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Kyiv Jews celebrate their 2nd wartime Purim with renewed resolve and optimism
KYIV (JTA) — In a historic building in the most industrial part of Podil, the hipster district of Kyiv that once was the heart of the Jewish trading community, a senior and passionate Esther seduces a much younger Ahasuerus. She flirts with the handsome king to the raucous giggling of the audience, which breaks into applause when the Purim shpiel comes to an end.
A year and a few days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Jews in Kyiv and the rest of the country have celebrated Purim in precarious economic and emotional circumstances, under the continued threat of Russian attacks. Still, many of them are in much better spirits than in 2022, when the Jewish holiday of joy found Ukrainian Jews in a frantic state of worry and uncertainty about their immediate future.
“A year ago you could see the fear in people’s eyes; now they are very proud because Ukraine has resisted, and Jews are fully involved in the cause,” Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during the movement’s Purim celebration in Podil. She is an Israeli rabbi who is the executive director of the Masorti movement-affiliated Schechter Institutes and periodically travels to Ukraine to serve the country’s Masorti communities. Masorti Judaism is similar to the Conservative movement in the United States.
“Last year it was very, very hard, because people were in shock, afraid, and they didn’t know what to do,” said Ariel Markowitz, Kyiv’s most senior rabbi from the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, which held its own Purim celebration Monday night. “But now we know that we have a strong army, that we have a chance, and many people have actually returned to Kyiv.”
Rabbi Ariel Markowitz of Chabad Kyiv reads from the Megillah during his community’s Purim celebration, March 6, 2023. (Courtesy Markowitz)
The year-old war has shaken up Ukraine’s Jewish community, with members leaving the country or moving within it to avoid Russian shelling and its effects.
“Everyone has pretty much made a decision on whether to stay or to leave and we are reorganizing our community,” said Gritsevskaya.
Although at least 14,000 Ukrainians have moved to Israel since Russia’s all-out invasion started, and many more thousands have found refuge in Germany and other European countries, Gritsevskaya wants to focus on those who stayed. Estimates of the Jewish population in Ukraine ranged before the war from just under 50,000 to up to 400,000, depending on who counted.
One of the people who left the country was the former Masorti rabbi in Ukraine, Reuven Stamov, who moved with his family to Israel. Currently, the Masorti movement — whose Ukrainian following Grivtseskaya estimates in the thousands — does not have a rabbi permanently in the country. But the community keeps active in Kyiv and other cities, such as Kharkiv in the east, Odessa in the south and Chernivtsi in the southwest, thanks to activists, volunteers and rabbinical students, plus the visits by Gritsevskaya, who first returned for Purim last year.
“Community life has never been so important,” she said.
Gritsevskaya pointed to the difference that having access to material help, connections and emotional and spiritual support makes for those who arrive in new cities from places in the south or the east occupied by Russia or close to the front.
She acknowledged that some Jewish organizations have ceased their operations in Ukraine and stressed the need of strengthening the work of those who are committed to remain, so Jewish life in Ukraine could be as “diverse” as before and people “have options” to choose the way they practice their Judaism.
Among the Ukrainian Jews that decided to stay is the director of the MILI Foundation, the entity that organizes the Masorti community in Ukraine. Maksym Melnikov moved to Kyiv from his native Donetsk in 2014 after Russian-backed separatist militias declared the independence of part of the region and war broke out in Eastern Ukraine.
Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya poses with community members of the Masorti community in Kyiv, March 6, 2023. (Marcel Gascón Barberá)
“I came when they started to occupy our land in Ukraine,” Melnikov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the Masorti Purim celebration in Kyiv, just before taking the stage to help Gritsevskaya read the Purim Megillah. “Almost a decade later, war came after me to Kyiv, and I don’t want to move this time, I’m staying.”
Since 2014, many of Melnikov’s friends and acquaintances from Donetsk have moved to Kyiv. While Russia’s full-scale invasion has pushed many Jews from Kyiv to move westwards or leave the country, the western city’s communities have received a new infusion of people from the eastern cities more affected by the war.
“Communities are changing constantly countrywide, and we are trying to reach out to those who arrive, both to help them start a new life and to build our community stronger,” said Grivtsevskaya.
She said the Masorti community in Chernivtsi has experienced a notable revival. Situated near the border with Romania, Chernivtsi is one of the few Ukrainian provincial capitals that has not been bombed by Russia, and thousands have moved there. “They have received another family and are very strong right now,” she said about the once-dwindling community in this historical Jewish center, where she hosted a Purim celebration after making her way into Ukraine in March 2022.
The massive uprooting of entire Jewish communities has been experienced keenly by Chabad, which has the largest Jewish presence in the country, with hundreds of emissaries serving Jewish communities in dozens of cities.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in those who come looking for help,” Markowitz told JTA hours before the start of Purim at Chabad’s community center in Kyiv. Many of them, he said, had come from Mariupol, a city bombed into submission by Russia at the beginning of the war.
Scenes of the Purim shpiel at the Masorti community in Kyiv, March 6, 2023. (Marcel Gascón Barberá)
Chabad is one of several organizations providing aid to Ukrainian Jews, including support in obtaining food, medical care and generators that keep power flowing amid widespread outages.
The rise of the demand for these services is not only driven by refugees, but by families and individuals who have lost their source of income due to the economic disruptions caused by the invasion.
“There is inflation, there are less jobs, a lot of companies closed and people lost their jobs or are unable to help their family members,” Markowitz said.
Besides the demographic and economic shake-ups, the war has brought changes in the way Jews relate to their Ukrainian identity. Perhaps the most striking has been a rapid shift away from speaking Russian, the first language of many Ukrainian Jews until recently.
“Even I started learning and speaking Ukrainian and you can definitely see how a new sense of national identity is being born,” Maria Karadin, a Russia-born Israeli who moved to Ukraine with her husband in 2005, said at the Masorti Purim event.
Maiia Malkova is 15 years old and one of the most active young members of the Masorti community in Kyiv.
“Last year I didn’t even think about Purim so much because I was so frightened,” she said while wearing a necklace with a tryzub, the trident that symbolizes Ukrainian statehood and independence. “But we kind of got accustomed to this situation. And it is great to be able to celebrate Purim again.”
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Brooklyn Nets Forward Michael Porter Jr. Defends Deni Avdija Against Hate for Representing Israel
Mar 2, 2025; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Portland Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija (8) drives to the basket against Cleveland Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome (2) and forward Dean Wade (32) during the second half at Rocket Arena. Photot: Ken Blaze-Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. defended fellow NBA player and Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija against the hate he receives for representing his home country of Israel.
Porter Jr. recently made an appearance on a live stream with YouTuber N3on and mentioned that Avdija is a player who gets to the free-throw line often. N3on then commented that Avdija “gets a lot of hate,” referring to hate messages on social media, even though “he’s a good player.” When Porter asked the streamer if Avdija is criticized because he is Jewish, N3on replied yes.
“Really? What are people mad about?” Porter asked.
“Because he wore a flag or something,” N3on replied, referring to Avdija’s public display of pride for Israel, such as wearing a jersey featuring an Israeli flag or draping himself in an Israeli flag on the court.
“It’s so weird,” Porter said in response. “Do people not want others to represent their country? What do they expect from him?”
Michael Porter Jr. tells N3on people are weird for hating on Deni Avdija just because he proudly represents Israel
“Why hate someone for repping their country?”
pic.twitter.com/C945Xr0dhB
— luci. (@inmaxera) May 2, 2026
Avdija, who is set to become a free agent in 2028, is the first Israeli to be named an NBA All-Star and last month became the first Israeli to reach and win an NBA Playoff game. Unfortunately, the Portland Trail Blazers ended their 2025-26 season last week with a 114-95 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the 2026 playoffs.
Earlier the year, Avdija spoke to The Athletic about the hate that he receives as an NBA player from Israel.
“I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate,” he said. “Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments [on social media] are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player.”
“You don’t have to love what I stand for or how I look, but if I’m a good player, give props,” Avdija added. “All this hate … for no reason, like I’m deciding things in the world … I’m from there, and I respect my country, and I stand behind it. I’m a proud Israeli because that’s where I grew up. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Israel and the support the people and fans gave me. But all the extra stuff around it? It’s just unnecessary.”
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Mike Stoller and Iris Rainer Dart talk ‘Beaches’ and reviving their Yiddish musical
A Peanuts poster in the background of our video call reminds Iris Rainer Dart of her brief time starring in a musical.
“I was the understudy for Judy Kaye in the L.A. company of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown,” recalled Dart, 82, the author of the bestselling novel Beaches and the book and lyrics for the new Broadway musical based on it. “She wanted to go home for Thanksgiving, and so they let me go on one time to see if I could do it. And then for Thanksgiving, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then went on as Lucy!”
After that, it was curtains. “That’s my distinguished acting career,” Dart said. “Boy, am I glad it gave me up!”
But Dart never gave up on musicals, which she started writing as an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon with an up-and-coming composer named Stephen Schwartz. She worked as a writer for Sonny and Cher’s variety show, and used Cher as a partial model for the character of Cee Cee Bloom, the brassy diva whose friendship with the more refined Bertie White is the center of Beaches. (There’s a bit of Dart in Bloom, too — namely the Jewishness.) Years later, after Garry Marshall directed the 1988 film version of Beaches, Bette Midler, who gave life to Cee Cee on screen, asked Dart to write a new vehicle for her.
Searching for subject matter, Dart remembered her stint as a replacement teacher at her daughter’s Jewish school in her largely Judenrein neck of California. She felt unprepared to take over — “The understudy doesn’t know the lines” — but she got mailers from Jewish institutions to develop her lesson plans. One was a catalog of Yiddish films.
Growing up in Pittsburgh with Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents, she didn’t need subtitles to watch them. Inspired, she wrote what would become The People in the Picture, a memory play of Yiddish theater and the Holocaust.
Midler wouldn’t go on to star in the show, which debuted on Broadway in 2011 with Donna Murphy, but she made the shidduch between Dart and Mike Stoller, the legendary songsmith who, with lyricist Jerry Leiber, penned “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakety Yak” and, yes, a tune called “Charlie Brown” for the Coasters.
When it came time to adapt Beaches, a story built in part around backstage drama, and an enduring friendship that grows out of it, Dart reconnected with Stoller after working with a different composer on a previous run of the show.
Stoller, 93, has had his music feature in many Broadway musicals — mostly of the jukebox variety, long after they had already been hit records. He says he approaches crafting an original score differently, writing for characters rather than an artist like Elvis. With Beaches he set out to write a “musical-musical,” that was traditional and book-driven. In the case of both Beaches and People in the Picture, there’s a heaping helping of Yiddishkeit.
One line that has audiences rolling in the aisles comes when Cee Cee (played by Jessica Vosk) pays a visit to her friend Bertie (Kelli Barrett), whose mother is dying at a Catholic hospital. She tells the nuns “my mother used to point you out to me on the street and say, ‘At least they married a Jewish guy.’”
Stoller spent some of his early years living in the converted basement of his grandparents’ house in Bell End, Queens. His grandmother spoke Yiddish, Russian, Polish and English with a Cockney accent.
“She left Bialystok and moved to Whitechapel in London on her way to America,” Stoller explained.
Stoller never had a bar mitzvah, and learned his father didn’t either. It was only when the family moved to California that Stoller learned his dad, A.L. Stoller’s, full name.
“I was thrilled to find out that his name was really ‘Abraham Lincoln Stoler,’” Stoller recalled. “In a way, it sounded Black, and I was working primarily with African American people when I started writing along with Jerry, and those were the singers that inspired us, and so I felt additional pride in his name.”
The People in the Picture brought Stoller to tears. Beaches, which (spoilers for a 41-year-old story) ends with Bertie’s untimely death, has audiences cracking up before they reach for a Kleenex.
The one song Stoller didn’t compose for the show is “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which became a standard from the film. But beyond that, the story stays truer to Dart’s novel than the movie did.
“I always knew, because I wasn’t writing it, that it would not be the story that I wanted to tell,” said Dart of the film version. “The story I wanted to tell was in the book and in this musical.”
In the meantime, Stoller and Dart want to bring back People in the Picture. Dart said she has a new draft ready to go.
“I’m hoping that maybe we can get Jeff Goldblum, who says he loves Yiddish,” Dart said. “He’s from Pittsburgh also, and I think his father, Dr. Goldblum, may have been the doctor to my family, to my mother. Because there were two Dr Goldblums, and one of them was an eye doctor, and my mother was always trying to fix him up with my cousin.”
“Need I say more?” Dart asked.
The post Mike Stoller and Iris Rainer Dart talk ‘Beaches’ and reviving their Yiddish musical appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says Iran ‘Should Wave White Flag of Surrender’ as Shaky Ceasefire Holds Despite Exchange of Fire
US President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a memorandum in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed Iran‘s military capability and said Tehran “should wave the white flag of surrender” but is too proud to do so.
Trump’s comments to reporters in the Oval Office came as the United Arab Emirates said it was under attack from Iranian missiles and drones, even as Washington said a shaky ceasefire was intact despite an exchange of fire the previous day as US forces attempted to force open the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the escalation, Iran‘s military has been reduced to firing “peashooters,” Trump said, adding that Tehran privately wants to make a deal despite its public saber-rattling.
“They play games, but let me just tell you, they want to make a deal. And who wouldn’t, when your military is totally gone?” he said.
Trump heaped praise on the US blockade of Iranian ports in the region. “It’s like a piece of steel. Nobody’s going to challenge the blockade. And I think it’s working out very well,” he said.
When asked what Iran would need to do to violate the ceasefire, Trump said: “Well, you’ll find out, because I’ll let you know … They know what not to do.”
Trump argued that Iran “should save the white flag of surrender,” adding, “If this were a fight, they’d stop it.”
The US military said it had destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called “Project Freedom.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation to protect commercial ships was temporary and the four-week-old truce was not over. “We’re not looking for a fight,” he told a press conference. “Right now, the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely.”
Iran fired missiles at US ships on Monday and attacked the UAE, a key regional ally of Washington, with missiles and drones. After issuing a new map of the Strait of Hormuz with an expanded Iranian area of control, Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards warned vessels on Tuesday to stick to the corridors it had set or face a “decisive response.”
Shortly after Hegseth spoke on Tuesday, the UAE’s defense ministry said its air defenses were again dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran.
‘RIGHT TO RESPOND’
The Gulf Arab state’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the attacks were a serious escalation and posed a direct threat to the country’s security, adding that the UAE reserved its “full and legitimate right” to respond.
There was no immediate comment on that from Iran, though earlier its parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, had said breaches of the ceasefire by the US and its allies endangered shipping through the strait, which carries a large share of the world’s oil and fertilizer supplies.
“We know well that the continuation of the current situation is unbearable for the United States, while we have not even begun yet,” he said in a social media post.
The Strait of Hormuz has been virtually shut since the United States and Israel began attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, triggering disruptions that have pushed up commodity prices around the world.
Iran has effectively sealed off the strait by threatening to deploy mines, drones, missiles, and fast-attack craft. The United States has countered by blockading Iranian ports and mounting escorted transits for commercial vessels.
Hegseth said the US had successfully secured a path through the narrow waterway and that hundreds of commercial ships were lining up to pass through.
The US military said two US merchant ships made it through the strait, without saying when, with the support of Navy guided-missile destroyers.
Iran denied any crossings had taken place, though shipping company Maersk said the Alliance Fairfax, a US-flagged ship, exited the Gulf under US military escort on Monday.
Several merchant ships in the Gulf reported explosions or fires on Monday, and an oil port in the UAE, which hosts a large US military base, was set ablaze by Iranian missiles.
Iran also said it fired warning shots at a US warship approaching the strait, forcing it to turn back.
Reuters could not independently verify events in the strait as the two sides issued contradictory statements.
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian attacks against US forces fell “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.”
PAKISTAN’S MEDIATION EFFORTS CONTINUE
The war has killed thousands as it spread beyond Iran to Lebanon and the Gulf, and has roiled the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that even if the conflict ended immediately, it would take three to four months to deal with the consequences.
US and Iranian officials have held one round of face-to-face peace talks, but attempts to set up further meetings have failed.
Iranian state media said on Sunday that the US had conveyed its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal via Pakistan, and Iran was reviewing it. Neither side gave details.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said peace talks were still progressing with Pakistan’s mediation and warned the US and the UAE against being drawn into a “quagmire.”
He was traveling to Beijing on Tuesday for talks with his Chinese counterpart, his ministry said. Trump is also due to visit China this month.
A senior Pakistani official involved in talks said: “We have put in a lot of efforts – actually both the sides have narrowed gaps on a majority of the issues.”
Trump has said the US-Israeli attacks aimed to eliminate what he called imminent threats from Iran, citing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Trump has insisted Iran must surrender its enriched uranium stockpiles to prevent it producing a nuclear weapon – an ambition Tehran denies.