The War in Ukraine: Jewish News #50
In this Issue: Jewish Soldiers Fall in Combat; Israel Delivers Patriots to Ukraine – or Not?; and more…
Jewish Soldiers Fall in Combat
Death has struck Ukrainian Jews many times during the last three years. There were two recent cases, each tragic in its own way.
Hryhorii (Tsvi-Hirsh) Zvurgzeda fell in combat on the Kherson front last week, at the age of 34. Tsvi Hirsh was a native of Odessa who attended the local Chabad day-school. A professional chef who hoped to open a Michelin star restaurant in Odessa, he is survived by two young children, ages 5 and 4.
Rabbi Avraham Woolf of Odessa mourned his congregant’s death. “He grew up in our midst, in the Jewish community. A boy that lived a life of tradition and community. He set out to defend his homeland and his brethren with his body. He died as a Ukrainian soldier and a proud Jew.”
Military Chaplain Yaakov Sinyakov arranged transfer of the body to Odessa, ensuring that no autopsy was performed, in accordance with Jewish tradition.
The other instance was that of the popular actor and television host Maksim Nelipa, who died in combat at the age of 48. He was best known for hosting shows, such as the Ukrainian versions of “Dancing with the Stars”, and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.
At the outset of full-scale invasion, Nelipa joined the Ukrainian armed forces, while his wife and 17-year old son Artem emigrated to Israel. The son received Israeli citizenship, and was drafted into the IDF, where he serves in the Golani Brigade.
Because Artem is both an Israeli and Ukrainian citizen, he could not travel to attend his father’s funeral. Had he gone, he would have been prevented from leaving Ukraine as a draft-age citizen, and mobilized into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And stuck in Ukraine, he would have been classified as AWOL by the Israelis.
The case aroused public furor. The Israeli Embassy in Kyiv submitted formal requests to allow Artem to attend his father’s funeral, but they were unsuccessful.
Israel Delivers Patriots to Ukraine, or Not?
Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Brodsky disclosed in an interview this week that Israel has transferred Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. He noted that they were older systems that Israel received from the United States in the 1990s. Then on Tuesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry denied its Ambassador’s statement.
Brodsky did not specify how many Patriot systems Israel transferred, or when they arrived in Ukraine. According to press reports, Ukraine had eight American Patriot systems, and it is believed that Israel sent two.
The Patriots would constitute the largest instance of Israeli military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the full-fledged Russian invasion in 2022. It is noteworthy that Israel decided to make the shipment public and thereby signal a shift in its policy of military neutrality.
In response to reports of the interview, Russia demanded clarification through diplomatic channels. The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a one sentence public statement to Ynet: “Israel has not transferred such systems to Ukraine”.
Either the Ambassador or the Ministry gave misleading information. It is possible, indeed likely, that Israel transferred the Patriots to a third country, which in turn transferred them to Ukraine, thereby giving Israel plausible deniability.
The Demographic Dilemma
It’s been a long time since anyone has done a serious study of the Ukrainian Jewish population (let alone a survey of their opinions and Jewish identity).
You can see wildly unsubstantiated numbers on the internet – 350,000, even 500,000. Sergio della Pergola of the Hebrew University, the foremost authority on Jewish demography, provided the following numbers in 2020:
I should point out that all three figures are extrapolations. Even the “core Jewish population” figure is based on the 2001 census number of 103,000 Jews, minus the estimated population loss/drop between 2001 and 2020, due to emigration and other factors.
Since 2020, there have been some major changes in the Jewish population. That was before the war. Many Jews left for European countries and Israel as refugees in 2022. But a certain proportion of them have returned to Ukraine since 2023. Some Jews didn’t move anywhere, but now live under Russian rule, in Russian-occupied territories. All these events effect the total Jewish population.
There is also a positive side to the ledger. It is now much more socially acceptable to consider oneself Jewish and to declare that fact in public. Since the president of Ukraine is Jewish, there is much less stigma to the label. So there may indeed more self-declaring Jews in Ukraine today than there were beforehand.
In Ukrainian censuses, Jews are considered a “nationality” (like ethnic Hungarians, Poles, and Tatars). The definition of Jews as a natsional’nost probably keeps their number down, because a lot of people want to say “I am Ukrainian”, meaning that they embrace Ukrainian civic identity, as a citizen and patriot of Ukraine. If I had my druthers, I would want the census to ask people about their ethnic origin - and not use the word “nationality”.
So how many Jews are there in Ukraine? Based on the current state of knowledge, any answer between 45,000 and 200,000 is legitimate. But anything more than 200,000 is wishful thinking, pie-in-the-sky.
Drama on Children of the Chernivtsi Ghetto – in Chernivtsi
A unique cultural event took place in Chernivtsi in April: the premier performance of “Blinks of Death”, a drama devoted to the stories of four Jewish children from Chernivtsi who endured the city’s ghetto and camps in Transnistria. When I visited in late May, people were still enthralled by the performance.
“Blinks ot Death” was presented in the large hall of Chernivtsi’s Palace of Culture, and was staged by actors from the Bu-Bu-Bu Children’s Theatre and the Hrihory Arheev Theatre Ensemble.
“Blinks of Death” is an adaptation of a graphic novel written by local writer and educator Anna Yamchuk in partnership with Nikolai Kushnir, director of the Museum of the History of the Jews of Bukovina. The book and play are based on the real-life stories of four children from the Chernivtsi ghetto – Mimi Reifer, Herbert Rubinstein, Joseph Elgiser and Joseph Bursuk.
The play uses a powerful mixture of music, special effects, lighting, decorations and costumes to create a strong impression on audiences. The fact that the real-life stories it portrays took place in the city where it is performed adds to the emotional impact. Here is a report with video clips of the play.
Before the performance of “Blinks of Death”, director Ivan Danilin appeared on stage with opening remarks: “We dedicate this performance to all the Jewish children who were victims of the Second World War in Bukovina. And also to all Ukrainian children who have been killed, maimed, kidnapped, or orphaned in the current genocidal war against our country.”
In an interview, ten year old actress Yarina Zadoretska explained:
“I play a child that experienced terrible things. The tragedy causes me to feel deep sadness. But when I am on stage, I think to myself: ‘thank God it’s not happening to me, thank God it’s not happening to me’.“
Author Anna Yamchuk says that the play, like the book, is primarily intended for young audiences. She hopes that in the fall, it will be shown regularly to school children. “It’s very important that everyone understand that this story is part of the history of Chernivtsi. It is not just a story that happened somewhere, to someone. This is part of the story of our city. We will soon perform the play in the former Jewish National House [one of the tallest buildings in Chernivtsi]. Imagine what kind of community there was here if it built such a palace for its cultural and educational needs!”
The drama was funded by the “Memory Footsteps” program of the German Foreign Ministry.
New Ukrainian History Textbook Covers Israeli History Very Favorably
The Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science has approved and distributed a new eleventh grade textbook of global history since 1945. Israeli-Ukrainian journalist Shimon Briman examined the textbook, entitled World History, and found that it is “the most pro-Israeli in the world”.
Israel occupies eleven pages in the book, more pages than the history of Africa since 1945.
Global History discusses the adoption of United Nations resolution 181, which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. In that context, it gives credit to the V. Tarasenko, the UN representative of the Ukrainian SSR for supporting the resolution, and calls his vote and remarks “the Ukrainian contribution to the establishment of Israel”. That characterization strikes me as disingenuous or at least odd. The Ukrainian SSR’s representative in the UN took his orders from Moscow, and always voted as did the main Soviet representative. I can’t see how one can simultaneously consider the Ukrainian SSR an oppressive tool of Russian domination, but give it credit for its UN vote, as if it were an autonomous entity.
The book’s brief treatment of the Six Day War stresses Israel’s military and territorial victories, without mentioning the 3 million Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, who came under Israeli occupation. Certainly that fact effected subsequent global events.
The textbook covers major events in the Middle East down until 2024, such as the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian peace accords, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The textbook takes an Israeli right-wing position on recent events. It places the words “peaceful inhabitants of Gaza” in quotation marks, apparently to indicate that there were no truly peaceful inhabitants in Gaza.
Of course, there is much historical irony in my criticizing a Ukrainian textbook for being too pro-Israel.
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is also touched up in Global History, with mention of the campaign against rootless cosmopolitans, beginning in 1949, and the Doctor’s Plot of 1953. Also mentioned are the 1968 antisemitic campaign in Poland, and German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s role in atoning for the Holocaust.
Global History was composed by Dr. Igor Schupak, Director of the Tkuma Institute of Holocaust Studies in Dnepro, and was printed in 165,000 copies. Schupak is the author of several other approved history textbooks for Ukrainian schools.