum in Kharkiv and the Sholem Aleichem Museum in Kyiv. A key challenge faced by all these museums is long-term viability because such private initiatives lack guarantees as well as professionals with the needed expertise in Jewish history and culture to work in them.<\/p>\n

5.5<\/strong>
\nThe challenge of recovering historical memory and the cultural context: reintegrating the Jewish past into the history <\/strong>and culture of Galicia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Taras Vozniak (Editor, Ji Magazine, Lviv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>One of the most pressing tasks of Ukrainian society is to recover the country's historical memory and cultural context, which was either destroyed or lost over seventy years of Sovietization. The creation of the \"Soviet person\" and the \"new historical community of the Soviet people\" led to expunging from the historical memory entire cultural layers, so that the current dominant population is no longer aware of the past or even current presence of Polish, Austrian, Hungarian, and Jewish cultural communities in the region. These communities formed significant elements of the urban landscape prior to the establishment of Soviet power, ethnic cleansings, and the Holocaust. How can you restore in Ukrainian memory the pre-existing cultural contexts, despite the absence of carriers of these contexts? More specifically, how can one make current residents of Galicia identify with the entire cultural heritage of the region \u2014 Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish? The NGO independent cultural journal Ji <\/em>has attempted to address this lacuna in Ukrainian memory by dedicating several issues of Ji <\/em>to Jewish history in Galicia, in particular, the many shtetls <\/em>or small towns where Jews constituted a significant proportion of the population, and in this way to reconstruct, at least virtually, the world that constitutes an important component of the Galician identity.<\/p>\n

Part 6 \u2014 Perspectives on divided memory and dialogue<\/h2>\n

6.1
\n<\/strong>Sharing the divided past: Symbols, commemorations, and representations at Babyn Yar<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Georgii Kasianov (Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nThis article describes how the mass killings that took place in 1941\u201343 at Babyn Yar were represented in different memorialization and commemorative projects, from Soviet times to independent Ukraine. Following several aborted initial efforts begun as early as 1945, a campaign for the commemoration of the victims at Babyn Yar was initiated during Khrushchev's \"Thaw\" by intellectuals in Kyiv and Moscow. This led to a closed competition, a memorial stone to \"the Soviet people, victims of the crimes of fascism,\" and eventually an official memorial monument in July 1976, which again avoided mention of the Jewish victims. Since 1991, the Soviet narrative has been replaced by competing memory projects. A Menorah <\/em>monument to the Jewish victims was soon followed by two crosses, one dedicated to members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists shot by the Germans, another to two murdered Orthodox priests. A controversial proposal to construct a Jewish community \"Heritage\" centre in the early 2000s has been countered with presidential decrees to establish a state-owned historical-cultural \"sanctuary Babyn Yar\" to be followed by a memorial museum, among other projects. Meanwhile, the Babyn Yar terrain has been gradually \"populated\" by additional commemorative signs and monuments, including the monument to children murdered at Babyn Yar, the monument to Ostarbeiters<\/em>, and a plate indicating where a monument dedicated to the Roma victims will be erected. Babyn Yar has thus become a \"battlefield\" for competing memory projects.<\/p>\n

6.2<\/strong>
\nJewish-Christian dialogue and Jewish-Ukrainian relations: The burdens of history and prospects for the future<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Myroslav Marynovych (Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/em>Because of forced atheism in the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, attempts at Jewish-Christian dialogue in Ukraine since the late 1990s have constantly been reduced to a Jewish-Ukrainian dialogue at a secular level. The prevailing secular approach to combating antisemitism with well-thought-out educational measures is not proving to be successful, as is clear from the fact that antisemitism still persists. There is, however, the opportunity now to make known in Ukraine the achievements of the worldwide Jewish-Christian dialogue since the 1960s, which has greater potential to contribute to inter-ethnic understanding than the purely secular approach. Particularly significant is the assertion that the biblical narration includes reports not only about the persecution of the Jews, but also about their glorification \u2014 which implies that the nations should not merely renounce antisemitism, but rather should receive the Jews as a blessing. In this light, the Second Vatican Council and the revolutionary conciliar document Nostra Aetate <\/em>condemned the persecution of Jews and advocated desisting from attempts to convert Jews to Christianity. The biblical perspective calls for a rethinking of Christianity as born in the bosom of Judaism and counteracts harmful notions relating to forced conversion of Jews based on disdain for Judaism, while leaving room for the evangelization (or re-evangelization) of the Jews from within the Jewish tradition<\/em>. Both communities need conversion, but they need a true conversion \u2014 not a \"conversion to Christianity\" and not a \"capitulation before Judaism,\" but a genuine conversion to one God, which does not call out unfortunate demons of the past, such as the pride of being the only right one and the aggression of religious prejudices.<\/p>\n

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