Before the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine was home to a sizeable Jewish population ranging between 45,000 and 140,000 Jews. Marina Sapritsky-Nahum details the ways the war has impacted Jewish communal life, senses of national and religious belonging and the preservation of cultural heritage.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the military conflict rippled through the religious communities, institutions and congregational networks that spanned the border between the two countries. Thus, the larger world of Russian-speaking ex-Soviet Jewry fragmented along lines of national affinity and in many émigré communities the war stirred political debates.
While a divide opened between Russian and Ukrainian Jews, new forms of solidarity formed within the Jewish groups in Ukraine and among the Jewish refugee groups abroad. In Odesa, one of the hubs of Jewish life on the coast of the Black Sea, some Jewish religious leaders took entire communities out of the country, while others relocated temporarily. Jews in need of support sought out those communities and took up religious practice to both help themselves and to support others.
For more than two years, I have been conducting ethnographic research with Ukrainian-Jewish refugees in Germany and other parts of Europe and the UK, while also following the lives of their families and friends at home. I have thus seen the unexpected ways the war has impacted Jewish communal life, senses of national and religious belonging and the making and preservation of cultural heritage.
Speaking of her life in Berlin among fellow refugees, one woman in her sixties told me: “I see familiar faces and we speak the same language. Shabbat is the best part of the week. You see and speak to people. We discuss life and the latest developments. It’s better than going to a psychologist.”
Reshaping communities
Before the war, Ukraine was home to a sizeable Jewish population which ranged between 45,000 and 140,000 Jews (depending on the criteria used for identification). After Russia’s incursion, an estimated 25,000 fled and thousands of others were internally displaced. Approximately 15,000 Jews and their kin moved to Israel, where they later found themselves amidst another war.
But most went to Europe with smaller numbers going to the UK, America and Canada. Of the approximately 5,000 Jews and their extended families who went to Germany, more than 20 percent settled in Berlin. Indeed, Jews are welcome migrants in Germany, a country which has relied on ex-Soviet Jewry to replenish their Jewish communities post-Holocaust.
Despite the warm welcome many received in Germany, no one that I interviewed in the first few months of the war imagined staying there long, often pointing to the irony of Jews escaping Russians by going to Germany. Indeed, many took the risk of going back home to Ukraine – some to find family, others because they could not acclimate to life abroad. A number of families specifically cited the difficulty of being in Germany and hearing German spoken with its echoes of the Holocaust.
For those who are still in Berlin, the constant longing for home is compounded by the challenges of resettlement, including those of learning a new language and managing their children’s education. At the same time, Ukrainian Jews are grateful for the assistance they have received from the German government and the local Jewish communities.
Many young people are trying to make the best of their time in Europe, seeing this as an opportunity to try a new life abroad. Besides the few men with large families and others who managed to leave, most of these refugees are women and children. Although they have the option of returning or visiting Ukraine, military-age men are at risk of mobilisation. Many have therefore relied on Jewish communities they might have been only marginally attached to before the war.
Since religious organisations were at the forefront of facilitating the arrival and accommodation of Jewish refugees in Germany, Ukrainian Jews could apply for permanent residency as part of an established programme initially set out for Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Moreover, some previously unidentified Jews sought to establish their identity legally in order to benefit from the initiative.
As these new Jewish communities were taking shape, other already established connections were changing. Jews who once regarded themselves as “Jews living in Ukraine” were pushed by the war and their refugee experience to adopt a heightened sense of Ukrainian identity – becoming “Ukrainian Jews”.
Previously, many of them would have connected with the more established diaspora of Russian-speaking Jewry in Berlin (who had arrived from the Soviet Union or from ex-Soviet states decades earlier) because they all spoke Russian and identified with Russian culture.
Now, while still speaking Russian among themselves, some who know Ukrainian well turned to speaking Ukrainian publicly, writing in Ukrainian and embracing Ukrainian music and culture to demarcate the borders of difference among the larger group of Russian-speaking Jews. Many Ukrainian Jewish organisations have also switched to the Ukrainian language on their online platforms, although Russian still dominates in everyday life.
These Ukrainian Jews did not just adopt a more pronounced Ukrainian identity due to Russia’s invasion. Many had cultivated a deeper Jewish identity and education, stemming from the Jewish revival that had come to define contemporary Ukraine. Blending religious and national loyalties in intimate settings of Ukrainian-Jewish community life, Ukrainian-Jewish refugees are continually redefining a specifically Ukrainian-Jewish sense of solidarity.
Some studies have probed idealised perceptions of migrant solidarity based on discrimination. But the example of Ukrainian Jewry, whose arrival in Germany has been facilitated by religious and political actors, reveals how solidarity is never a given or uniform for refugee groups with multiple senses of belonging. For many ethnic and religious minorities, solidarity is a process negotiated across national, ethnic and religious affiliations firmly rooted in the intimate affairs of immigrant-based communities.
Revival in the context of war
Throughout the years of the war, sermons presented by Jewish leaders who stayed in Ukraine have highlighted Jewish resilience and linked Jewish biblical stories of flight and survival to their lived reality. Many Jews have indeed turned to these leaders for spiritual inspiration and for moral and psychological support. More pragmatically, the religious organisations are at the forefront of aid initiatives and serve as hubs of humanitarian relief. Many Jews rely on this aid, which draws congregations together and forges communities.
In turn, the organisations sponsor cultural initiatives designed to strengthen a Ukrainian-Jewish culture and create a world of Ukrainian-Jewish heritage. Prayer books and other Jewish texts are now available in Ukrainian. The first Ukrainian language Haggadah, a book that tells the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt and is read by Jews on Passover, features vivid images of Russian aggression.
In the struggle to remain a free people, many Ukrainian Jews have come to bind their historical struggle as Jews to their current struggle as Ukrainians. In this way, the story of Ukraine’s Jewry likely connects to the trajectories of Ukraine’s other ethnoreligious minority communities.
Understanding the realities of Ukraine’s ethno-religious minorities helps us to see past the binary of Russians versus Ukrainians or the broad generalisations of Ukrainian refugees as white and Christian. Instead, Ukraine can be properly recognised as a diverse civic society with a multiplicity of identities and communities that are slowly coalescing under the duress of war.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: paparazzza / Shutterstock.com
