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Ukrainian Jewish life has always taken place in Russian. Now a race to translate is underway.
LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) – The rabbis sat around a breakfast table, discussing Russia’s war on the country where they work in a mixture of Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. They named their hometowns as Lugansk, Lvov and Dnepr, the Russian names for Ukrainian cities that have vaulted into international headlines since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Although they were focused on Ukraine’s progress in the fighting, the rabbis uttered not a single word in Ukrainian. How could they? Like the vast majority of Jews in Ukraine, none of them speaks the country’s official language.
Russian has long been the first language for a wide swath of Ukrainians, including the majority of the country’s Jews. But after the Russian invasion, many Ukrainians decided they wanted to speak less Russian and more Ukrainian. Many Jews, similarly horrified by the sight of thousands of Russian soldiers pouring over Ukraine’s borders and wishing to demonstrate their Ukrainian bonafides, have made the same choice — even as it means disrupting a long linguistic tradition.
So when the rabbis’ successors meet for pancakes and sour cream, they will be far more likely to introduce themselves as the rabbis of Luhansk, Lviv and Dnipro, the Ukrainian names for their hometowns that have become the standard in English. They will also likely be able to hand their students and congregants Ukrainian-language versions of central Jewish texts that simply do not exist now.
“Many of my friends say that they are embarrassed to use Russian as a language. They say that we are Ukrainian Jews, and that Russia is a terrorist country fighting us and that we shouldn’t use their language,” said Rabbi Meir Stambler, from Dnipro. “Others say that [Russian president Vladimir] Putin doesn’t own the Russian language. It is an issue.”
He added, “This is something that people are discussing all the time.”
A decade ago, half of Ukrainians said they spoke Russian as their native language. That number has declined to 20%, fueled in part by resentment over Russia’s aggressions in Crimea, a contested region that it annexed by force in 2014. But Jews have remained predominantly Russian-speaking, even in parts of western Ukraine where Ukrainian has long been the dominant language. (Russian and Ukrainian are related linguistically, but their speakers cannot understand each other.)
Russia’s war on Ukraine has Ukrainian Jews playing catchup. Stambler, who heads the Federation of Jewish Communities, a body affiliated with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement that operates a network of 36 synagogues around Ukraine, offers a stark prediction: “Within 10 years, every Jew in Ukraine will speak Ukrainian.”
The dominance of Russian among Ukraine’s Jews, who numbered in the tens of thousands before the war, has deep roots.
“The historical trajectory of Jews in what is now Ukraine led them in the 19th century to adopt Russian rather than Ukrainian,” says historian Natan Meir, a professor of Judaic studies at Portland State University. “That was because Ukrainian was perceived as a peasant language that did not have any high culture associated with it, and because there were no economic advantages to adopting Ukrainian at the time.”
Now, the upside of switching to Ukrainian — demonstrating a national allegiance during a time of war — couldn’t be clearer.
“Jews feel quite integrated into Ukrainian society, but a shift, even if it is a gradual shift, to Ukrainian is going to make that more tangible than ever,” Meir said, calling the Russian invasion “absolutely game-changing” for Ukrainian Jews. “They will be perceived even more strongly than they have been as being wholly Ukrainian and part of the fabric of Ukrainian society.”
Most Ukrainian Jews, especially those educated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, can now speak some Ukrainian. But their ability often depends on where they grew up: Many Jews in traditionally Russophone cities such as Odesa, Dnipro or Kharkiv can struggle with the language, while their grandparents often cannot speak it at all.
Books in both Hebrew and Russian sit on a bookshelf at Medzhybizh. (Jacob Judah)
“Not more than 20% were Ukrainian-speaking at home,” says Stambler. “Take President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. He knew Ukrainian, but he didn’t speak it at home, and he had to polish it up when he became president.”
It will not be simple for the Jewish community to suddenly switch to Ukrainian, the most widely spoken European language without a standardized translation of the Torah.
Two years ago, a team of translators working in Israel, Austria and Hungary began working to produce Ukrainian-language Jewish texts. But before the Russian invasion, the effort had so far produced only a Ukrainian book of psalms, or tehillim.
In May, two months into the war, a decision was made to accelerate work on a daily prayer book. A Torah could follow.
“The chumash is difficult,” said Stambler, who oversees the half-dozen-strong team of translators from his base in Dnipro, using the Hebrew word for the printed form of the Torah. “We are working on it.”
While translating sacred texts can take years, other changes have come faster. The leaflets, brochures and calendars that are a fixture at any Jewish center in Ukraine were quickly swapped out Russian for Ukrainian, at least at the federation’s headquarters. Before February, these had often been produced and printed by Russian Jewish communities and shared with those in Ukraine, for simplicity’s sake.
“This differentiation from Russian Jewry is going to be huge,” said Meir, the historian. “Up until this point they have essentially formed one linguistic and cultural space that all Jews, whether they were in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus could move freely between.”
Now, the ties between those communities are both logistically complicated to maintain — trade routes have been ruptured — and also potentially a liability at a time when anyone in either Russia or Ukraine showing an affinity for the other country can face suspicion or penalties.
“This shift, if it actually happens, is going to be marking out a totally new cultural space for Ukrainian Jews and almost a declaration of independence,” Meir said “Or at least that is the aspiration, because there is so much of their heritage which is still based in the Russian language that it is going to be a long time before they can fully separate.”
That separation process, which began to take shape most clearly after 2014, has quickened. “We started doing things ourselves,” said Stambler. “We used to do about 20% in Ukrainian for the Jews in western towns like Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Uzhhorod, but we are making a much stronger push now.”
He estimates that some 75% of material being distributed to Ukrainian Jewish communities by the Federation of Jewish Communities was in Ukrainian by September, up from 20% to 35% in January.
Young rabbis who come from the United States or Israel to serve small Jewish communities across Ukraine now say that they have had to add Ukrainian alongside their Russian classes.
“I began with Russian,” said one of those rabbis who works in Vinnitsya, until he decided over the summer that he had to learn Ukrainian. “I realized that I had to learn Ukrainian because I needed it on the street. I needed it to speak with the government and with the media.”
Signs in a synagogue in Ukraine are written in both Ukrainian and Russian. (Jacob Judah)
Some Ukrainian Jews are voting with their voices.
“My whole life, I spoke only Russian,” said Olha Peresunko, who before the war lived in Mikolaiv in southern Ukraine. “But after the 24th of February I am speaking only Ukrainian.”
Peresunko was speaking outside a Lviv synagogue this fall, where she and other refugees were waiting for food parcels. She had fled Mikolaiv, which has sustained repeated assault by Russian troops, for Lviv with her mother and two children while her husband is on the frontlines.
Her children are finding it hard to adjust to the exclusive Ukrainian environment in Lviv, but she is confident that they will make the shift. “They will speak Ukrainian as their first language,” Peresunko said.
Exactly how much the shift to Ukrainian will change local Jewish communities is a matter of debate. Rabbi Shalom Gopin, who fled to Kyiv in 2014 from his home community in Luhansk, an overwhelmingly Russophone city seized by Russia-backed separatists at that time, said he, too, believes that Ukrainian will displace Russian as the lingua franca of Ukrainian Jewry.
A Ukrainian woman displays her Ukrainian-language Jewish calendar as a source of pride, September 2022. (Jacob Judah)
“They are starting to slowly speak Ukrainian,” he said. “It is no problem. There are lots of Jews in America who speak English. We live here, and we speak the languages of the places that we live. It is normal.”
But Gopin said the linguistic shift “means nothing” amid other issues facing Jews in Ukraine, where Russia’s war is threatening to undo 30 years of Jewish community building, largely though not exclusively led by Chabad, Gopin’s Orthodox movement.
“The problem for the Jews of Ukraine is not language,” he said. “It is about how much they are going to synagogue, or how many children are going to Jewish schools, not about what they are speaking.”
Natalia Kozachuk, 45, a Jewish businesswoman in Lviv, sees only upside to shedding Russian, her native language. She has started to speak to her children only in Ukrainian.
“It will be hugely positive if Jews speak more Ukrainian,” Kozachuk said. This is the only way that Jews can truly “learn more about the Ukrainian people,” she said, “about their history and the positive qualities and strengths of Ukraine.”
“Only good can come of it,” she added. “We will understand each other better.”
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650+ US rabbis sign letter opposing Zohran Mamdani and the ‘political normalization’ of anti-Zionism
(JTA) — As the New York mayoral election draws near, a group of 650 rabbis and cantors from across the United States have signed onto a letter voicing their opposition to mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and the “political normalization” of anti-Zionism.
The letter, titled “A Rabbinic Call to Action: Defending the Jewish Future,” cited Mamdani’s previous defense of the slogan “globalize the Intifada,” his denial of “Israel’s legitimacy” and his accusations that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza.
The letter quotes Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the leader of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, who told his congregants in a YouTube address last week that Mamdani’s rhetoric will “delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility toward Judaism and Jews.”
Hirsch was also one of the signatories on the letter, which included a wide range of rabbis and cantors from over 30 states as well as Toronto. It was organized by the new Jewish Majority advocacy group, led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman.
About 60 rabbis across denominations in New York City signed on, including Rabbi Joshua Davidson of the Reform Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, Rabbi David Ingber of the progressive synagogue Romemu on the Upper West Side and the 92nd Street Y and Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side.
Gerald Weider, a rabbi emeritus at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Mamdani spoke earlier this month at the invitation of its current rabbi, also signed on.
Other influential rabbis across the country who signed on include the author and former leader of Los Angeles’ Conservative Sinai Temple Rabbi David Wolpe and Rabbi Denise Eger, the first openly LGBTQ+ rabbi to head the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
While New York City rabbis, including Hirsch, have previously voiced their opposition to endorsing candidates from the pulpit, that norm appears to have been set aside as Mamdani carves out a significant edge ahead of the Nov. 4 election.
The candidate has said Israel has a right to exist as a state with “with equal rights for all”; he has also said he would “discourage” the phrase “globalize the intifada,” acknowledging that it makes some Jews scared, and would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited New York.
“We will not accept a culture that treats Jewish self-determination as a negotiable ideal or Jewish inclusion as something to be ‘granted,’” the letter says. “The safety and dignity of Jews in every city depend on rejecting that false choice.”
The letter quotes Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, who urged his congregants during a sermon last week not only to vote against Mamdani but to convince other Jews they know to do the same.
“We also call on our interfaith and communal partners to stand with the Jewish community in rejecting this dangerous rhetoric and to affirm the rights of Jews to live securely and with dignity,” the letter concluded. “Now is the time for everyone to unite across political and moral divides, and to reject the language that seeks to delegitimize our Jewish identity and our community.”
The post 650+ US rabbis sign letter opposing Zohran Mamdani and the ‘political normalization’ of anti-Zionism appeared first on The Forward.
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International Court of Justice says Israel must work with UN to deliver aid into Gaza
(JTA) — The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on Wednesday that Israel is legally obligated to work with the United Nations’ Palestinian relief agency to deliver aid into Gaza.
In its opinion, the ICJ rejected Israel’s justification for barring UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, from operating in Israel in March, saying it was unable to prove that the agency was subject to “widespread infiltration” by Hamas.
While UNRWA still operates in Gaza, it has been unable to bring supplies into the enclave since the ban took effect.
“The occupying power may never invoke reasons of security to justify the general suspension of all humanitarian activities in occupied territory,” Judge Iwasawa Yuji said while delivering the opinion. “After examining the evidence, the court finds that the local population in Gaza Strip has been inadequately supplied.”
The ruling comes as top U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, are in Israel to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and lay the groundwork for improved humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Jared Kushner, who helped broker the deal, said there had been “surprisingly strong coordination” between the United Nations and Israel on delivering humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The ICJ, the United Nation’s top legal body, has no enforcement power. It ruled in January 2024 that South Africa’s claims that Palestinians are at risk of genocide were “plausible” but has not issued a ruling in that case.
The court’s opinion Wednesday passed in a vote of 10 to 1, with its Vice President Julia Sebutinde, who has previously ruled in favor of Israel, writing in her opinion that the court did not “sufficiently consider” UNRWA’s infiltration by Hamas.
Israel has long accused UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. A UN investigation into the agency found that nine of its 13,000 workers “may have” participated in the attacks but no longer work for the agency.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry decried the ruling Wednesday in a post on X, writing that it “rejects the politicization of International Law.”
“Israel categorically rejects the ICJ’s ‘advisory opinion,’ which was entirely predictable from the outset regarding UNRWA,” the post read. “This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘International Law.’”
The post International Court of Justice says Israel must work with UN to deliver aid into Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas to Ramp Up Brutal Crackdown on Gazans as New Israeli Data Shows Terror Group Still Heavily Armed
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
As new Israeli intelligence reveals that Hamas remains heavily armed despite severe losses during the two-year conflict in Gaza, the Palestinian terrorist group is intensifying its brutal crackdown on all opposition in the enclave.
Hamas still maintains a substantial stockpile of rockets and other weaponry, even after being severely weakened by Israel’s military campaign, according to information and estimates gathered by the Israeli defense establishment and shared with Hebrew media on Wednesday.
The newly released intelligence assessment, reported by Israel’s Channel 12 news, indicates that the Palestinian terrorist group is facing a major weapons shortfall, with over 60 percent of its military equipment lost, nearly half of its forces — including senior members — eliminated, and more than half of its above-ground infrastructure destroyed.
However, Israel believes that Hamas, despite suffering severe losses during the war, continues to operate more than half of its tunnels, with its underground infrastructure serving as the Islamist group’s main hub. Hamas also still has hundreds of rockets, some of them medium range, which can reach the center of Israel, and has more than 10,000 other weapons.
Meanwhile, Hamas is still bringing in recruits and has about 20,000 terrorists still active in the ranks of the organization. However, these are primarily fighters with little experience and competence, according to Israeli assessments, who have undergone only limited training, while the terrorist group’s elite Nukhba forces, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, have struggled to replenish their decimated ranks.
Shortly after the US-backed ceasefire to halt fighting in Gaza took effect, Hamas moved to reassert control over the war-torn enclave and consolidate its weakened position by targeting Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel.”
According to Iranian media, Hamas is preparing to launch its largest operation yet to eliminate the remaining armed opposition groups “that continue to collaborate with the Israeli occupation forces.”
“In the coming days, we will launch our largest security campaign yet, targeting multiple areas where these groups remain,” a Hamas official told the Iranian state outlet Press TV.
“Our goal is to eliminate all collaborators and ensure peace and security for the people of Gaza,” he continued.
Since the ceasefire, which left the Israeli military in control of 53 percent of the enclave, took effect earlier this month, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has escalated dramatically, sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
The terrorist group has publicly executed alleged collaborators and rival militia members in the 47 percent of Gaza that remains outside Israeli military control, an area where the majority of Gaza’s population still lives under Hamas’s authority.
BREAKING: Some reports suggest that Hamas has informed Egypt they’ve decided to stop the public executions of Palestinians in Gaza.
Let’s hope that’s true. pic.twitter.com/qFpJ7u3MhH
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) October 17, 2025
Social media videos widely circulated online show Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians, dragging them across the ground, and even breaking their legs or kneecapping them in an effort to terrorize the population.
Hamas continues to torture Palestinians in Gaza. Will anyone speak out about this? pic.twitter.com/AsogVjdyVn
— Eretz Israel (@EretzIsrael) October 22, 2025
Hamas officials have accused Israel and the United States of attempting to use these alleged “collaborators” and militias as proxies to undermine the group’s authority and destabilize Gaza following the ceasefire.
Last week, US President Donald Trump warned that he would support attacks on Hamas if the group continued its violent campaigns and public executions.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also drew attention to Hamas’s escalating violence in Gaza, slamming the international community for its silence.
“Killings in public by Palestinian Hamas – and deafening silence from the ‘moral preachers.’ Do you hear the sound of the crickets?” the ministry wrote in a post on X.
Killings in public by Palestinian Hamas – and deafening silence from the “moral preachers”.
Do you hear the sound of the crickets? pic.twitter.com/CcnX94d39U— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 22, 2025
Meanwhile, Hamas leaders met with Qatari and Turkish officials in Doha on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing ceasefire and plans for rebuilding Gaza after the war.
As regional powers back reconstruction efforts in support of Trump’s peace plan, experts have warned about the expanding roles of Qatar and Turkey in such initiatives, amid concerns that their involvement could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure. Both countries have been key backers Hamas for years.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at opposition to any involvement of Turkish security forces in monitoring the US-backed ceasefire in Gaza.