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The first Passover haggadah in Ukrainian marks a community’s break with Russia
(JTA) — For Michal Stamova, the challenge of translating Passover’s core text into Ukrainian started with the title.
The haggadah — the book containing the Passover story — starts with an “h” sound in both Hebrew, its original language, and English. In Russian, the primary language of organized Jewish life in Ukraine until recently, there is no such sound, so the book has long been known there as an “agada.”
Ukrainian does have an “h” sound. But the character representing that sound conveys a different sound in Russian: a “G.” So for many Ukrainian Jews, the cover of Stamova’s translation will read as “Gagada.”
The journey of that single sound reflects the complexity of the task Stamova took on to aid Ukrainian Jews celebrating Passover a year into their country’s war with Russia. A musicologist from western Ukraine who fled to Israel shortly after Russia’s invasion, Stamova was recruited to create a Ukrainian-language haggadah, a powerful sign of the community’s rupture with its Russophone past.
Stamova knew she wanted to base her translation not off the preexisting Russian translation, but from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. That proved challenging because much of the text of the haggadah is lifted from other sources in Jewish canon, but Jewish translations of those texts to Ukrainian are only underway now for the first time.
“At first, it was very difficult to start, because we don’t have the sources in Ukrainian,” Stamova said. “We don’t have Torah in Ukrainian. We don’t have Tanakh in Ukrainian. It was very difficult to know what words to find.”
Stamova’s text, titled “For Our Freedom,” was released online earlier this month in advance of the Passover holiday that starts April 5. It is one of a growing number of efforts to translate Jewish texts into Ukrainian. Translators affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement have produced a book of psalms and are working on a daily prayer book, with their sights set on a full translation of the Torah. An effort is also underway now to translate a chapter of a newer text associated with Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day, in advance of its commemoration this year on April 18.
The absence of those texts until now, despite Ukraine’s significant Jewish population, reflects the particular linguistic history of Ukrainian Jews. Under the Russian empire, Jews living in what is now Ukraine in the 19th century tended to adopt Russian rather than Ukrainian, usually in addition to Yiddish, because Ukrainian was perceived as the language of the peasantry and conferred few benefits. That tilt became more pronounced after World War II and the Holocaust, when Yiddish declined as a Jewish vernacular and Russian became the main language of the Soviet Union. The history helps explain why, even as the number of Ukrainians speaking Russian at home fell sharply over the last decade, Jews remained largely Russian-speaking. (Russian and Ukrainian are related linguistically, though their speakers cannot understand each other.)
A sample page of text from the haggadah. (Courtesy of Project Kesher)
Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of printed material used by Ukrainian Jewish communities, including haggadahs for Passover, were created in Russian by groups such as Chabad, which is the main Jewish presence in both countries. But after Russia’s invasion, those materials became a liability at a time when being perceived as having ties to the enemy could be dangerous.
Indeed, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year prompted many Russian-speaking Ukrainians to switch languages as a marker of national solidarity — and sparked a push to translate Ukraine’s Jewish life into the Ukrainian language.
“Ukrainian Jews always spoke Russian. That really was the norm. With the advent of the escalation of the war, that has shifted, and Ukrainian Jews who are in the country are shifting as fast as they can over to Ukrainian,” said Karyn Gershon, the executive director of Project Kesher, the global Jewish feminist nonprofit that commissioned the new haggadah.
Gershon said the haggadah offers an opportunity to elevate a Ukrainian Jewish identity in other ways, such as by including tidbits about famous Jewish writers from the area that comprises modern Ukraine who in the past might have been characterized only as “Russian.”
“In most of the Jewish world, the things that make a haggadah unique are the special readings,” Gershon said. The new Ukrainian haggadah includes alongside the traditional text, she said, “prayers for the defenders of Ukraine, prayers for peace in Ukraine, but also [passages] reclaiming writers who were always categorized as Russian, but because they came from places like Kyiv, Odessa and Berdichev, are more accurately Ukrainian.”
For example, the haggadah includes passages from the 1925 book “Passover Nights,” by Hava Shapiro, a Kyiv-born Jew and journalist who authored one of the first Hebrew-language diaries known to have been written by a woman.
The additions offer an element of pride for some of the Ukrainian Jews who plan to use the new haggadah.
“It is bringing you to the roots of those Jews who were living here before the Holocaust,” said Lena Pysina, who lives in Cherkasy, southeast of Kyiv. “It’s about rebuilding the Jewish communities in Ukraine as ‘Ukrainian Jews.’”
Pysina said the switch to Ukrainian and the embrace of Ukrainian Jewish history in some ways echoed the themes of the Passover story, which describes the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt.
“It’s like an exodus for us. It is not comfortable, because we get used to what we get used to. But we have to be proactive, we have to find our identity,” she said. “It took us 70 years of Soviet times to … celebrate the Jewish holidays and Jewish traditions. And it took us 30 years to understand that we have to build Ukrainian Jewish communities, too.”
Those communities are very much in flux a year into the war, with millions of Ukrainians internally displaced or having relocated overseas. Stamova undertook the haggadah project from Israel, where she is one of an estimated 15,000 Ukrainians who arrived since February 2022.
Stamova grew up in western Ukraine, where the use of the Ukrainian language is more common than in the east. Like most other Ukrainian Jews, she still grew up speaking Russian at home, but her school, university and most of her life outside the home was conducted in Ukrainian. That made her a natural fit for the translation project, along with her background in Jewish liturgy, which she had studied at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of printed material used by Ukrainian Jewish communities, including haggadahs for Passover, were created in Russian. (Courtesy of Project Kesher)
The challenges went beyond phonetics. One frequent question was whether to use Russianisms that are widely known in Ukrainian and would be more easily understandable to a Jewish audience, or to use uniquely Ukrainian words.
The most difficult section of the text, she said, was Hallel, the penultimate step of the Passover seder. Hallel is a lengthy song of divine praise heavy with poetry and allegorical language — making for challenging translation work in any language.
Stamova said she sought to stick to the traditional understanding of the text while also making some adjustments for the contemporary seder attendee. For example, the section of the haggadah about the “four sons” with varying relationships to Judaism is rendered gender-neutral and changed to the “four children” in Stamova’s translation — an adjustment that has been made in other languages, too.
Most of all, Stamova said, she hopes the haggadah offers some solace to Ukrainian Jews whose entire lives have been turned upside down.
“The Jewish tradition of Pesach is that we every year have to remember that we escaped from Egypt, from slavery. It’s very therapeutic,” Stamova said, using the Hebrew word for Passover. “How is it like therapy? Yes, we every year remember this difficult story, but then we have a plan for the future, we say next year in Jerusalem. So we have to have a plan. We have to see the future.”
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Hamas Continues to Reject Disarmament as Fragile US-Backed Gaza Peace Plan Faces Hurdles
Palestinians walk among piles of rubble and damaged buildings in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Nov. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
As the US-backed Gaza peace plan falters amid mutual accusations of ceasefire violations, Hamas continues to refuse to disarm in accordance with the agreement, insisting that any decisions about the terrorist group’s weapons should be resolved through “internal Palestinian dialogue.”
In an interview published Wednesday with Saudi media outlet Al-Arabiya, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said that any move toward disarmament “is connected to internal consensus, and is also tied to a real political process that leads to an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
The senior terrorist figure also said Hamas has “fully committed to everything required in the first stage in order to open the way for transitioning to the second stage, which Israel continues to obstruct.”
Last week, the United Nations Security Council formally backed US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan — which went into effect last month — calling for an interim technocratic Palestinian government in the war-torn enclave, overseen by an international “board of peace” and supported by an International Stabilization Force (ISF) for at least two years.
Under Trump’s plan, the ISF — comprising troops from multiple participating countries — will oversee the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, train local security forces, secure Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, and protect civilians while maintaining humanitarian corridors.
In addition, the ISF would seemingly be expected to take on the responsibility of disarming Hamas — a key component of Trump’s peace plan to end the war in Gaza which the Palestinian terrorist group has repeatedly rejected.
Earlier this week, Hamas leader and chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said that the group’s disarmament remains under discussion, emphasizing that the issue “is tied to the end of the Israeli occupation.”
Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups have not only consistently refused to give up their weapons but also rejected key elements of Trump’s plan — including the ISF, which they have threatened to treat as a “foreign occupying force” and actively fight it.
Hamas officials rejected any “foreign guardianship” over Gaza and vowed to oppose any attempts to disarm “the Palestinian resistance.”
“Assigning the international force tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation,” the terrorist group said in a statement.
In his Wednesday interview, Qassem emphasized that Hamas’s senior delegation visit to Cairo this week reflects the group’s seriousness, signaling its intent to move forward and lay the groundwork for the next stage.
According to Qassem, Hamas has been meeting with Qatari, Turkish, and Egyptian mediators, as well as with Palestinian factions, “to consult and engage in dialogue, and to reach agreed-upon national political understandings.”
Turkey and Qatar, both longtime backers of Hamas, have been trying to expand their roles in Gaza’s reconstruction and post-war efforts, which experts have warned could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish or Qatari involvement in post-war Gaza.
Under phase one of Trump’s peace plan, Hamas released the remaining 20 living hostages still held in Gaza, along with the remains of most of the 28 others who died in captivity, while Israel freed 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including several hundred convicted terrorists.
Two deceased hostages – an Israeli and a Thai national – still remain in Gaza who were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
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Crypto’s Role in Iran’s Global Terrorism Exposed by New Lawsuit Against Binance
The logo of cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Illustration: Reuters/Dado Ruvic
Cryptocurrency has come under increasing scrutiny for its alleged role in subverting the United States’ sanctions against Iranian state-sponsored terrorism, with the world’s top platform receiving an unwanted spotlight this week.
On Monday, lawyers in North Dakota sued Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, alleging the company had facilitated more than $1 billion in funding to designated terrorist groups backed by the Islamic regime in Iran. The US federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The suit represents the latest instance of cryptocurrency allegedly playing a role in Iran’s efforts to destroy the Jewish state. Leaders of Iran and its network of terrorist groups named in the complaint, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), routinely declare their goal of wiping Israel off the map.
Israel has previously clashed with Binance in its counter-terrorism efforts. In May 2023, the Jewish state seized nearly 200 accounts on the platform linked to Islamist groups, including ISIS. In November 2022, researchers at Nobitex said that since 2018, Binance had processed $7.8 billion through Iran-linked accounts.
This week’s suit adds further evidence of the recurring link between Iranian terrorism and cryptocurrency, identifying the high profit potential for those willing to attempt to dodge US sanctions against terror financing.
Binance has declined to discuss the lawsuit but told Reuters that “we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.”
Jonathan Missner, the attorney who represents the Oct. 7 victims and their families named as plaintiffs in the suit, said that Binance’s alleged facilitating of payments to terror groups “was not a compliance” but rather “a business model.”
“Our investigation shows that Binance built systems designed to evade oversight, using its off-chain network and weak controls to move enormous sums for sanctioned groups,” he said in a statement.
The lawsuit states that “by knowingly moving and concealing the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas, the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah, and PIJ, Defendants Binance Holdings Limited, Changpeng Zhao, and Guangying ‘Heina’ Chen provided pervasive and systemic assistance to these terrorist organizations.”
Chen is described in the suit as a co-founder of Binance and “de facto CFO.” The lawsuit charges that Zhao and Chen “materially contributed to the Oct. 7 attacks and to subsequent terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas, Hezbollah, and PIJ.”
One of the plaintiffs named in the suit is Eyal Balva, whose son Omer died in combat following the Oct. 7 atrocities while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. “Binance’s platform moved the money that helped fund the violence that destroyed our family,” he said.
Zhao and Binance — the world’s largest crypto trading platform with $300 billion in daily trades and more than 280 million users — have previously faced penalties for criminality. As part of a 2023 settlement agreement with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Binance paid $4.3 billion in fines and restitution. Zhao was previously convicted of money laundering and served four months imprisonment. US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao, with analysts noting the decision came following a sizable investment by Binance into the Trump family Crypto exchange platform World Liberty Financial.
The lawsuit also notes a money laundering scheme involving transferring gold from Venezuela to Iran to overcome American sanctions, and that Binance “pitched itself to terrorist organizations, narcotics traffickers, and tax evaders as beyond the reach of any single country’s laws or regulations.”
On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put out a statement condemning the possibility of potential US military action against Venezuela, labeling the Trump administration’s posture a “bullying approach.”
The filing against Binance comes in a year in which Australian authorities have highlighted the alleged role of cryptocurrency in directing antisemitic hate crimes in Melbourne and Sydney, prompting the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador in August.
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (Asio) chief Mike Burgess said that his team had found connections “between the alleged crimes and the commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.”
He added, “They’re just using cut-outs, including people who are criminals and members of organized crime gangs to do their bidding or direct their bidding.”
Cryptocurrency has long functioned as a tool of Iran to evade US sanctions. The high energy costs from the so-called “mining” of cryptocurrency — powerful computers must run complex programs in order to generate additional tokens for trading — has put a strain on Iran’s electrical system. Mohammad Allahdad, Iran’s deputy director of power generation, said that the business practice “represents around 5 percent of total electricity consumption” and “it accounts for up to 20 percent of the current power deficit.”
Allahdad also warned that the heat from crypto mining devices was “intense” and could cause fires. “We’ve had multiple reports from fire departments about fires linked to mining rigs, some of which spread to neighboring homes,” he noted.
Now is potentially the worst time for fires in Iran, given a persistent devastating drought and ongoing government mismanagement of the water system. The situation has reached the point that Iran’s president said last week that the country had “no choice” but to evacuate and move the capital Tehran.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a speech.
The US State Department recently noted that Iran has provided Lebanese Hezbollah with more than $100 million each month this year. Critics of the regime have pointed out that funds spent in the war effort to destroy Israel could have gone toward improving infrastructure to better support the civilian population. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that one-third of the water supply to Tehran is lost through leaks and theft.
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Mamdani Draws Fury After Naming Activist Booted From Women’s March for Antisemitism to Transition Team
Tamika Mallory at the Wilmington Public Library in Wilmington, Delaware, Sept. 19, 2024. Photo: Saquan Stimpson/Cal Sport Media/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Tamika Mallory, the former Women’s March co-chair who was forced out of the organization amid allegations of antisemitism, has been appointed to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, according to newly released staffing lists.
Mallory was selected to serve on the Committee on Community Safety, one of several advisory bodies shaping the incoming mayoral administration’s approach to policing, public safety, and community relations. Her appointment has already drawn sharp criticism from Jewish communal organizations, which say the decision raises serious concerns at a time of rising antisemitic incidents across the city.
Mamdani himself has also faced allegations of antisemitism, and his electoral victory earlier this month raised alarm bells among Jewish New Yorkers, many of whom expressed concern about their future with an ardent anti-Israel activist in office.
Mallory resigned from the Women’s March leadership in 2019 after extensive reporting said that she and other senior figures had allowed antisemitic rhetoric to permeate the organization. A widely discussed investigative article at the time claimed Mallory referenced conspiracy theories portraying Jews as exploiters of black and brown communities and echoed false claims linking Jewish financiers to the transatlantic slave trade.
She denied making the statements but continued to face criticism for her longstanding praise of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks such as comparing Jews to termites, describing Judaism as a “dirty religion,” calling the Jewish people “Satan,” publicly questioned the Holocaust, sharing anti-Israel conspiracy theories, and blamed Jews for pedophilia and sex trafficking. Mallory called Farrakhan “the greatest of all time because of what he’s done in black communities.”
Transition team members typically serve in an advisory capacity, though their recommendations often help shape early policy direction.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent Jewish civil rights organization, condemned the new appointment, arguing that Mallory is “simply the wrong choice” to join the Mamdani transition team, citing her “highly insensitive remarks about Jews and money.”
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his young political career, has filled several transition committees with progressive activists, criminal-justice reform advocates, and academics associated with police abolition movements. His Community Safety Committee includes multiple figures known for their opposition to traditional law-enforcement models.
Jewish and allied leaders said the decision to include Mallory reinforces fears that the incoming administration may sideline concerns about antisemitism.
“New Yorkers are shocked to learn that Zohran Mandani has appointed Tamika Mallory to his team. Mallory is a notorious trafficker of Jew-hatred in America, a defender for Louis Farrakhan’s vicious vitriol against Jews,” The Lawfare Project, which provides legal services to victims of antisemitism, posted on social media. “We must be vigilant and carefully scrutinize who Mamdani appoints to key positions and, more importantly, what they do once in office. Protecting Jewish civil rights means taking action whenever they are violated.”
Mallory’s appointment isn’t the only one to draw concern due to allegations of antisemitism.
For example, Hassaan Chaudhary, an adviser to Mamdani who describes himself as the political director for the mayor-elect’s transition team, once used the word “Jew” as a slur. In 2012, he wrote Jew hoga tera baap,” which means in English, “Jew will be your father.” He also referred to Israel as a “cancer which will be eliminated very soon.”
The appointments come as New York City has seen a major spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes over the last two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. According to police data, Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in the city last year. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas activists have held raucous — and sometimes violent — protests on the city’s college campuses, oftentimes causing Jewish students to fear for their safety.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
A recently released Sienna Research Institute poll revealed that a whopping 72 percent of Jewish New Yorkers believe that Mamdani will be “bad” for the city. A mere 18 percent hold a favorable view of Mamdani. Conversely, 67 percent view him unfavorably.