The dramatic decrease in Ukrainian anti-Semitism has not been reported in the press. Vladimir Putin and the Russian propaganda machine have depicted rampant anti-Semitism in Ukraine and has used this as one of the justifications for their invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. One of the beneficial outcomes of the Maydan Revolution has been […]
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From Lugansk to Code Red in Ashdod
“Once the war began, the Israeli consul in Lugansk helped us leave Ukraine. We had passports, and soon we received assistance from The Jewish Agency and the organization “Ezra.” They even escorted us to the plane which brought us to Israel. They secured us entirely, everything was very smooth and organized, and I thank […]
Unable to flee, elderly Jews remain behind in eastern Ukraine
DNIPROPETROVSK – More than 1,600 elderly Jews are either unable or unwilling to leave the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, according to the director of the local branch of a local welfare organization. Lyudmila Saprikina, the head of the Donetsk branch of Hesed, which cares for Jewish senior citizens throughout the former […]
Holocaust Museum Urges Ukraine To Examine Its History of Anti-Semitism
by Nathan Guttman As Ukraine grapples with political upheaval and threats to its territorial integrity, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is confronting the country’s post-revolution government with another, no less difficult challenge: contending with its past treatment of Jews. The museum has urged the new government in Kiev to set up an international […]
Moldova’s Jews, torn between revival and emigration
CHISINAU, Moldova — On a side street in the old quarter of the Moldovan capital stands a small house, looking very much as it did on the day 111 years ago when rioters broke in and murdered Jews in what came to be known around the world as the Kishinev pogrom. Last weekend, the sounds […]
Report: Armed men threatened to burn down Ukrainian rabbi’s home
(JTA) — Armed, masked men threatened to burn down the house of one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, a spokeswoman from his office said. The incident outside the Kiev-area residence of Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich occurred on May 23 at 1:30 a.m., Inna Yoffe, the executive director of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, told Ukrainian media […]
Op-Ed: Support Jews staying in Ukraine
(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 […]
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 […]