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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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NYC synagogue protest leads to a new bill, and a rally by Jewish groups outside Park East shul
(JTA) — A demonstration outside Park East Synagogue two weeks ago, during which protesters shouted chants like “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the Intifada,” has spurred major Jewish groups and lawmakers into action.
A coalition of Jewish groups are organizing a solidarity gathering on Manhattan’s Upper East Side Thursday night, outside the same synagogue where pro-Palestinian groups protested an event promoting immigration to Israel — a scene that NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch later referred to as “turmoil.”
The rally “will bring our community together in that same sacred space to celebrate and defend our community’s values and support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland,” according to a press release from UJA-Federation of New York.
UJA is partnering on the rally with Park East Synagogue itself, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council, the New York Board of Rabbis, and local branches of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.
They’ve also listed dozens of Jewish organizations, schools and congregations as partners. Schools and synagogues around the city were sharing information with families about how to commute to the rally.
The gathering will feature live performances, community leaders and elected officials, according to UJA’s release, though it did not specify who would be present.
The rally is set to take place on the heels of newly introduced legislation, brought forward on Wednesday by a pair of Jewish lawmakers — Assembly member Micah Lasher and State Sen. Sam Sutton — that proposes banning protests within 25 feet of houses of worship.
“New York must always be a place where people can both exercise free speech and express their religious identity without fear or intimidation, and that balance broke down outside Park East Synagogue,” said Micah Lasher, who is running for Congress in New York’s 12th district, which includes Park East.
The bill was co-sponsored by fellow Jewish lawmakers Nily Rozic, a Democratic Assembly member, and Sen. Liz Krueger, who endorsed mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the general election.
Many Jewish groups were disappointed with the initial response to the incident by Mamdani’s spokesperson, who said that while Mamdani would “discourage the language used” at the protest, “these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” The second clause was a reference to complaints that the synagogue event’s organizers facilitate immigration to the West Bank, which most countries consider illegally occupied by Israel under international law.
Critics said Mamdani’s statement drew an unfair comparison between menacing protesters and a synagogue exercising its commitment to Jewish communities in what the ADL referred to as their “ancestral homeland,” and that the protest made no distinction between immigration to Israel and the West Bank.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has been a harsh critic of Mamdani and is the son of Park East’s senior rabbi, said on WABC that he’s had multiple phone calls with the mayor-elect about legislation like the bill proposed by Lasher and Sutton.
Schneier said Mamdani was receptive to the idea during their discussions, and a Mamdani spokesperson told The New York Times that the mayor-elect “expressed his interest in hearing more details about the Schneier pitch.”
Jewish leaders say they are looking to Thursday as an opportunity to counter the rhetoric used outside Park East.
Chaim Steinmetz, a critic of Mamdani and the senior rabbi of a different Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side, shared a post about Thursday’s rally, calling it an opportunity to “stand up as proud Jews.”
“And now, with a new city administration about to take office, it is more important than ever that we bring our pride into the streets,” he wrote.
The post NYC synagogue protest leads to a new bill, and a rally by Jewish groups outside Park East shul appeared first on The Forward.
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LA mayor condemns protest outside synagogue event that featured Israeli defense firm
An anti-Israel demonstration outside a prominent Los Angeles synagogue led to two arrests Wednesday, drawing condemnation from the city’s mayor who decried the protesters’ behavior as antisemitic.
Multiple local pro-Palestinian groups promoted the protest outside Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a Reform synagogue, which was hosting a program on the intersection of artificial intelligence and public safety that featured speakers from Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems, the Israeli police and the local Jewish federation. The event was organized by the Israeli Consulate General of Los Angeles.
Videos from the scene uploaded to social media showed around 20 protesters, many clad in masks and keffiyehs, gathering outside the entrance to the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, a neighboring event space owned by the synagogue, and engaging in heated arguments with people on their way into the event.
The protesters hung a large banner that said “Elbit out of Los Angeles” and “Genociders not welcome,” and distributed flyers that said Elbit was responsible for weapons and technology that Israel uses against Palestinian civilians and that ICE uses in the U.S.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department said officers arrested one person for battery and another for vandalism.
Rabbi Joel Nickerson, the synagogue’s head rabbi, called the incident “a disturbing outbreak of hate” in a statement.
“These individuals targeted the Jewish community and chose to disrupt a community event on synagogue property that was focused on advancing public safety in Koreatown,” he said, adding, “No one should be targeted in the City of Los Angeles on account of their faith.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that protesters were calling attendees antisemitic names and had damaged property inside the synagogue. She said additional LAPD officers had been deployed to patrol near areas of worship.
“This behavior is abhorrent and has no place in Los Angeles,” Bass said. “I spoke with Rabbi Nickerson to ensure he and his congregation know that the City of Los Angeles stands with them and fully condemns these attacks.”
It was unclear how many protesters gained access to the building or how they were able to. The damaged property appeared to include a broken vase, according to video from the scene posted to social media.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles said in a statement that the protest was “antisemitism and hate disguised as dissent.”
“We are outraged and condemn this antisemitic behavior in the strongest of terms,” it said.
The protest appeared to be coordinated by multiple groups, among them Koreatown for Palestine, a local chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement and the far-left group People’s City Council Los Angeles. They urged their social media followers to call in their concerns prior to the event to the synagogue and to the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, and to arrive early Wednesday to picket outside the latter.
“We KNOW that these technologies are created on the targeting and killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and will do the same to vulnerable communities in Ktown,” the Palestinian Youth Movement chapter wrote Tuesday on Instagram.
Titled “Innovating Safety, Empowering Communities,” Wednesday’s symposium was billed as an event that would strengthen bonds between Jews, Israelis, Koreans and Korean Americans. The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles’ emblem appears on a flyer for the event.
The program included appearances from Gal Ben Ish, the Israel Police Attache to North America, and Goni Saar from Elbit Systems. Saar’s LinkedIn profile says he is a strategic business development manager for the firm; a program for the event said he presented on “public safety AI tools.”
Saar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also speaking were the head of the Jewish federation’s Community Security Initiative, and Sheva Cho, a Korean singer who moved to Israel in 2012.
Elbit is one of the oldest and largest defense companies in Israel, employing some 18,000 people, and it developed the drones IDF has used heavily in its wars following the Oct. 7 attacks. An Elbit Hermes 450 drone reportedly struck the World Central Kitchen aid convoy in April 2024, killing seven aid workers.
According to the Elbit website, artificial intelligence tools have played a major role in Israel’s war in Gaza.
“From unmanned aerial systems and drones to electronic warfare, intelligence gathering, robotics and more, AI played an important role,” an article on the website reads. “Elbit is leading some of these directions like autonomous vehicles, different platforms and weapons that are targeted and analyzed constantly with AI, drones, AI on a strategic level to analyze different signals that can show how the enemy is working (including in civilian areas).”
People’s City Council Los Angeles did not return a request for comment, but pushed back against the assertion that the protest was antisemitic in posts Wednesday night on X.
“The ‘private event’ in question was put on by the Consulate General of Israel,” the organization wrote in a response to Bass’ post. “It featured Goni Saar from Elbit Systems and the Israel Police Attache to North America, Gal Ben Ish. It took place at Audrey Irmas Pavilion, an events venue, not Wilshire Boulevard Temple.”
Wilshire Boulevard Temple is one of the oldest synagogues on the West Coast, dating its construction to the 1920s; the congregation itself was founded in the 19th century. But the Audrey Irmas Pavilion is a recent addition, opening in 2021. It has since been featured in the Netflix show Nobody Wants This.
The post LA mayor condemns protest outside synagogue event that featured Israeli defense firm appeared first on The Forward.
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China Slams Israel for Joining UN Human Rights Statement Condemning Beijing
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon addressing the UN Security Council on Sept. 19, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
China slammed Israel on Wednesday for joining a United Nations declaration condemning its human rights record, accusing some nations of “slandering” Beijing on the international stage as bilateral relations between the two countries grow increasingly tense.
Last week, Israel endorsed a US-backed declaration, signed by 15 other countries — including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan — that expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” over human rights violations in China.
In a rare move, Jerusalem broke with its traditionally cautious approach to China — aimed at preserving diplomatic and economic ties — by signing on to the statement as Beijing continues to strengthen relations with Iran, whose Islamic government openly seeks Israel’s destruction, and expand its influence in the Middle East.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing.
Iran’s growing ties with China come at a time when Tehran faces mounting economic sanctions from Western powers, while Beijing itself is also under US sanctions.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
With this latest UN declaration, the signatory countries denounced China’s repression of ethnic and religious minority groups, citing arbitrary detentions, forced labor, mass surveillance, and restrictions on cultural and religious expression.
According to the statement, minority groups — particularly Uyghurs, other Muslim communities, Christians, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners — face targeted repression, including the separation of children from their families, torture, and the destruction of cultural heritage.
In response, China’s Foreign Ministry accused the signatories of “slandering and smearing” the country and interfering in its internal affairs “in serious violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.”
The UN declaration also voiced “deep concern” over the erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law in Hong Kong, citing arrest warrants and fines for activists abroad, as well as the use of state censorship and surveillance to control information, suppress public debate, and create a “climate of fear” that silences criticism.
Western powers called on China to release all individuals unjustly detained for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms and to fully comply with international law.
Israel’s latest diplomatic move comes amid an already tense relationship with China, strained since the start of the war in Gaza. In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Beijing, along with Qatar, of funding a “media blockade” against the Jewish state.
At the time, the Chinese embassy in Israel dismissed such accusations, saying they “lack factual basis [and] harm China-Israel relations.”