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The first Passover haggadah in Ukrainian marks a community’s break with Russia

(JTA) — For Michal Stamova, the challenge of translating Passover’s core text into Ukrainian started with the title.

The haggadah — the book containing the Passover story — starts with an “h” sound in both Hebrew, its original language, and English. In Russian, the primary language of organized Jewish life in Ukraine until recently, there is no such sound, so the book has long been known there as an “agada.”

Ukrainian does have an “h” sound. But the character representing that sound conveys a different sound in Russian: a “G.” So for many Ukrainian Jews, the cover of Stamova’s translation will read as “Gagada.”

The journey of that single sound reflects the complexity of the task Stamova took on to aid Ukrainian Jews celebrating Passover a year into their country’s war with Russia. A musicologist from western Ukraine who fled to Israel shortly after Russia’s invasion, Stamova was recruited to create a Ukrainian-language haggadah, a powerful sign of the community’s rupture with its Russophone past.

Stamova knew she wanted to base her translation not off the preexisting Russian translation, but from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. That proved challenging because much of the text of the haggadah is lifted from other sources in Jewish canon, but Jewish translations of those texts to Ukrainian are only underway now for the first time.

“At first, it was very difficult to start, because we don’t have the sources in Ukrainian,” Stamova said. “We don’t have Torah in Ukrainian. We don’t have Tanakh in Ukrainian. It was very difficult to know what words to find.”

Stamova’s text, titled “For Our Freedom,” was released online earlier this month in advance of the Passover holiday that starts April 5. It is one of a growing number of efforts to translate Jewish texts into Ukrainian. Translators affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement have produced a book of psalms and are working on a daily prayer book, with their sights set on a full translation of the Torah. An effort is also underway now to translate a chapter of a newer text associated with Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day, in advance of its commemoration this year on April 18.

The absence of those texts until now, despite Ukraine’s significant Jewish population, reflects the particular linguistic history of Ukrainian Jews. Under the Russian empire, Jews living in what is now Ukraine in the 19th century tended to adopt Russian rather than Ukrainian, usually in addition to Yiddish, because Ukrainian was perceived as the language of the peasantry and conferred few benefits. That tilt became more pronounced after World War II and the Holocaust, when Yiddish declined as a Jewish vernacular and Russian became the main language of the Soviet Union. The history helps explain why, even as the number of Ukrainians speaking Russian at home fell sharply over the last decade, Jews remained largely Russian-speaking. (Russian and Ukrainian are related linguistically, though their speakers cannot understand each other.)

A sample page of text from the haggadah. (Courtesy of Project Kesher)

Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of printed material used by Ukrainian Jewish communities, including haggadahs for Passover, were created in Russian by groups such as Chabad, which is the main Jewish presence in both countries. But after Russia’s invasion, those materials became a liability at a time when being perceived as having ties to the enemy could be dangerous.

Indeed, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year prompted many Russian-speaking Ukrainians to switch languages as a marker of national solidarity — and sparked a push to translate Ukraine’s Jewish life into the Ukrainian language.

“Ukrainian Jews always spoke Russian. That really was the norm. With the advent of the escalation of the war, that has shifted, and Ukrainian Jews who are in the country are shifting as fast as they can over to Ukrainian,” said Karyn Gershon, the executive director of Project Kesher, the global Jewish feminist nonprofit that commissioned the new haggadah.

Gershon said the haggadah offers an opportunity to elevate a Ukrainian Jewish identity in other ways, such as by including tidbits about famous Jewish writers from the area that comprises modern Ukraine who in the past might have been characterized only as “Russian.”

“In most of the Jewish world, the things that make a haggadah unique are the special readings,” Gershon said. The new Ukrainian haggadah includes alongside the traditional text, she said, “prayers for the defenders of Ukraine, prayers for peace in Ukraine, but also [passages] reclaiming writers who were always categorized as Russian, but because they came from places like Kyiv, Odessa and Berdichev, are more accurately Ukrainian.” 

For example, the haggadah includes passages from the 1925 book “Passover Nights,” by Hava Shapiro, a Kyiv-born Jew and journalist who authored one of the first Hebrew-language diaries known to have been written by a woman.

The additions offer an element of pride for some of the Ukrainian Jews who plan to use the new haggadah.

“It is bringing you to the roots of those Jews who were living here before the Holocaust,” said Lena Pysina, who lives in Cherkasy, southeast of Kyiv. “It’s about rebuilding the Jewish communities in Ukraine as ‘Ukrainian Jews.’”

Pysina said the switch to Ukrainian and the embrace of Ukrainian Jewish history in some ways echoed the themes of the Passover story, which describes the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt.

“It’s like an exodus for us. It is not comfortable, because we get used to what we get used to. But we have to be proactive, we have to find our identity,” she said. “It took us 70 years of Soviet times to … celebrate the Jewish holidays and Jewish traditions. And it took us 30 years to understand that we have to build Ukrainian Jewish communities, too.”

Those communities are very much in flux a year into the war, with millions of Ukrainians internally displaced or having relocated overseas. Stamova undertook the haggadah project from Israel, where she is one of an estimated 15,000 Ukrainians who arrived since February 2022. 

Stamova grew up in western Ukraine, where the use of the Ukrainian language is more common than in the east. Like most other Ukrainian Jews, she still grew up speaking Russian at home, but her school, university and most of her life outside the home was conducted in Ukrainian. That made her a natural fit for the translation project, along with her background in Jewish liturgy, which she had studied at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of printed material used by Ukrainian Jewish communities, including haggadahs for Passover, were created in Russian. (Courtesy of Project Kesher)

The challenges went beyond phonetics. One frequent question was whether to use Russianisms that are widely known in Ukrainian and would be more easily understandable to a Jewish audience, or to use uniquely Ukrainian words.

The most difficult section of the text, she said, was Hallel, the penultimate step of the Passover seder. Hallel is a lengthy song of divine praise heavy with poetry and allegorical language — making for challenging translation work in any language.

Stamova said she sought to stick to the traditional understanding of the text while also making some adjustments for the contemporary seder attendee. For example, the section of the haggadah about the “four sons” with varying relationships to Judaism is rendered gender-neutral and changed to the “four children” in Stamova’s translation — an adjustment that has been made in other languages, too. 

Most of all, Stamova said, she hopes the haggadah offers some solace to Ukrainian Jews whose entire lives have been turned upside down. 

“The Jewish tradition of Pesach is that we every year have to remember that we escaped from Egypt, from slavery. It’s very therapeutic,” Stamova said, using the Hebrew word for Passover. “How is it like therapy? Yes, we every year remember this difficult story, but then we have a plan for the future, we say next year in Jerusalem. So we have to have a plan. We have to see the future.”

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The post The first Passover haggadah in Ukrainian marks a community’s break with Russia appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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US Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Deport Immigrants With Extremist Ideologies

US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) leaves the House Republican Conference caucus meeting in the US Capitol on April 15, 2026. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has introduced sweeping legislation aimed at expanding the federal government’s authority to deport, denaturalize, deny US citizenship, and refuse entry to immigrants tied to extremist ideologies, including socialism, communism, and Islamic fundamentalism.

The legislation, titled the MAMDANI Act, short for Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists, is a direct political reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and what conservatives describe as a growing alliance between far-left anti-Israel activism and Islamist extremism.

Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist, has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric.

In a statement, Roy argued that the legislation would increase the government’s capability to filter out potential immigrants with anti-American, anti-Western ideologies.

“Not just for the last six years, but for the last 60 years, our immigration system has been cynically used to disadvantage American workers’ competitiveness in favor of mass-importing the third world,” Roy added. “This has not just led to higher crime and lower wages, but also the promulgation of hostile ideologies fundamentally opposed to American values.”

Roy said the bill is intended to confront what he called a “Red-Green Alliance” between far-left and Islamist extremists that has fueled antisemitism, anti-American radicalism, and support for terrorist organizations under the guise of progressive politics.

“By targeting the Red-Green Alliance, this legislation deploys new tools to fight back against the Marxist and Islamist advance that has devastated Europe and has now arrived on our doorstep, especially in my home state of Texas,” Roy continued. 

Under the proposal, non-citizens affiliated with socialist parties, communist parties, the Chinese Communist Party, or organizations deemed to promote Islamic fundamentalism could be denied entry or deported. The bill would also expand grounds for denying naturalization and, in some cases, allow denaturalization for individuals found to have concealed ideological affiliations or to be actively advocating for violent anti-democratic movements.

Supporters of the bill argue that the measure is necessary amid rising antisemitic incidents across the United States following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. They point to pro-Hamas rhetoric on some college campuses and among far-left activist circles as evidence that immigration enforcement should include stronger scrutiny of extremist ideological affiliations.

In recent years, conservatives have drawn attention to the massive surge in antisemitic protests on American soil, pointing to an increase of foreign migration as the culprit. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 slaughters in Israel, protests erupted on US campuses and streets. Many of these demonstrations, many of which devolved into riots, were spearheaded by either foreign nationals or recent migrants from the Middle East or southeast Asia.

US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned in 2024 that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to many of these protests.

Critics, however, say Roy’s legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly around First Amendment protections, religious liberty, and due process rights. Civil liberties advocates have warned that broad ideological tests for citizenship or deportation could be vulnerable to court challenges and used too broadly against political dissent.

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Orthodox Jews Harassed in Brooklyn as Antisemitic Hate Crimes Surge in New York City Under Mamdani

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

Multiple videos which emerged this week captured in vivid detail the surge of antisemitic hate crimes that have proliferated under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s leadership.

On Monday, Williamsburg News shared a 36-second video depicting two young males riding bicycles on Williamsburg Street & Lee Avenue in Brooklyn. The first swerves his bike in front of an elderly Jewish man, leading the victim to turn and address his assailant. Then the second perpetrator comes from behind on his bike and knocks off the Jewish man’s black hat.

Officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s 90th precinct responded to the assault and opened a hate crime investigation.

Also on Monday, the Boro Park Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group, released a 37-second clip of young males driving a white SUV into a crosswalk before stopping to address a Jewish man with payot wearing traditional Hasidic attire. He begins to walk away, provoking a teenager in the back seat to leap out, chase after him, and yell, “Come here! Come here!”

An individual sitting in the front seat’s passenger side applauds the act of intimidation before the young man rushes back into the SUV which speeds away, tires squealing.

While evidence of these antisemitic incidents emerged from security footage, the perpetrators of a separate incident from last week chose to film their harassment targeting a Jewish pizzeria proprietor themselves.

Operatives of the so-called Palestine News Network (PNN) conducted one of their pseudo-interviews of Isaac Garson, owner of Slices Pizza in Hastings-on-Hudson, a community roughly 20 miles north of New York City.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group’s modus operandi of choreographed hostility, explaining that members “have a history of entering neighborhoods with significant Jewish populations, or approaching those attending Jewish or Israel-related events, where they shoot videos that walk the line between ‘interview’ and provocation.”

The 47-second video appears in a vertical format, indicating filming on a phone. In the lower right corner, the video bears a red and white PNN logo intended as a parody of the traditional CNN logo. Garson emerges from the restaurant, gestures his hands, and says, “I’m going to be calm. I want peace around the world.”

The man filming the encounter then goads, “What about Palestine? Can you say Palestine, specifically?”

The video cuts to footage of a man outside the restaurant who appears to be affiliated with PNN and carries a fractured placard that says, “End US AID to Israel.” However, the word “Israel” was originally at the bottom of the sign but snapped off, requiring the activist to carry along the broken piece to complete his political proclamation.

The next 20 seconds of the video focus on the men harassing a woman wearing a black baseball cap and black sunglasses walking by on the sidewalk. They demand to know “what’s your opinion?” The video cuts off her answer and jumps to them insulting her as “a textbook case of white mediocrity. Mediocre aesthetics, no stances, this is what we call ‘white mediocrity.’ You’re a shining example of mediocrity.”

The woman, taken aback by being insulted by eccentric activists carrying a dilapidated sign on the street, says, “Oh. Well, that’s also your opinion.”

The conclusion of the video returns to Garson, who asks the men: “What happened to Israel in 1948?”

The cameraman then yells, “Oh, it came out! It came out!”

Garson asks, “What happened?”

The cameraman then chants proudly, “The Nakba! The Nakba!”

The Arabic term “Nakba” translates as “catastrophe,” and anti-Zionists regularly deploy it to signify the founding of the modern State of Israel. In 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree defining the “Nakba” as “the crime against humanity committed against the Palestinian people in 1948.”

Garson then asks in the video: “How many people were killed on Oct. 7?” referring to the Palestinian terrorist group’s 2023 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

The cameraman shoots back, “We support Oct. 7!”

Beginning to walk back into his restaurant, Garson says, “OK, great, you support a murder.”

Hastings-on-Hudson Mayor Tom Drake released a statement on Wednesday condemning PNN’s harassment.

“I am sorry that this type of conduct has reached our amazing and tolerant village,” Drake said. “Today, the strength exhibited by our friend and business owner, who I have been in communication with, makes me proud to be your mayor and do everything to support our businesses and residents, even when faced with such a gross display of hate.”

Drake added, “As a community, we cannot let stickers placed on signs or other forms of hate become normal. While they may seem small in some cases, they are intended to cause fear and intimidation. These actions have targeted a specific population of our village, and I urge all Hastings residents to join me in condemning such actions of hate and come together and support one another.”

The ADL names the leaders of PNN as Ramsey Aburdene and David Wolf, explaining they chose to found the group following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in southern Israel. Aburdene says that he has urged people for years to “stop condemning Hamas.”

Wolf is Jewish and described by the ADL as “an extreme anti-Zionist” who “had his Star of David tattooed over with a Palestinian flag.”

PNN has amassed more than 100,000 followers on the X social media platform and has seen its videos shared by prominent anti-Zionist influencers such as British rapper Lowkey and “anti-imperialist journalist” Benjamin Rubenstein.

The incidents come amid continued criticism and scrutiny over the Mamdani administration’s approach to countering antisemitism.

Earlier this month, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed that “confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent this quarter citywide. We continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature.”

Tisch added that “in fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55 percent, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population of New York City.”

Mamdani assumed office on Jan. 1.

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‘Another Holocaust’: Netanyahu Tells Bereaved Families on Memorial Day of Iran Plot to Destroy Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the opening event for the Memorial Day at the Yad LaBanim House in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem/Pool via REUTERS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Holocaust during a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem on Tuesday, saying joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran had prevented the regime from carrying out its genocidal vision. 

“The Ayatollah regime in Iran planned another Holocaust. It plotted to destroy us with nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles,” he said at the state ceremony for fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl military cemetery. “Had we not acted against the existential threat, had we not acted with determination and daring, the names of the death sites Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan might have joined the names of the death camps of the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka.”

“But that did not happen because together with our great friend, the United States, we crushed the Iranian regime’s machinery of destruction in time,” he said. “We removed an immediate existential threat.”

Netanyahu ended by saluting wounded soldiers and bereaved families. “May the memory of the fallen of Israel’s wars be blessed and kept in our hearts forever,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing the Tefillin of IDF Golani Brigade Fighter First Sgt. Sean Carmeli, who fell in the 2014 war with Gaza. Photo: Ma’ayan Toaf (GPO)

The national Memorial Day, known as Yom Hazikaron, came as Iran poured cold water on the notion of extending the ceasefire, saying it would not send officials to Islamabad to continue negotiations with the US.  

Meanwhile, a second ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump with Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah was also poised to be tested, as rocket sirens sounded toward evening in northern Israeli communities near the border with Lebanon.

At a separate Memorial Day ceremony for fallen Mossad personnel, intelligence agency chief David Barnea disclosed that one of the service’s operatives was killed during the war with Iran.

The officer, whose identity remains under gag order, had served in the agency for more than three decades, Barnea said, adding that he was “filled with pride” by his actions.

“There is no other day during the year that is as difficult for us, for me, as Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen,” Barnea said, tracing a line from the defenders of the pre-state Jewish community to the soldiers fighting since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He said the obligation to defend the country had passed from generation to generation, with each cohort choosing to shoulder it anew.

Other commemorations took place outside the state ceremonies. On Memorial Day eve, OneFamily, a nonprofit that supports victims of terrorism and bereaved families, held a gathering centered on personal testimony.

The evening was led by two bereaved mothers, Liat Smadja and Laly Derai, whose sons were killed in the same explosion in Gaza in June 2024.

Smadja, who serves in the reserves as a casualty notifier, described the cruel inversion of learning that the task she performs for other families had come to her own door.

“I have the job of knocking on doors and delivering the worst possible news, one that changes a family’s life forever,” she said. “And then the message came for me as well.”

In Israel, “the knock on the door” has become a traumatic shorthand for one of the most feared moments in public life, the arrival of military representatives to tell a family that a loved one has been killed.

Derai said the families had forged a bond that cut across their different backgrounds.

“We come from different worlds and different backgrounds. Since [their death], we are one family, connected by something deep and unbreakable.”

Two days earlier, Derai had attended a weekend for bereaved families organized by OneFamily, spending the run-up to Memorial Day among others carrying the same loss.

Yigal Tamam, whose son Adir and daughter-in-law Shiraz were murdered on their way to the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attack, was also there.

As rocket fire erupted early in the morning that day, the couple pulled over and ran into a roadside bomb shelter, where they were killed by Hamas terrorists who threw grenades inside. The two were survived by their young daughters. 

“I’m breathing but I’m not alive,” Tamam said over the weekend.

He said he breaks down when he thinks about his grandchildren, Goshen, 10, and Gili, 8, growing up without their parents.

OneFamily founder Chantal Belzberg is set to receive the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, a rare national award granted by the state for outstanding contributions to Israeli society, presented on Independence Day, which follows Memorial Day.

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