Horrific war in Ukraine has touched us all

Marina Berkovich, JHSSWF President

Ukraine is a place from which many American Jews hail in this or preceding generations, and that is why I am dedicating my Passover column to it.

It has a long and complex historical path, which, over the final days of February 2022, became even more entangled. Who lived there first? There is much evidence that Jews were among the earliest settlers in the contemporary Podol part of Kiev, the Mother of all Russia, its lowland. Ukraine, whose territorial name first emerged as Zaporozhian Sich, received its first independent statehood in 1991, following the collapse of the USSR. Before the Soviet Union was formed, there was a short-lived attempt of Ukrainian statehood in 1918- 19 and its yellow-blue flag was first used.

Most Americans are unfamiliar with Sich, aka Cossack republic. This semi-free settlement was well depicted in the “Taras Bulba” film. But you’ve no doubt heard of the Cossacks of 19th- and 20th-century Russia through the family lore of pogroms in the Pale. Initially, the Cossacks fled Mongols and were guarding the Russian borders from them and the Ottomans. The population of the Sich had Ukrainians, Moldavians, Tatars, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians and many other ethnicities of all social layers, including runaway nobility.

After the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire for possession of the Black Sea and Crimean steppes ended, Russia no longer needed the Zaporozhian Cossacks for border protection and it was destroyed in 1775. It was during Catherine the Great’s reign that the word ukraina was likely derived from the Russian word okraina, specifi cally meaning “the edge of this land,” or less likely, from the Ukrainian kraina or Polish kraj, both meaning “country/land.” It was also still on Catherine’s watch that the Pale was formed to “protect the Jews.” Modern Ukrainians have genes with more than 13 million genetic variants among their DNA samples; many have Ashkenazi ancestry.

Ukraine has been striving to become a nation. Whether or not it did a good job or was drowning in corruption is for history to decide. It will be harder to get to the truth now, since, like in Iraq, Ukraine’s museums were bombed and robbed of priceless artifacts.

The Kievan Rus princes forcibly converted the people of Kiev to Christianity in 988, winning over three potential religions: Islam, Catholicism and Judaism. The population of Russia is not ethnically pure either, with more than 100 languages spoken by over 120 ethnic groups, who have coexisted since times immemorial.

We are all grieving for the victims of this current tragedy. Especially, those of us with family or friends in Ukraine or Russian families and friends with children in the military. There will be no winners here. Nobody’s lives will ever be the same.

Lastly, given the long, love-hate relationship of Ukraine and its Jewry, it must be providential that, at this significant moment in history, defense of Ukraine is led by its Jewish President, and how! Let’s pray for his safety.

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