Hello, Привіт, שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם, Здравствуйте!
Welcome to my blog, Kvelling in Kyiv! In Yiddish, kvell means to burst with pride or excitement, to well up with emotion. It’s going to be an exciting year and I hope there will be much to kvell over. My name is Benjamin Cohen and I am currently serving as a Fulbright Student Grantee to Ukraine from September 2016-June 2017. I am a graduate of Pomona College in Claremont, CA where I fell in love with Slavic languages and cultures. As I began to study Eastern Europe more intensively, I began to realize just how closely this part of the world intertwines with my own family’s narrative. I am a descendent of Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement, mostly in what is now Ukraine, until as late as the 1920s. The Pale of Settlement was a vast stretch of land created by Catherine the Great during the Partitions of Poland in the 1790s; it was the only part of the Russian Empire that Jews were officially permitted to call home. (Today, the countries of Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, and parts of Western Russia encompass the Pale.)
Source: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/ostropol/_pages/maps/maps.html
Jewish life thrived in Eastern Europe thrived for many years after the Pale was created but this was not to last forever. Pogroms, or attacks on Jewish villages swept across the Pale, increasing in intensity at the turn of the century. The Russian Empire continued to tighten its grip on the Jews. Later, mass devastation and genocide during the Holocaust and severe repression under the Soviet Union nearly erased this rich cultural and religious legacy for good.
Nearly.
Jewish life continues to exist in these places today and has experienced something of a rebirth since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Individuals are now free to decide what it means to be Jewish after living for decades, even centuries under authorities who imposed identity on Jews, openly discriminating against and persecuting them. For Ukraine in particular, the question of Jewish identity is particularly fascinating taking recent events into consideration.
Nearly three years ago, Ukrainians of all ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds took to the streets in protest against ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to revoke promises of closer cooperation with the European Union. What began as a social movement in search of Europe became a social movement in search of Ukraine; a Ukraine free from corruption, a Ukraine open to democracy, a Ukraine on the march toward a brighter future. In February 2014, protests turned violent as government forces fired on civilians. A month later, the Russian government, an authoritarian body that deeply fears mass social movements, illegally annexed and continues to occupy the Crimean peninsula. A war between Ukraine and rebel forces supported by the Russian military broke out in Eastern Ukraine and continues to simmer. Over 9,000 people have been killed and as many as 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes. Nevertheless, Ukraine pushes forward into the future, albeit an uncertain one. In contravention to Putin’s aims to divide Ukraine, the country has begun to adopt a strong, unifying national narrative and identity. This narrative reinforces its national sovereignty, takes pride in its linguistic and cultural heritage, and sheds its Soviet legacy in an attempt to create a modern state completely independent of its warmongering neighbor.
But how does this newfound national identity reconcile with a history of Jewish oppression? It’s not such an easy question to answer. For example, Ukrainian nationalists such as Stepan Bandera are lauded while their history of Nazi collaboration is either downplayed domestically or used to delegitimize the Ukrainian state from abroad. The Russian propaganda machine is often the first to employ such tactics and calls the new Ukrainian government fascist while spreading disinformation about anti-Semitism and the right-wing, ultranationalist fringe in Ukraine. Alarm bells ring. In the eyes of many observers, Ukraine cannot seem to escape its past. And yet, despite the hardships of war, economic collapse, and the constant barrage of Russian intimidation, Jewish life abounds in many forms.
So now, the main questions: as national identity continues to coalesce in Ukraine, where do Jews fit into the picture? Long considered a separate ethnic group (or in the Soviet Union, a separate nationality) from Ukrainians, what does it mean to be a Jew in Ukraine today? Is Ukraine’s newfound sense of national identity inclusive of Jews? Does national identity transcend the ethnoreligious?
These are the questions I hope to answer with the help of the Fulbright Program, which has generously provided funds to cover my work and living expenses here. I will be spending the next nine months based at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the Jewish Studies program exploring the topic of contemporary Jewish identity in Ukraine. This blog will cover my encounters and observations of Jewish life in the country. My plan as it stands now is to participate in Jewish life in the country, interview Jewish people living in Ukraine, and hopefully get some answers to the questions I have posed.
So come along for the journey! It promises to be fascinating, meaningful, and occasionally doused with sour cream. If that doesn’t scare you, you’re in the right place. Поехали! Let’s go!
Kvelling in Kyiv 