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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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Israel’s reputation is in free fall. One radical change could help
Israeli settlers spent months ramping up a campaign of terror against Palestinians in the West Bank — torching mosques, Qurans and farmland; attacking innocent civilians; and defacing IDF bases — before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even weakly condemned these “riots” for violating Israeli law. And that statement, issued on Sunday, only came because of international outrage.
If you want to understand why Americans are abandoning Israel, that long silence is your answer. Israel’s opponents frame the state as hellbent on ridding the land of Palestinians by any means necessary, and the American public increasingly believe them. When Israel’s leaders and supporters turn a blind eye to lawless settlers, and the Palestinian suffering they create, that belief is reinforced.
For that to change, the response to settler violence has to change. Israel and its supporters must try to expunge this extremism from its circles.
That will not be easy, because settler violence is not a new phenomenon.
For the last 50 years, a radical ideology preaching Israeli dominance, and advocating Palestinian expulsion, has spread among settlers’ ranks. And they have come to expect impunity for extremist acts, because for much of that time, Israeli leadership failed to impose strict or meaningful consequences.
The attacks hit a fever pitch in the last two years, reaching an all-time high this October. In one notable example from two years ago, swaths of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian village of Huwara, leaving one Palestinian dead, about 100 injured and the entire town ablaze. The Israeli army did not intervene, and hardly anyone was punished.
The fact that extremists like the far-right cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — who often defend settlers in these cases — are prominently serving in Israel’s government indicts the Jewish state even further.
I understand that criticizing the state of Israel is a big no-no among pro-Israel organizations, which usually excuse their silence by saying they do not comment on domestic Israeli affairs. But this inaction is de facto acceptance. It’s a long-standing norm that needs to change.
In Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, Joshua Leifer traces this loyalty to the 1967 Six-Day War, which provoked a broad deepening of Zionist sentiment among American Jews. The result was a relationship in which diaspora supporters of Israel were expected to support the state without criticism — because criticism was seen as playing into the hands of Israel’s enemies, who had so recently posed an existential threat to the state’s continuance.
The overwhelming power of that expectation was perhaps best shown in the experience of Elie Wiesel — the Nobel Prize-winning human rights defender who survived the Holocaust — who was met with outrage when he tried to critique Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank in the 1970s, particularly taking aim at settlement expansion.
“Wiesel was so upset by the Israeli reaction that he made a pledge to himself never to criticize Israel again,” writes Joseph Berger in his 2024 biography Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence. “And he never did.”
Against this backdrop, for pro-Israel groups and advocates to stand against settler violence is no simple choice — but it is doable.
The American Jewish Committee consistently calls out acts of settler violence, urging accountability and punishment. Other groups — such as the Anti-Defamation League — did the same in prior years, although the drop-off of such advocacy over the last few years has been stark.
But much remains to be done, because the silent devotion to Israel by generations past does not work today. Not for Americans at large, and certainly not for young American Jews.
“For an older generation of American Jews, a mythologized vision of a progressive, social democratic Israel served as a source of moral inspiration,” Leifer writes in Tablets Shattered. “That view is much less prevalent today.”
While many young Jews still view Israel in such a light, Leifer explains, increasing numbers “have only known Israel as an authoritarian state and regional military power hurtling down a path of ever more extreme ethnonationalism.”
Pairing these conceptions with countless videos depicting masked Israelis brutalizing Palestinians and ransacking their properties in the West Bank, in addition to the devastation of the war in Gaza, it is no wonder why public opinion on Israel is in free fall.
American sympathy for Israel hit a 25-year low in March 2025. Views of Israel and its government worsen each year. Even American Jews are drifting — with 41% opposing more U.S. military aid to Israel and 39% believing Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The violence in the West Bank is almost certainly not the primary factor in that slide. But silence on it suggests that Israeli violence against Palestinians is acceptable — a stance that needs urgent and public correcting.
Condemnation is a necessary step, but words will not be enough to change the minds of opponents of the Jewish state. More crucially, supporters of Israel need to start taking steps to systematically combat extremism.
First, they must show zero tolerance for those who excuse or minimize crimes like those committed by settlers in the West Bank. Words without actions are meaningless, so pro-Israel groups must take steps to weed out those espousing views within their own community that align with the extremism now rife within settlement communities.
Second, they must unequivocally condemn violent rhetoric and actions against Palestinians. During the war against Hamas, for example, slogans like “no innocents in Gaza” and jokes mocking starving Palestinians ran rampant on social media from Israelis, including many Knesset members. Some were echoed by Israel’s supporters abroad. Pro-Israel groups must reject such rhetoric, as it applies to the West Bank as well as Gaza, immediately and forcefully.
Third, they must recognize Israel’s failure to subdue extremists and demand real accountability. They must demand investigations, prosecutions and punishments for violent settlers, insist that the Israeli government follow its own laws, and be prepared to impose consequences if those calls go unmet.
Claiming moral superiority while accepting extremism only reinforces distrust in Israeli narratives. Moreover, extremism of this flavor endangers the Jewish state itself by prolonging the conflict and degrading law and order.
This is not the behavior of a country committed to peace, justice and democracy — and the American public sees that. The absolutist narrative of total Israeli innocence is not only materially untrue but also entirely unconvincing.
Now is the time to pivot on the pro-Israel playbook and stand up for what we profess to care about. What Americans are looking for is not whether injustice takes place in Israel — but how the country and its supporters respond.
The post Israel’s reputation is in free fall. One radical change could help appeared first on The Forward.
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Exclusive: In bid for Nadler’s seat, Jack Schlossberg makes Jewish security his first priority
Jack Schlossberg, the online influencer turned political candidate running to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler, is making Jewish security a central pillar of his campaign in one of the nation’s largest Jewish districts. In an interview on Tuesday, Schlossberg, the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, said that if elected next year, he would immediately introduce legislation to nearly double federal funding for security upgrades at synagogues and other Jewish institutions.
He dubbed it the “Jack-fast-track” plan — a strategy that would involve introducing the bill while simultaneously collecting the 218 signatures needed for a discharge petition, allowing him to force a floor vote and bypass any potential delays in committee. “I don’t think we have any time to waste here because of how important this is,” said Schlossberg, who identifies as Jewish. “So no matter who’s in leadership in the House, this bill will see a floor vote.”
The Nonprofit Security Grant Program, established by Congress in 2005 and administered by FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security, provides funding to nonprofit organizations, including houses of worship, to bolster protection against potential attacks. Congress began significantly increasing its appropriations in 2018, in bipartisan fashion, following a wave of synagogue attacks nationwide.
The program currently stands at $270 million. Major Jewish groups have been pushing to raise it to $500 million amid rising antisemitic threats. Earlier this year, the Trump administration briefly froze the program as part of broader federal agency cuts, and some organizations have been hesitant to apply because of requirements that grantees affirm cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Schlossberg said there are at least 10 prominent institutions in New York’s 12th District that would benefit from this increase, including the Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where his grandfather, Alfred Schlossberg, was president. The measure is a “big deal for NY12 because it’s a critical funding stream that these institutions really need and rely on to strengthen their security,” he said. “Here is something the federal government can do immediately for this district, and something that I will put my energy behind.”
Raised Catholic by his mother, Caroline Kennedy, the 32-year-old Schlossberg said he also identifies as Jewish and “occasionally” goes for services at Temple Shaaray Tefila with his aunt on his father’s side. He also attends Church services on Sundays.
Schlossberg is one of several candidates vying for the seat. Other candidates include Micah Lasher, Liam Elkind, and Cameron Kasky, who are Jewish; Assemblymember Alex Bores, whose wife, Darya Moldavskaya, is Jewish; and Councilmember Erik Bottcher. Jews account for about 30% of the vote in the Democratic primary.
In the last Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Schlossberg endorsed Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who is critical of Israel. In an interview with The New York Times after Mamdani’s victory in the general election, Schlossberg said it served as an encouraging sign for his own campaign. Mamdani has pledged to increase funding for hate crime prevention and to provide protection to Jewish institutions.
Addressing that Nazi salute, the first controversy of his campaign
Schlossberg, who announced his candidacy last week, has come under fire for performing a Nazi salute in a since-deleted Instagram video, after Elon Musk, the powerful billionaire, appeared to do a Sieg Heil salute at a celebration rally following President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The Anti-Defamation League excused Musk’s move as an “awkward gesture,” but other Jewish organizations called it a dog whistle. Musk, the Tesla CEO whose relationship with Trump has since soured, has a history of endorsing antisemitic conspiracies online and allowing antisemitism on his platform, X.
In Tuesday’s phone interview, Schlossberg said that the video published by the Washington Free Beacon takes his motion out of context. “What I was trying to do is be like, ‘Okay, well, he just did it and claimed that that wasn’t it. And so that’s the world we’re living in now. How ridiculous is that?’” Schlossberg explained, saying his act was an attempt to draw attention to Musk. The Washington Free Beacon said that he was referencing Musk’s motion as well.
Schlossberg said that the hateful rhetoric and antisemitic attacks “have, in large part, been driven by the hard-right silo in American politics, especially Elon Musk.”
The post Exclusive: In bid for Nadler’s seat, Jack Schlossberg makes Jewish security his first priority appeared first on The Forward.
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Outgoing NYC Mayor Adams Says He’s Concerned About Safety of Jewish New Yorkers Under Successor Mamdani
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (L) speaks with Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) CEO Sacha Roytman at a special event in Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 16, 2025. Photo: CAM
Outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Sunday that Jewish New Yorkers should be worried about their safety and the prevalence of antisemitism in the city when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office in January.
“If I were a Jewish New Yorker, I would be concerned about my children,” he added. “When it comes down to the energy that is brewing, there’s a level of concern that I know I have. And we need to be honest about the moment, because people want to sugarcoat the moment.”
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.
Mamdani was elected as the new mayor of New York City earlier this month, beating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. Adams, who was running for reelection as an independent, pulled out of the mayoral race in late September.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) hosted a special gathering on Sunday in Tel Aviv’s Dubnov Gallery to honor Adams’ strong support for Israel and the Jewish communities in New York over the past four years, particularly after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the global rise in antisemitism that followed. When it comes to confronting the rise in antisemitism, Adams was asked if he thinks anything has changed in New York over the last two years – following his famous “We Are Not Alright” speech in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities.
“No, we’re not [alright],” Adams replied. “We’re far from being alright. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
The outgoing mayor said that antisemitism is becoming “cool and hip” among younger generations due in large part to social media indoctrination, and organized efforts to normalize and spread anti-Israel and anti-Jewish false narratives. He called on Jewish organizations and their allies to formulate and carry out a “well-executed business plan” to fight antisemitism. He also expressed concern that the incoming Mamdani administration will not push forward on efforts to unite the city.
“I knew part of the role [as mayor] was to heal the city and bring us together, and there’s more healing to do. And I’m not confident that this incoming administration understands that,” he explained. “A lot of the work that we’ve started on many areas, but particularly the area of healing and bringing our city together, I think we are going to lose some ground on that, and that sort of troubles me.”
Adams stressed that leaders must not stay silent about hatred, urging Mamdani to understand that “being a mayor is both substantive and symbolic. They both go together. Your words can translate into the actions of others. Even if you disagree, you must be a leader for everyone.”
“The symbolism … There are things that we do to send a symbol that one is welcome. And he has failed to do that,” Adams said. “You cannot be slow on defining that you do not embrace a ‘globalize the Intifada.’ The symbolism of being a leader is just as important as the substance. I think he must stand up and show that he can be a leader of the city with all of this diversity. Even if you don’t agree or disagree, you must be a leader for everyone in the city because your words actually can translate into the actions of others.”
In his opening remarks at Sunday’s event, CAM CEO Sacha Roytman highlighted Adams’ longtime commitment to combating antisemitism.
Adams created the first-of-its-kind mayor’s office dedicated to combating antisemitism; signed an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism; established the city’s first Jewish Advisory Council; and launched the New York City-Israel Economic Council. He participated in CAM’s Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism in Athens, Greece, in 2022.
“You stood before leaders from across the globe and said that mayors must act and must not allow antisemitism to rise in their cities,” Roytman said.
“After Oct. 7, when antisemitism surged, you were out in the streets standing with us,” he continued, referring to Adams. “Your famous words — ‘We are not alright’ — still echo in our minds, because that is exactly how we feel when we see antisemitism rising and when we see who New York elected as its next mayor.”
“Your voice brings people together — Jews and Muslims, African Americans, and so many others,” Roytman added. “The friendship between Jews and the Black community is essential. Together, we can push back against hatred and build a better world.”
Reflecting on his tenure as mayor, Adams, who is Black, described it as “a relay” and talked again about Mamdani taking over in January.
“You run your mile and you hand a baton off, and my transition team, we’re going to do everything possible to hand off lessons learned, some of the things that we thought were great, and some of the things we could have done differently,” he said.
Adams also hinted that he might have a future connection to Israel. “I want to start speaking to the real estate agents here so I can find my place in Israel,” he concluded.