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Kyiv Jews celebrate their 2nd wartime Purim with renewed resolve and optimism
KYIV (JTA) — In a historic building in the most industrial part of Podil, the hipster district of Kyiv that once was the heart of the Jewish trading community, a senior and passionate Esther seduces a much younger Ahasuerus. She flirts with the handsome king to the raucous giggling of the audience, which breaks into applause when the Purim shpiel comes to an end.
A year and a few days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Jews in Kyiv and the rest of the country have celebrated Purim in precarious economic and emotional circumstances, under the continued threat of Russian attacks. Still, many of them are in much better spirits than in 2022, when the Jewish holiday of joy found Ukrainian Jews in a frantic state of worry and uncertainty about their immediate future.
“A year ago you could see the fear in people’s eyes; now they are very proud because Ukraine has resisted, and Jews are fully involved in the cause,” Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during the movement’s Purim celebration in Podil. She is an Israeli rabbi who is the executive director of the Masorti movement-affiliated Schechter Institutes and periodically travels to Ukraine to serve the country’s Masorti communities. Masorti Judaism is similar to the Conservative movement in the United States.
“Last year it was very, very hard, because people were in shock, afraid, and they didn’t know what to do,” said Ariel Markowitz, Kyiv’s most senior rabbi from the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, which held its own Purim celebration Monday night. “But now we know that we have a strong army, that we have a chance, and many people have actually returned to Kyiv.”
Rabbi Ariel Markowitz of Chabad Kyiv reads from the Megillah during his community’s Purim celebration, March 6, 2023. (Courtesy Markowitz)
The year-old war has shaken up Ukraine’s Jewish community, with members leaving the country or moving within it to avoid Russian shelling and its effects.
“Everyone has pretty much made a decision on whether to stay or to leave and we are reorganizing our community,” said Gritsevskaya.
Although at least 14,000 Ukrainians have moved to Israel since Russia’s all-out invasion started, and many more thousands have found refuge in Germany and other European countries, Gritsevskaya wants to focus on those who stayed. Estimates of the Jewish population in Ukraine ranged before the war from just under 50,000 to up to 400,000, depending on who counted.
One of the people who left the country was the former Masorti rabbi in Ukraine, Reuven Stamov, who moved with his family to Israel. Currently, the Masorti movement — whose Ukrainian following Grivtseskaya estimates in the thousands — does not have a rabbi permanently in the country. But the community keeps active in Kyiv and other cities, such as Kharkiv in the east, Odessa in the south and Chernivtsi in the southwest, thanks to activists, volunteers and rabbinical students, plus the visits by Gritsevskaya, who first returned for Purim last year.
“Community life has never been so important,” she said.
Gritsevskaya pointed to the difference that having access to material help, connections and emotional and spiritual support makes for those who arrive in new cities from places in the south or the east occupied by Russia or close to the front.
She acknowledged that some Jewish organizations have ceased their operations in Ukraine and stressed the need of strengthening the work of those who are committed to remain, so Jewish life in Ukraine could be as “diverse” as before and people “have options” to choose the way they practice their Judaism.
Among the Ukrainian Jews that decided to stay is the director of the MILI Foundation, the entity that organizes the Masorti community in Ukraine. Maksym Melnikov moved to Kyiv from his native Donetsk in 2014 after Russian-backed separatist militias declared the independence of part of the region and war broke out in Eastern Ukraine.
Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya poses with community members of the Masorti community in Kyiv, March 6, 2023. (Marcel Gascón Barberá)
“I came when they started to occupy our land in Ukraine,” Melnikov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the Masorti Purim celebration in Kyiv, just before taking the stage to help Gritsevskaya read the Purim Megillah. “Almost a decade later, war came after me to Kyiv, and I don’t want to move this time, I’m staying.”
Since 2014, many of Melnikov’s friends and acquaintances from Donetsk have moved to Kyiv. While Russia’s full-scale invasion has pushed many Jews from Kyiv to move westwards or leave the country, the western city’s communities have received a new infusion of people from the eastern cities more affected by the war.
“Communities are changing constantly countrywide, and we are trying to reach out to those who arrive, both to help them start a new life and to build our community stronger,” said Grivtsevskaya.
She said the Masorti community in Chernivtsi has experienced a notable revival. Situated near the border with Romania, Chernivtsi is one of the few Ukrainian provincial capitals that has not been bombed by Russia, and thousands have moved there. “They have received another family and are very strong right now,” she said about the once-dwindling community in this historical Jewish center, where she hosted a Purim celebration after making her way into Ukraine in March 2022.
The massive uprooting of entire Jewish communities has been experienced keenly by Chabad, which has the largest Jewish presence in the country, with hundreds of emissaries serving Jewish communities in dozens of cities.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in those who come looking for help,” Markowitz told JTA hours before the start of Purim at Chabad’s community center in Kyiv. Many of them, he said, had come from Mariupol, a city bombed into submission by Russia at the beginning of the war.
Scenes of the Purim shpiel at the Masorti community in Kyiv, March 6, 2023. (Marcel Gascón Barberá)
Chabad is one of several organizations providing aid to Ukrainian Jews, including support in obtaining food, medical care and generators that keep power flowing amid widespread outages.
The rise of the demand for these services is not only driven by refugees, but by families and individuals who have lost their source of income due to the economic disruptions caused by the invasion.
“There is inflation, there are less jobs, a lot of companies closed and people lost their jobs or are unable to help their family members,” Markowitz said.
Besides the demographic and economic shake-ups, the war has brought changes in the way Jews relate to their Ukrainian identity. Perhaps the most striking has been a rapid shift away from speaking Russian, the first language of many Ukrainian Jews until recently.
“Even I started learning and speaking Ukrainian and you can definitely see how a new sense of national identity is being born,” Maria Karadin, a Russia-born Israeli who moved to Ukraine with her husband in 2005, said at the Masorti Purim event.
Maiia Malkova is 15 years old and one of the most active young members of the Masorti community in Kyiv.
“Last year I didn’t even think about Purim so much because I was so frightened,” she said while wearing a necklace with a tryzub, the trident that symbolizes Ukrainian statehood and independence. “But we kind of got accustomed to this situation. And it is great to be able to celebrate Purim again.”
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Police Chief in UK Retires After Facing Scrutiny for Banning Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv Fans From Soccer Match
WMP Chief Constable Craig Guildford speaking before the Home Affairs Committee on Jan. 6, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
West Midlands Police (WMP) Chief Constable Craig Guildford retired on Friday effective immediately after increasing public scrutiny and revelations over his use of “exaggerated or simply untrue” intelligence to justify a ban prohibiting Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans from attending a match late last year.
Simon Foster, the police and crime commissioner of WMP, announced Guildford’s retirement in a formal statement delivered outside Birmingham’s Lloyd House, which is the headquarters of the West Midlands police force. Guildford will collect his full pension after three decades of service. Foster thanked Guildford for his service and said he welcomes the chief constable’s decision to retire. He added that Guildford’s stepping down is in the “best interest” of the police force and the local community.
Guildford’s retirement follows the decision of the Birmingham City Council Safety Advisory Group, based on the recommendation of West Midlands Police, to ban traveling Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans from attending the Europa League soccer match between Aston Villa and the Israeli team on Nov. 6, 2025, at Villa Park in Birmingham due to “public safety concerns.”
The announcement also comes just two days after British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the British Parliament that she has lost confidence in Guildford. The minister said she came to the conclusion after receiving a “damning” and “devastating” report by Sir Andy Cooke, his Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, on Wednesday that revealed several failings by the WMP force in relation to its recommendation to ban Maccabi soccer fans, including “misleading” public statements and “misinformation” promoted by the police.
Foster acknowledged on Thursday that the police forced faced “understandable intense and significant oversight and scrutiny.”
“The findings of the chief inspector were damning. They set out a catalogue of failings that have harmed trust in West Midlands Police,” Mahmood said in a statement following Thursday’s announcement. “By stepping down, Craig Guildford has done the right thing today … Today marks a crucial first step to rebuilding trust and confidence in the force amongst all the communities they serve.”
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EndJewHatred Hosts NYC Rally in Support of Iranian Protesters, Other Jewish Groups Express Solidarity
Protesters gathered outside the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York City on Jan. 15, 2026. Photo: #EndJewHatred
#EndJewHatred, the international grassroots civil rights movement, hosted a rally outside the office of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York City on Thursday night to express solidarity with Iranians amid the crackdown on anti-government protesters in the Islamic Republic.
Demonstrators from various faiths held American, Iranian, and Israeli flags, while some others held signs that read “Free Iran” and “Jews for a Free Iran.” Rallygoers also chanted in English “Free Iran” and in Farsi, “This is our last fight, Pahlavi will return,” referring to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran. Pahlavi is in exile in the US, but many Iranians support his return to become the leader of Iran. The exact level of support for Pahlavi is difficult to gauge.
Protesters on Thursday also chanted in Farsi “Long Live Shah. Welcome Reza Pahlavi,” as well as “Death to the dictator,” and “Khameni is a murderer,” in reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The rally included a performance by Iranian Jewish Ghazal Mizrahi and speeches by several faith leaders, including Pakistani-American Muslim women’’ rights activist Anila Ali. Michelle Ahdoot, the director of programming and strategy at #EndJewHatred, is a first generation Iranian-American whose parents, husband, and in-laws were all born in Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution and forced to flee the country.
“It was a flourishing democracy pre-1979,” Ahdoot said of Iran. “What is it now is not PL … We are here tonight, an interfaith showing, people from all different backgrounds, all of us here to restore democracy. All of us united with the same message: The ideology that is there [in Iran] kills, and we won’t stand for it anymore.”
“To speak up is our responsibility. It is time to raise our voices and stand with the people of this world. To stand with humanity. Enough is enough. Down with the Islamic regime,” said Mizrahi in a speech during the rally. “Bring back the beautiful Iran. The country of color, of lively spices, of rich cultural music. It’s time to bring back our country.”
The protests that erupted in Iran on Dec. 28 initially focused on economic issues – including inflation, unemployment, and low wages — but quickly morphed into demonstrations against the country’s Islamist, authoritarian regime, political corruption, and lack of freedom and human rights in the country. Two sources, including one inside Iran, told CBS News on Tuesday that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed by authorities in Iran during their crackdown to quell nearly three weeks of protests.
Several Jewish groups around the world have voiced support for the Iranian people amid the anti-regime protests. The American Jewish Committee urged “all people of conscience” to stand in solidarity with Iranians and called on the Iranian regime to be held accountable for its violence against protesters.
“Millions of Iranians are courageously demanding a better life, basic dignity, and a more peaceful future. These brave individuals are risking everything to confront a radical Islamist regime that has brought repression, suffering, and terror to its own people, the region, and across the globe,” the AJC said. “The international community has a moral responsibility to act in solidarity with the Iranian people and to advance a safer region and a more peaceful Middle East.”
“My thoughts are with the people of Iran who are protesting a brutal and repressive regime,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “May all those who have taken to the streets remain safe,”
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) CEO Sacha Roytman said the world “must not look away this time” at the Iranian government’s “brutal suppression of its own people.”
“What we are witnessing is not just an internal political crisis, it is a human rights catastrophe of a global magnitude,” he added, in a released statement. “We stand with the Iranian people fighting for their freedom … It menaces anyone who believes in human liberty, dignity, and the right to live without fear … We look forward to a future where the people of Iran enjoy the freedom that is their right and they so richly deserve. May it come soon.”
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Baruch College Receives $75K Donation for Antisemitism Research
Protesters gathered at CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez’s office under the mantra ‘End Jew Hatred’ to protest growing antisemitism within CUNY and their campuses on Sept. 12, 2023. Photo by Meir Chaimowitz/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect.
The Antisemitism Studies Laboratory at Baruch College, a new initiative by the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center to study the rise of “contemporary antisemitism,” has received a $75,000 gift from the AddressHate nonprofit organization, the school announced on Thursday.
Founded in April amid a global surge in antisemitic incidents not seen since World War II, the Antisemitism Studies Lab will study, among other things, how antisemitism is fostered on social media. It has raised nearly $500,000 to date, a figure which Baruch College says is indicative of strong support for its mission.
“The environment for Jewish students and communities — in New York and around the world — has changed dramatically in the digital age,” AddressHate founder Joshua Laterman said on Thursday in a statement. “Baruch College has been a leader in taking this reality seriously, not only by studying antisemitism as a historical and social phenomenon, but by examining its dynamic in this fast evolving era of new media.”
He added, “Our investment in the Antisemitism Studies Lab and the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center is part of our effort to break the code of hate before it breaks us.”
Baruch College is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system.
CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez thanked Laterman, saying, “This gift will help our faculty and students analyze the dynamics and effects of digital hate with rigor, and, equally important, translate that scholarship into practical ways to strengthen campus safety, intellectual discourse, and cross community understanding. That’s what an education at Baruch College is all about.”
Founded in 1919, Baruch College in many ways stands as a tribute to the success of Jewish assimilation in America. Its namesake, Bernard Baruch served as an adviser to US President Woodrow Wilson and led the War Industries Board during World War I. Baruch was also a close friend of Winston Churchill, who faced down Hitler alone while waiting for US assistance to stop the Nazi leader’s aggression in the lead up to and early years of World War II.
The CUNY system is the alma mater of many other Jews whose scientific and cultural achievements helped create the “American Century.” That list includes vaccine developer Jonas Salk (City College), comedian and actor Jerry Seinfeld (Queens College), and Irving Kristol (City College) — whose political commentary played a key role in shaping the US conservative movement, in part by excluding antisemitic elements of the political right.
However, in recent years CUNY has been a key player in the campus antisemitism crisis.
In 2025, a professor told The Algemeiner it contains elements that are “virtually Judenrein,” and in 2022, Jewish students said they were threatened with strangulation and pressured to say that Jews are racially white people who cannot, and have not, experienced oppression.
“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events told The Algemeiner, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, you can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.”
Last year, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which represents over 30,000 CUNY staff and faculty, passed a resolution which falsely accused Israel of war crimes and other affronts to humanity, including “genocide” and “apartheid,” and called for the union to divest its pension plan of holdings linked to “Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2025.”
That was not the first controversial resolution passed by the CUNY faculty union. In 2021, during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, it voted to approve a defaming statement which accused Israel of “ongoing settler colonial violence” and demanded the university “divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” Doing so set off a cascade of events, including a mass resignation of faculty from the union, the founding of new campus Jewish civil rights groups, and a major — ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit which aimed to abolish compulsory public sector union membership.
In November, a City College graduate student disrupted an interfaith event by exploding into a prolonged rant in which he called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
“I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” the student, Abdullah Mady, who is also purported to be a local imam, bellowed before challenging the religious bonafides of Muslim students in the audience. “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
Mady uttered other pronouncements drawn from the jihadist tradition of radical Islam.
“I’m talking about the elite, the filthy rich, the ones that continue to steal from people as we speak today. Those are the ones that deserve their tips to be cut off,” Mady said. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Widely criticized for not appearing to combat antisemitism before it became a system wide conflagration, Rodriguez told the US Congress in June that “we are committed to constant vigilance against antisemitism.” He also announced a robust policy agenda which includes a climate survey, an enhanced system for reporting hate crimes, and new training programs on antisemitism prevention and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.