(Jewish Group) The stormy, yet rich history of the Jews in Ukraine

Ukraine is in the news. Daily reports pour in about the buildup of Russian troops – as many as 130,000, to the north, east and south of the country. Diplomatic activity is also escalating but without a clear path to resolving the situation. NATO is on alert. Ukrainian civilians are beginning to train militia-style to resist a possible invasion. Worst of all are the projections of massive casualties, especially if the capital city of Kiev is attacked. It is a “night of watching” (Exodus 12:42) for Ukraine.

In the middle of this storm is Ukraine’s Jewish community and remarkably, although only 100,000 Ukrainians are Jews at this moment, the President of the country, Volodymr Zelensky, is Jewish and embraces his identity. Few countries, including the United States, can make that claim. Eight decades ago, members of the Zelensky family were murdered during the Holocaust and others fought in the Red Army.

Another surprising fact about the Ukrainian Jewish heritage is that the novel on which the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” is based, “Tevye the Dairyman”, is most likely modeled on shtetlach in Ukraine where Tevye’s creator, Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), grew up. At the end of the 19th century, Ukraine was in the Pale of Settlement, a vast area established by the Czars to quarantine Jews along the western border of the vast Russian Empire. The Pale included not only Ukraine but also Poland and other large centers of Jewish population. Indeed, the territory of the Pale was the site of the largest Jewish population in the world until the Shoah.

Today, it’s hard to know exactly how many Jews live in Ukraine, but it’s believed to be about 100,000, down considerably from 400,000 before the massive waves of Jewish emigration at the end of the 20th century. At its high point, Ukraine had more than a million Jews whose native language was nearly 100% Yiddish.

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