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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