(JTA) — At the end of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the classic musical celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Tevye and his family flee their village of Anatevka for a better and safer life. In reality, however, not everybody left. Today, several hundred thousand Jews still live in Ukraine, where the fictional Anatevka was likely […]
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Jews in Russia balance Jewish culture and Russia’s place in the world
MOSCOW – More than 1,000, mostly young, Russian Jews gathered over the weekend at the Limmud FSU Moscow conference to listen to around 160 sessions highlighting Jewish culture, business and history. The energetic and talkative crowds had come from Moscow and the surrounding area, with a few flying from as far away as Australia and […]
The Death of a Soviet Jewry Prophet
On the morning of May 1, 1964 — almost exactly 50 years ago — an unusual sight greeted anyone walking along 67th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A thousand young men and women in two neat rows, dressed like they were heading off to synagogue, the boys in skinny black ties, the girls in […]
Back from the dead: a Ukrainian model for world Jewry
Dnepropetrovsk’s 600,000 sq ft Menorah Centre, approached by night, looks for all the world like the lurid, self-aggrandising dream of an eastern oligarch. Rising out of largely neglected city streets, it is, literally, a vast menorah, with the glass outhouses that crown each of its seven towers illuminated each day of the week to represent […]
Meylakh Sheykhet – A fight for the Jewish heritage in Lviv
Meylakh Sheykhet is the person that cannot be ignored in Lviv concerning the Jewish life. As the representative of the Union of Councils for the Jews of the Former Soviet Union in Ukraine, he acts to the promotion of the democracy in the country. His action stretches on various fields as the defense of the […]
Here come the Subbotnik Jews
by Michael Freund Just in time for Purim, when we celebrate the ancient deliverance of the Jewish people, a long-suffering Jewish community has received some remarkably good tidings. After nearly a decade of bureaucratic torment and agony, the remaining Subbotnik Jews of the former Soviet Union will at last be coming home to the Jewish […]
Purim 1953: Jews in the Communist empire
by Yosef Begun, Larry Pfeffer Jews in the Former Soviet Union are generally well aware that the Russian-dominated part of the Communist empire was getting increasingly anti-Semitic after 1948, when it became clear Israel would not turn “red.” What might have been had Stalin stayed in power? Yosef Begun’s memories from Moscow Two years after […]
Before Crimea Was an Ethnic Russian Stronghold, It Was a Potential Jewish Homeland
by Jeffrey Veidlinger “On the way to Sevastopol, not too far from Simferopol,” begins what is probably the most famous Yiddish song from the Soviet Union, “Hey Dzhankoye.” The song, named after a collective farm near the Crimean town of Dzhankoy, celebrates the alleged victories of the Soviet collectivization drive of the 1920s and 1930s, which, […]
The mysteries of Azerbaijan: A Shiite nation embraces its Jews
by Rob Eshman Red Village rises up along the Qudiyal River like a Jewish Brigadoon. To get there, you fly 13 hours from Los Angeles to Istanbul, then catch a three-hour flight to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan — a former Soviet country of some 9 million people on the Caspian Sea. From Baku, you […]
We Are All Russian Jews Now
By Zvi Gitelman http://forward.com/articles/186698/we-are-all-russian-jews-now/?p=all In the wake of the Pew Research Center’s findings on American Jews, the Forward’s headlines told a disheartening story: “Boundaries Are Blurring,” “New Study Finds Jews Fleeing Faith Traditions” and “Can You Be Jewish and Believe in Jesus?” But for Jews in Russia and Ukraine, none of this was news. With two […]