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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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What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste
It has become exceedingly difficult to get a bowl of kosher matzo ball soup in my L.A. neighborhood. I’m reminded of this every few months, when a cold or a craving reminds me what we lost when Pico Kosher Deli, established in 1968 about a mile from my apartment, closed for good early in the pandemic. It’s not just the soup, of course. It’s the whole kosher deli experience — bulging pastrami sandwiches, a waitress with a notepad, frilly toothpicks.
The traditional kosher deli is dying, if not dead, and not just in L.A. Kosher Ashkenazi fare is officially passé, a cuisine category today’s balabustas — at least my millennial Modern Orthodox cohort — have abandoned. At the kosher markets, Manischewitz products are relegated to a dusty corner, the “kosher aisle” of the kosher grocer. And at surviving delis like Katz’s and Canter’s, kosher is not a religious certification. It is, simply, a nostalgia cue immediately preceding the word “style.”
Fortunately, a wave of new, smartly packaged foodstuffs capitalizing on that nostalgia has arrived to restore my Ashkenazi birthright, or at least my former sodium levels. In the years since my neighborhood deli closed, direct-to-consumer brands have launched to hawk kosher potato latke crisps, kosher matzo chips and kosher jarred charoset (lovingly named Schmutz). The newcomer that I sprung for was a kosher instant matzo ball soup called Nooish. A box of four stout, colorful soup cups arrived about a week after I ordered them online.
To find out why these shelf-stable products have taken off while delis languish, I called Nate Rosen, whose official title — creator of the consumer brands newsletter Express Checkout — obscures the coolness of his job, which largely consists of reviewing new snacks on TikTok. According to Rosen, the kosher renaissance was part of a broader surge of food startups during the pandemic, when free time and disposable income were suddenly in abundance. It was inevitable someone would find the Jewish angle on the trend.
“There’s a market for it,” Rosen said. “There’s dedicated spots for it [on shelves]. And I think especially now, people are proud to be Jewish and proud to show that off a little bit.”
Nooish’s instant soup, ready in just a couple minutes, doesn’t come with booth seating. But taste-wise, comfort-wise and deli-wise, it’s a worthy adaptation of the experience. The kneidlach — three to a cup, each a bit larger than a Ping-Pong ball and floating in a salty brown broth, hold their form but obey your spoon. (There’s no chicken, and the soup is certified pareve.) At four-for-$36, the instant soup is probably too pricey for your kid’s lunchbox, and not substantial enough for an adult meal. But in a pinch — say, a cold or a craving — it can be transporting.
If the kosher deli is out, what’s in? The answer awaited me at Hatch Kitchen, a new kosher meat restaurant, where earlier this week I watched a barista prepare a fancy smoothie. Elaborate, astonishingly expensive and often named after celebrities, fancy smoothies are an L.A. institution, the lifeblood of the influencer class. The most notorious of these drinks, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie, contains strawberries and dates but also vanilla collagen powder and something called sea moss gel. It costs $20.
Hatch, I was told, makes something similar, the strawberry-based “Or-gan-ic” (the middle syllable also the Hebrew word for garden), which the restaurant calls its “most viral smoothie.” No sea moss gel, but the menu touts “anti-inflammatory” ingredients that include flax seeds and hibiscus. It’s $12, which sounds like a lot if you’ve never spent $20 on a smoothie before, and like a bargain if you just did, and for that one you’d had to look a cashier in the eye and utter the name of Justin Bieber’s wife. (At Hatch, you order from an iPad.)
Hatch’s fancy smoothie — which is also a photogenic one — models the dominant trend in contemporary kosher dining: pop-culture mimicry. Across from where the Pico Kosher Deli once stood, you can order a kosher crunchwrap supreme — a Taco Bell menu item — from a Mexican street food place called Lenny’s Casita. Kosher cafes still serve bagels, but people go for the avocado toast. It’s kosher dining’s hypebeast era, if you can afford it; Lenny’s crunchwrap with beef runs $30. I’m not sure how close the knockoff is to the real thing, or whether proximity really matters. Most customers will never taste the alternative.
There’s a tension inherent in these appropriated menu items — affirming both the desirability of secular culture and the Jewish laws forbidding it. Cultural diffusion and communal retreat. Assimilation and resistance. Meanwhile, the ancestral cuisine, which emerged out of kosher dietary laws, has been simultaneously rejected and idealized. You can’t find too many kosher delis, but TikTok has popularized pickle fountains. (Wait until they find out about hamantaschen.)
I was sort of sad about this state of affairs until I spoke to David Sax, who was dismayed enough about the decline of delis to write a book about it. He explained that Jewish deli food developed as a way of transforming European deli methods and flavors, which were more often made with pork, into kosher adaptations. The corned beef sandwich was the original fancy smoothie, which means our kosher crunchwrap might become tomorrow’s matzo ball soup. The comfort food changes, but the people endure.
The post What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas, Hezbollah, Terror Allies Vow to Keep Fighting Israel, Reject Regional Peace Initiatives
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Hamas and allied terrorist groups on Friday hailed the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a “landmark victory,” rejecting disarmament and vowing to continue fighting the Jewish state even as international efforts push to implement a regional peace plan.
Leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and several other Islamist terrorist groups gathered at the 34th Arab National Conference in Beirut, where speakers called for “resistance against the Israeli occupation and its expansionist projects in Palestine and the region,” Arabic-language Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reported.
During the summit, terrorist leaders rejected efforts to compel them to disarm and pledged to continue fighting against Western influence across the Middle East, emphasizing the central role of weapons “in protecting national sovereignty and securing the region’s future.”
“On Oct. 7, an extraordinary act of heroism unfolded across Palestine and its borders, as people everywhere contributed in their own way to support us,” Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya said during the conference, referring to the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel in 2023.
“Gaza is wounded today, but it remains steadfast, calling on everyone to stay united in the pursuit of our legitimate national goals,” the terrorist leader continued.
“Palestine will endure, just as Gaza has, despite the aggression — its land, its people, men, women, and children — and eventually, injustice will be overcome,” al-Hayya said.
” طوفان الأقصى كان رداً على محاولات طمس القضية الفلسطينية وبناء شرق أوسط جديد”
رئيس حركة حماس في #غزة خليل الحية #الميادين pic.twitter.com/tsSAc44KXY
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
At the Beirut gathering, Hamas and its terrorist allies praised the Oct. 7 atrocities, calling them a turning point in their fight against the “Zionist occupation.” They also opposed any attempt to divide Gaza and reaffirmed their commitment to unity.
“We emerged from this battle against the occupation with our weapons in hand. All resistance factions stood united against the aggression, and that same solidarity extended to the political front,” Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala said during the conference.
“[US President Donald] Trump’s plan has set numerous obstacles and conditions that cannot be implemented,” al-Nakhala continued, referring to the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
“لقد كانت كل فصائل المقاومة يداً واحدة في وجه العدوان وكذلك كان الحال على الصعيد السياسي ولولا ذلك لما صمدنا شهراً واحداً”
الأمين العام لحركة الجهاد الإسلامي زياد النحالة في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/w71U1GNkZx
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Amid international efforts to mediate the Gaza conflict and bring peace to the Middle East, Hamas and its allies said they opposed all such initiatives, opting instead to escalate violence and advance their own agenda.
At the summit, Jamil Mazhar, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called for “rejecting plans to place the Palestinian people under tutelage and opposing any attempt at demographic change” — a clear rebuke of the Gaza peace plan.
Under Trump’s plan, an International Stabilization Force (ISF) will oversee the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and train local security forces
The ISF would include troops from multiple participating countries and would be responsible for securing Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, while also protecting civilians and maintaining humanitarian corridors.
“We have gathered to renew our commitment against the Zionist enemy and its allies, and to reaffirm that the fight continues,” Mazhar said during his speech at the conference.
“Today, we must move beyond mere solidarity and slogans, and put them into practical action,” the terrorist leader continued.
During the summit, Hezbollah international relations official Ammar al-Moussawi reaffirmed the Lebanese terrorist group’s commitment to defending and supporting the “resistance in Gaza.”
“We joined the battle to support Gaza out of our conviction in the justice and righteousness of this cause, and we do not regret our decision,” al-Moussawi said.
“History shows that the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine has endured crises far graver than today’s, and the same resistance that produced those martyred leaders is fully capable of producing new ones,” he continued.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also said at the conference that “the support fronts have played a key role throughout this important two-year round.”
“Hezbollah’s role is at the forefront of the support fronts, thanks to its steadfastness, pioneering and significant contributions, and immense sacrifices,” the leader of the terrorist group in Yemen said.
“The Israeli enemy, in alliance with the United States, seeks to impose a permissive formula and always place the blame on the victim,” he added.
“The Israeli enemy is attempting to disarm the weapons that protect Lebanon and the arms that have prevented it from controlling Gaza for the past two years,” al-Houthi said.
“العدو الإسرائيلي يحاول نزع السلاح الذي يحمي لبنان والسلاح الذي يُعيقه عن السيطرة على غزة على مدى عامين”
قائد حركة أنصار الله السيد عبد الملك الحوثي في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/utTs6S26Wc
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the Islamist groups with weapons, funding, and training.
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US Rep. Elise Stefanik, Outspoken Pro-Israel Supporter, Jumps Into New York Gubernatorial Race
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the US Congress, officially announced on Friday that she will run for governor of New York in the 2026 election, a move that could reshape the political landscape in the Empire State.
In a campaign video released early Friday morning, Stefanik declared that she would fight to make “New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state.” She took aim at incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership, declaring her the “worst governor in America.”
The campaign announcement video lambasted Hochul’s “failed policies” and depicted New York as a wasteland overrun by “migrant crime.”
“Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to save New York,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik, 41, has represented New York’s 21st Congressional District since January 2015 and has risen to national prominence as chair of the House Republican Conference. A close ally of US President Donald Trump, she has also emerged as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the US House of Representatives.
During the Israel-Hamas war, Stefanik earned praise across Jewish communities for her unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s terrorism and her efforts to hold American universities accountable for antisemitic incidents on campus. Her fiery December 2023 questioning of Ivy League presidents during a congressional hearing, in which she pressed them on their refusal to denounce calls for genocide against Jews, went viral and cemented her reputation as a defender of American Jewry.
In March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations due to the Republican Party’s razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives and concerns over passing legislation.
Though most polls indicate that Hochul maintains a lead over Stefanik, a recent survey by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the conservative firebrand leading Hochul 43 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
Hochul issued a pithy retort to Stefanik’s attacks.
“My message to Trump’s ‘top ally’ – bring it on,” Hochul said on X.
Though New York remains a heavily Democratic state, her candidacy could energize conservatives across upstate and suburban regions, particularly amid voter discontent over crime, migration, and the state’s economy. However, skeptics suggest that her status as a close Trump ally could capsize her candidacy in a historically blue state.
Pro-Israel groups have long considered Stefanik one of their strongest allies on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other advocacy organizations have praised her leadership on anti-BDS legislation and support for US military aid to Israel. In April, she introduced the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, which would bar entities that boycott Israel from doing business with the US federal government.
Stefanik’s quest to become governor comes as Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Israel activist and member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), prepares to become mayor of New York City following his election victory on Tuesday. Stefanik lambasted Hochul recently after the governor issued a formal endorsement of Mamdani, claiming that Hochul aligned herself with Mamdani’s alleged antisemitism. If Stefanik were to become governor, she could potentially serve as a critical bulwark in thwarting any anti-Israel policies from Mamdani’s office.
If elected, Stefanik would become the first female Republican governor of New York.