Yah Ukrainianits (я українець) - I'm Ukrainian.

The purpose of this blog is to build some Jewish solidarity....please forward to others who may enjoy at their Shabbat table, and of course print and share at your own.
Dedicated to the safety and security of the Jews and righteous gentiles of Ukraine. 

Jews first settled around the Black Sea over 2,000 years ago and as far as we know have lived in the area now called Ukraine without interruption ever since.

Moreover, it has been a major Jewish area and many, many of us descend from Ukrainian Jews. (It's at least one thing I personally have in common with Leonard Bernstein.)

My great-great-great-etc. grandparents were farmers and merchants there. According to family tradition, great-great-great-great grandfather Binyamin Nudelman met the Czar in 1817. (If you know anyone named Nudelman, Shoeffer, Tartarkovski, Pinsky, Moses, Meltzer, or Evseroff, we may be related.) 

Around 1905, several of my grandparents' parents left Odessa to seek a better life in America. Other great-grandparent came from slightly west of there around the same time.

And given the number of pogroms and persecutions, it's a wonder that any Jews are still there....

1648-1657 — Cossacks and Tatars murdered 20,000 Jews and ethnically-cleansed 300 communities of their Jews.
1821 — The first pogrom: anti-Jewish riots in Odessa, 14 Jews killed.
Early 20th century — anti-Jewish pogroms.
1911-1913 — widespread blood libels.
1915 — thousands of Jews expelled.
1917–1921 — pogroms killed 35,000-50,000 Jews.
Soviet era — religious persecution; Jews had to hide their Judaism.
WWII — one million Jews murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and their many local Ukrainian supporters.
1945 — pogrom against Jews who survived the Holocaust.

Yet they are there: with upwards of 300,000 souls, Ukrainian Jewry is the 3rd largest Jewish population in Europe and the 5th largest in the world (according to one way of counting; according to other methods, the population is more like 50,000; by any measure, it's one of the top 10 in the world outside of Israel and the US.)

During three remarkable years of 1917-1920, Yiddish was an official language of the country and appeared on their currency.

So it's a long and nuanced history, and nuanced present.

Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, Jewish life has been picking up, thanks in no small part to the heroic efforts of people like Rabbi Shalom Gopin of Kyiv and Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski of Donetsk and their families.

Or Rabbi and Rebbetzin Avraham and Chaya Wolff of Odessa who have stockpiled enough food to sustain their Jewish community for a year. (The mayor of Odessa recently awarded him a Medal of Honor for his family's amazing work on behalf of the city.)

The menorah-building above is the new 22-story JCC of Dnepropetrovsk. It's all so upward-looking (click on the image for more info).

So that's one set of facts.

Here's another set of fact to ponder:

- In 2007, Vladimir Putin donated one month's salary toward the building of the Moscow JCC.
- He also has an interesting relationship with Israel including this:

Putin's former high school teacher Mina Yuditskaya Berliner made aliyah in 1973. When he visited Israel in 2005, she met with him and soon after, he bought her an apartment in Tel Aviv. When she died in 2018 at age 96, she left the apartment to Putin.

How do you explain his attitude?

According to one compelling story, a Chasidic family was extremely kind to him as a child. According to another view, anything he does currently represents mere cynical political calculus. 

In either case, take a look at this map.

Lvov - way out west near Poland, and Odessa, down south on the coast, are receiving an influx of Jewish refugees.

United Hatzolah of Ukraine is asking us to help - they need funds for medical supplies now. Here's the link. Or here.

Even if you give a small amount, every name added to the list also gives them tremendous chizuk (encouragement).

For your table: Imagine you are the confidante of a Jew of Odessa who has the opportunity to get on a boat and sail away forever, versus to shelter safely in place and wait for the war to end. What would you advise them to do?


Shabbat Shalom


PPS -  This week's 7.5-minute podcast is called "I'm OK, You're OK, But Are You K2?" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

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Keinehara!

The purpose of this blog is to hear, see, and speak no evil at the Shabbat table....please print and share...

Dedicated to the refuah sheleima (full recovery) of Akiva Aryeh ben Eliya.

This weekly Table Talk is of course all about stirring up healthy table talk.

And last week's proposal for a new Olympic medal generated even more controversy than expected - including at our own table.

Keeping to that spirit, here's something to talk about that hopefully will generate just as much passion on both sides of the proverbial aisle.

Raise your hand if you ever heard someone say, "Keinehara!"

What does it mean and when is it said?

It came up in a conversation yesterday and I realized that there's a lot of confusion around this old Jewish expression.

My Bubbe (born in Chicago in 1911) used to say it. Not often, but enough for me to ask her about it. She said that her parents would say it after saying some good news, as in, "Rachel Schwartz is engaged, keinehara!" Or, "Keinehara, Murray Goldstein won the raffle!"

Notice how in these example, the good news being reported is about someone else.

In other words, it means something like, "I do not have a begrudging eye."

What's that supposed to mean?

Maybe the person saying, "Rachel Schwartz is engaged" also has a daughter of marriageable age. So keinehara means "I'm happy for her and don't envy them."

Here's another example. Let's say Reuvain is curious how many cars Shimon owns. If he simply asks, "Hey, Shimon, how many cars do you own?" maybe he's envious, or maybe the question comes in a spirit of criticism. In that case, Shimon should probably ignore him.

But what if Reuvain has a good reason to ask? Maybe he's Shimon's insurance agent. So he says, "Shimon, how many cars do you own, keinehara?"

In other words, you can feel safe answering me because it won't cause envy.

The etymology of keinehara is "without the evil eye". The evil eye is the eye of envy.

For your table: Who's being protected by saying keinehara - the person under discussion, or the person speaking?


Shabbat Shalom


PPS -  This week's 11-minute podcast is called "Nursing Home Insurance?" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....

Bronze, Silver, Gold... Platinum?

The purpose of this blog is to make everyone a champion at the Shabbat table....try printing and sharing...

A question for your table about the Olympic Games:

Is the Olympics a net-good for the world? 

Arguments for:

a. They provide friendly (mostly) non-violent competition between countries.
b. They motivate human beings to push themselves to their highest level of performance, which makes great entertainment for spectators.
c. They generate economic activity and serious profits for all kinds of corporations.

Arguments against:

a. They're a hotbed of corruption, corporate greed, propaganda, and cheating.
b. Take a look at this week's top results in the men's downhill alpine skiing event:

	Country	Competitor	Time	Difference
1	SUI	FEUZ Beat	1:42.69	0.00
2	FRA	CLAREY Johan	1:42.79	+0.10
3	AUT	MAYER Matthias	1:42.85	+0.16
4	CAN	CRAWFORD James	1:42.92	+0.23

So number 2 (silver medal) Johan Clarey lost by 1/10 of a second.

Number 3, Matthias Mayer, missed out on silver by 16/100 of a second (hey kids, can you simplify that fraction?).

And poor James Crawford was 23/100 of a second too slow to get any medal. Had he been ½ second faster, he would have had gold.

But because he's #4, he's a NOBODY. He's a loser. No big endorsement contracts, no picture on the cereal box. No breakfast of champions for him!

But there's no point in talking about it, it's not going to change, right?

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you may recall a few years ago when I wrote about the greatest Olympian ever - who lost his race. 

So here's a proposal - please tell me what you think:

Let's create a 4th medal — platinum. Platinum goes to any athlete the judges find to have shown exceptional sportsmanship (sportspersonship?). During the ceremony, platinum stands at the same podium level as gold. And if the judges don't judge anyone in that competition to be deserving of platinum, then that position on the podium remains awkwardly empty.

For your table: What do you think? Should we start a campaign to get the platinum medal created in time for the next Olympics?


Shabbat Shalom


PPS -  This week's 8-minute podcast is called "90,000 Pushups?" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

(Also - I send out a separate email on Sunday night when the new podcast episode is available - if you'd like to be added to that list, let me know.)

Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....

Caryn About Whoopi?

The purpose of this blog is to call a spade a spade at the Shabbat table....try printing and sharing...

How does a Jewish person make it in show business?

Clearly it helps to drop your Jewish name:

Asa Yoelson became Al Jolson
Bette Perske became Lauren Bacall
Allan Konigsberg became Woody Allen
Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan
Issur Danielovich became Kirk Douglas
Benny Kubelsky became Jack Benny
Joseph Levitch became Jerry Lewis
Charles Bushinsky became Charles Bronson
Winona Horowitz became Winona Ryder
Natalie Herschlag became Natalie Portman
Jonah Feldstein became Jonah Hill
Adam Spiegel became Spike Jonze  

The message is clear: if you're an -ich or an -itz or a -stein or a -berg, you ain't going nowhere.

(I mean, can you imagine them inviting someone named Bobby Zimmerman to headline at Woodstock?)

So how does it make any sense that a Gentile person would go the other direction and adopt a Jewish name?

I refer, of course, to Caryn Johnson. 

Per her Wikipedia page:

"My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name — it's part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black", and "I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don't go to temple, but I do remember the holidays." She has stated that "people would say 'Come on, are you Jewish?' And I always say 'Would you ask me that if I was white? I bet not.'" One account recalls that her mother, Emma Johnson, thought the family's original surname was "not Jewish enough" for her daughter to become a star. Researcher Henry Louis Gates Jr. found that all of Johnson's traceable ancestors were African Americans, that she had no known German or Jewish ancestry, and that none of her ancestors were named Goldberg. Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives traced part of her ancestry to the Pape and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her admixture test indicates that she is of 92 percent sub-Saharan African origin and of 8 percent European origin.

(In case you doubt the veracity of Wikipedia - someone with a net worth of $60 million probably can afford a publicist to clean up her image; it's reliable. But if you want to read the original Jewish Chronicle source of the above quotes, it's archived here.)

Of course she doesn't get the Holocaust! Just because she calls herself Goldberg and once upon a time planted a tree in Israel might qualify her as a philo-Semite if it didn't appear so opportunistic.  

What do you think? Did she go too far? Isn't it enough to become a Goldberg? Do the unwritten rules of show business require her to lie and say that she's actually Jewish?

Here's what I think is going on:

Either: She truly wants to become Jewish, in which case we need to reject her three times.

Or: Perhaps Ms. Johnson is quite perceptive. She sees that just because some Jews in show business wear Gentile "clothes" on the outside, that doesn't stop them from being Jewish on the inside (not to mention the many Hollywood Jews who kept their Jewish names). So when a Gentile wants to fit in, it isn't enough to get a Jewish façade; she has to virtue-signal that she's an MOT on the inside too.

I'm guessing that was her motive....what do you think?

Either way, she did (and perhaps continues to) try to fake it. 

So here's the last question for the table: is that something that a person can fake?

(That linked article above also mentions her tree-planting visit to Israel and her comment, "I feel a real connection there, but also with Palestine as well. We are one people, we really are.")


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Ms. Goldberg/Johnson, in case you are reading this - you could defend yourself by pointing out that at the time you made your infamous comment, the Anti-Defamation League's official definition of racism was "the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people." But thanks to you, they have hastily updated their definition. Here's a link to their now-abandoned definition at the time you made your comment and here's their new definition.

PPS -  This week's 5-minute podcast is called "It's a Mitzvah" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

(Also - I send out a separate email on Sunday night when the new podcast episode is available - if you'd like to be added to that list, let me know.)
 

Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....