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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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Holocaust survivor event features a Rob Reiner video address — recorded just weeks before his death
(JTA) — At a virtual Holocaust survivor event on Thursday, beloved Jewish film director Rob Reiner gave a pre-recorded address where he urged those watching to be “resilient.”
For the survivors, families and advocates who tuned into the virtual event hosted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, Reiner’s words carried added weight, having been recorded just weeks before he and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed in their home on Sunday.
Ahead of Reiner’s pre-recorded remarks, Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference, said that Reiner had begun working on the organization’s annual International Holocaust Survivors Night a few years ago, including appearances in the virtual screening in 2023 and 2024. The organization has disbursed restitution money to survivors since 1951.
Schneider then read a quote from a 2017 Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview with Reiner.
“Yes, all this is reflected in my work. It’s my sensibility. I’m a Jew. I was raised a Jew. I value honesty and integrity and knowledge and education and all those values I was raised with,” said Schneider, quoting Reiner.
Concluding his introduction to Reiner’s address, Schneider said, “Rob and Michelle, we will carry on your values of acting with honesty, integrity, knowledge and education.”
As Reiner came on the screen, surrounded by posters from some of his most acclaimed films, including “The Princess Bride” and “A Few Good Men,” he began by describing his family’s “personal connection” to the Holocaust.
“Thank you again for asking me to join your evening, I can tell you that what you’re all about means a lot to me,” Reiner said in the video. “Personally, my wife, her mother, was in Auschwitz, and her whole family died there. Her mother was the only survivor, and my aunt was also in Auschwitz.”
On Wednesday, the USC Shoah Foundation shared a 1994 video of Singer Reiner embracing her mother, Holocaust survivor Nicole Silberkleit, who described her children as “very understanding, loving, and affectionate.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSYmPLmEshI/
In his address, Reiner then shifted his focus to urging “resilience,” which was the theme of the virtual event to honor Holocaust survivors.
“I know the theme of the evening is resilience, and if ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now,” he said. “We’re living in a time where what’s happening in our country is scary and reminiscent of what we’ve seen happen in the past, and we just hope that we can all survive this and that we can hold on to our democracy, but I want to just thank everybody for being there, and let’s be resilient.”
The Claims Conference’s event was part of an annual menorah lighting ceremony on the fifth night of Hanukkah to honor survivors. It concluded with around 100 survivors lighting candles at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
This year, Claims Conference officials also used the event to draw attention to antisemitism, with the survivor event taking place just days after 15 were killed during an antisemitic attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia.
“Even in these difficult days, when antisemitism is rising and Jewish communities around the world are under attack — this very week on the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia — we draw strength and inspiration from you, the survivors, from your personal and collective resilience,” Schneider told the group of survivors in Jerusalem.
One of the victims of the attack, Alex Kleytman, was a Holocaust survivor who had passed World War II living with his family in Siberia.
“Lessons from the past should have protected Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman – a husband, a father and a grandfather,” the Claims Conference wrote in a post on Facebook Sunday. “Educating about how words of hate can turn into violence must not be a hollow promise.”
The couple’s 32-year-old son, Nick, briefly appeared in a Los Angeles court Wednesday after he was charged in connection to his parents’ killing. He has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders.
The other Reiner children, Jake and Romy, shared a statement with People on Wednesday expressing their grief over the loss of their parents.
“Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day,” the statement said. “The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends.”
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In Reykjavik, Hanukkah offers a chance for Iceland’s tiny, isolated Jewish community to come together
(JTA) — REYKJAVIK — December light is brief in Iceland. It was not yet 4 p.m., and by the time the giant menorah was lit in downtown Reykjavík, the day had already slipped into darkness. A steady drizzling rain blurred the streetlights and soaked the pavement where fewer than 100 people gathered, roughly half of the country’s Jewish population, which has always been small and largely unseen.
The celebrants were calm, almost subdued; security was not. Armed plainclothes police ringed the area. They moved through the crowd while surveillance drones hovered overhead. Air support was on standby, measures almost unheard of in a country that tops the world’s most peaceful list.
The gathering took place just hours after news broke of the most recent terrorist attack on Jews, this one a celebration of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Rabbi Avraham Feldman and his wife, Mushky, welcomed the crowd, their voices steady but restrained. Iceland’s minister of foreign affairs, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, followed, and she lit the menorah herself. Curious passersby slowed, some watching silently before moving on. The event passed without incident.
“The attack in Sydney reminds us that darkness is not only something we read about in history books. It still exists in the world and appears suddenly and violently,” said Avraham Feldman, who is associated with the Chabad movement, which makes public menorah-lightings a centerpiece of its outreach around the world.
“Hanukkah does not ask us to deny this darkness,” he added. “Instead, Hanukkah teaches us that each and every one of us can create light and positivity. Even a small light pushes away great darkness. And when many lights stand together, we overpower the darkness.”
In a statement issued the same day, Gunnarsdóttir condemned the attack in Sydney, which took place at a Chabad event. “I strongly condemn the horrific attack on those celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Australia,” she said. “There is no place, anywhere, for antisemitism or terror. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the victims, their loved ones, and others affected.”
Her presence at the Hanukkah event carried significance well beyond the ceremony itself. Iceland’s government has been among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, and public discourse around the war in Gaza has been intense. Jewish teens have reported increasingly tense relationships with their peers, and the national broadcaster recently announced that it would boycott the Eurovision song contest over Israel’s participation.
For some Jews in Iceland, the political situation has shaken their sense of acceptance.
“It has become very different for me since Oct. 7,” said an American Jew living in Iceland who asked to remain anonymous. “Before, I was fairly widely open about being Jewish, but the landscape has changed.”
When he and his spouse moved into a new home last year, he ordered a mezuzah for the front door, but he hesitated to put it up. “For the first time, I found myself concerned about placing my Hanukkah menorah in the window,” he said, even as he added that most Icelanders would likely not recognize the symbol anyway, given the prevalence of seven-armed electric advent lights in windows each December.
For some present, having Gunnarsdóttir at the Hanukkah event offered a rare and meaningful signal that support for a vulnerable minority need not be conflated with geopolitics.
“It’s so special to have the foreign minister join us today, to stand with us, support the community, and offer her continued friendship,” said Mushky Feldman said. “We’re honored to have her speak tonight and light the first candle.”
Jewish life in Iceland has no long historical footprint. There are no historic synagogues, no Jewish neighborhoods, and no centuries-old institutions. Holidays are celebrated in rented spaces or private homes. Until 2018, there was not even a resident rabbi. The community is made up largely of immigrants — including an Israeli jewelry designer who was the country’s first lady for 13 years until 2016 — their children, and Icelanders who have claimed a Jewish identity later in life.
“How do you teach your children what it means to be Jewish without a ready-made community?” asked Reykjavík resident Adam Gordon, an American Jew. “The answer is that we must create that community ourselves.”
Practical challenges abound. “Supplies can be difficult to come by,” said the American Jew, who decided that he would light a menorah. “I finally placed a bulk order from abroad with enough Hanukkah candles to get me through the end of this decade.”
An obstacle is the traditional Icelandic approach to religion. Most Icelanders are nominally Christian but the country is known as one of the most secular in Europe. (Judaism became an official state religion in 2021, following Avraham Feldman’s advocacy.)
“Icelanders see Jewishness as a function of religion, which they largely see as a quaint if outdated view of the world incompatible with their collective level of political and moral evolution,” said Mike Klein, an American Jew living in Iceland.
“Discussions about my being Jewish often become uncomfortable, partly because of the current political predicament, but also because Icelanders find it strange that I would choose to make my life difficult by maintaining my Jewish identity when I’m otherwise relatively well accepted,” Klein added.
Others echo the same tension. A Jewish American living in Iceland, who declined to be named out of concerns about identifying publicly as Jewish, said antisemitism in Iceland is often rooted in misunderstanding rather than explicit hatred. “There is a lot of ignorance,” she said.
“Many Icelanders have no idea that there are only about 15 million Jews in the world, and that while we are few, we are not a monolith. We have different ways of connecting to our Jewish identity, that it is not only rooted in religion, but culture, a shared heritage.”
At the same time, some Icelanders have embraced the community in meaningful ways. Finnur Thorlacius Eiríksson first encountered Jewish life in 2017, when he met an Israeli couple visiting Iceland. When they later moved to the country and invited him to a Passover seder in 2018, he joined.
“The experience was a positive one, which prompted me to attend more events where I got to know the Jewish community in Iceland quite well,” he said.
Eiríksson now holds the distinction of the only non-Jew known to be registered as a member of the official Jewish community. He attends major holidays and events and is even considering converting to Judaism.
“Thankfully, nearly all my Jewish friends are open about being Jewish,” he said. “They know it never helped the Jewish people to hide their identity, so they wear their Jewish identity with pride.”
Andrea Cheatham Kasper, who is Jewish and lives in Iceland with her family, said her Shabbat table has become a cornerstone of connection.
“Our Shabbat table has been central in our home and also as our way to make friends and build community,” she said. “Relationships have grown there, some immediately and some after many meals together.”
Kasper said she does not hide being Jewish or Israeli but avoids online political battles. “My goal is to focus on face-to-face relationships and interactions that are human, not political,” she said. “What I have found is that the noise comes from the loud voices, and they aren’t always representative.”
At the lighting, the menorah flickered against the rain and the early darkness. Children stood close to their parents. Photos were taken to share with family far away, and fresh-baked sufganiyot (jelly-filled donuts) were passed out to the crowd.
“Events like the menorah lighting become these precious moments when we can gather and celebrate together,” said Gordon. “None of us came to Iceland to deepen our Jewish practice, but we don’t want to abandon it. Instead, we want to weave it together with our Icelandic identities.”
The post In Reykjavik, Hanukkah offers a chance for Iceland’s tiny, isolated Jewish community to come together appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani Transition Team Appointee Resigns After ‘Money Hungry Jews’ Social Media Posts Resurface
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
An appointee of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani resigned just one day after her selection this week, following the exposure of decade-old social media posts that contained antisemitic language and stereotypes.
Catherine Almonte Da Costa, who had been named Mamdani’s director of appointments, stepped down Thursday after social media posts from around 2011–2012 resurfaced in which she used phrases echoing classic antisemitic tropes, including references to “money hungry Jews.”
The Anti-Defamation League condemned the comments, saying they “echo classic antisemitic tropes and otherwise demean Jewish people,” and questioned how such remarks were not uncovered during the vetting process for a senior role in the incoming administration. Shortly after the controversy broke, Da Costa’s X account was taken offline.
In a statement announcing her resignation, Da Costa expressed remorse for the posts, calling them and inconsistent with who she is today. In a statement, Da Costa said she “spoke with the Mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements. These statements are not indicative of who I am.” Mamdani accepted her resignation, stating that he believed her apology to be sincere.
The episode has intensified scrutiny of Mamdani’s transition team and personnel choices as he prepares to take office. Mamdani, a progressive lawmaker, has previously faced criticism from Jewish and pro-Israel groups over his rhetoric and positions related to Israel, prompting heightened sensitivity to issues of antisemitism surrounding his administration.
Jewish communal leaders said the incident underscores broader concerns about tolerance for antisemitic language within progressive political circles and the need for more rigorous screening of public officials and senior staff. Several noted that public servants must be held to a high standard, particularly at a time of rising antisemitism in the United States.
Halle Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, expressed approval of Da Costa’s resignation.
“Glad to see that Catherine Almonte Da Costa has resigned. The views she expressed are unacceptable and intolerable,” she said.
Sara Forman, executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, also praised Mamdani’s “cutting ties” with Da Costa, but cautioned that ““had she said ‘Zionist’ instead of ‘Jew’ the response from the incoming Mamdani administration and the outcome we just witnessed would likely have been quite different.”
David Friedman, the former US Ambassador to Israel, expressed a more skeptical view of Da Costa’s decision to step down.
“Seems like every Mamdani appointee has something in common — an intense dislike for Jews,” he said.
The resignation marks an early setback for Mamdani’s mayoral transition and is likely to keep questions about antisemitism and accountability at the forefront as his administration begins to take shape. Mamdani has repeatedly stressed his commitment to protecting New York City’s Jewish community amid ongoing concern over rising antisemitism in the city and his own anti-Israel viewpoints.
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. During his tenure in the NYC City Council, Mamdani spearheaded the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” legislation which would ban charities from using tax-deductible donations to aid organizations that work in the West Bank. In 2021, Mamdani issued public support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement—an initiative which seeks to economically and diplomatically isolate Israel in the first step to its eventual destruction.
Notably, on Oct. 8, 2023, 24 hours following the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani published a statement condemning “Netanyahu’s declaration of war” and suggesting that Israel would use the terror attacks to justify committing a second “Nakba.” Mamdani then said that Israel can only secure its long term safety by “ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”