Ukrainian Jews hold onto faint hope amid the ravages of war

Putin said that he was ready to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart in Moscow, but he showed little flexibility in the Kremlin’s past demands.

“It seems to me that if common sense prevails, it will be possible to agree on an acceptable solution to end this conflict,” Putin said. “If not, then we will have to resolve all the tasks before us by force of arms.”

Kyiv Ukraine Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, who was an observer of the 2019 negotiations over the Donbas region, said he had learned from the experience that “Russians were professional negotiators,” putting on shows of good faith to the world while issuing impossible demands at the table to ensure nothing would come of a parley.

“They’ll negotiate you to death,” Bleich recalled saying to Zelensky at the time.

“The only way that Russia knows to negotiate is from a position of power,” said Bleich.

The negotiations are also impacted by an imbalance in the systems of decision-making, explained Pinchas Goldschmidt, the exiled former Moscow chief rabbi and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis.

Putin can make decisions on his own, but Zelensky requires democratic consensus and even a national referendum to consider territorial accommodations, Goldschmidt noted. While he thought the talks could lead to some developments, there was no guarantee.

“We’re only at the beginning of those negotiations, and we don’t know where this is going to go,” said Goldschmidt, adding that “there’s a certain battle fatigue on both sides.”

“There is movement – but it is still fragile,” said Wolff. “The Ukrainian people seek peace and security, and they are doing everything they can to achieve it.”

Jewish Confederation of Ukraine (JCU) President Boris Lozhkin said the quest for peace was far from just dependent on Ukraine, as the country’s readiness for diplomacy had to be matched by the same determination to end hostilities as Russia’s.

To achieve this, Lozhkin said Ukraine counted on the “wisdom of President Donald Trump and our European allies.”

Support from these democratic allies had to take the form of “consistent, ever-increasing multidimensional assistance” to Ukraine, according to Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine (Vaad) executive co-president Josef Zissels, as Russia would only come to the negotiating table if Ukraine was in a strong military and economic situation.

Zissels already saw the recent push for negotiations as another disappointing failure to “calm down aggressive Russia.”

“I do not see the possibility of establishing peace by the means of pacification that a democratic civilization uses,” said Zissels. “At present, I believe the establishment of peace is very unlikely.”

More realistic was the idea of “freezing” the current battle lines, as Kyiv needed a respite from the conflict. He believed Moscow understood this need for Ukrainian recovery and sought to prevent “even a small truce.”

“Thus the only real option for Ukrainian victory is to continue to resist Russian aggression while the world searches for the ‘keys to peace’ and gathers strength to continually increase economic sanctions against Russia,” said Zissels, also noting that the keys could be found in Moscow.

Bleich said that stopping the war where the battle lines fell was a realistic objective. According to Goldschmidt, “Freezing the situation without security guarantees and without funds to rebuild” would result in a bleak future for Ukraine and its Jewish community.

Lozhkin also emphasized the importance of a stable and guaranteed peace to the rebuilding and development of the country, and that the JCU would stand behind the Ukrainian leadership in their position.

He argued that Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states hadn’t been recognized, and decades later they gained independence. Ukraine should be allowed the hope that one day they’d gain back Donbass and Crimea, and he thought they would, though the wheels of the world worked slowly.

Bleich noted that the conflict could also be solved by Russian forces leaving Ukraine, the Budapest Memorandum [on Security Assurances] being restored, and Kyiv and Moscow going back to just being neighbors. But as long as Putin and his desire for a revived Russian empire lived, the rabbi thought such an outcome was unlikely.

Wolff prayed that as an initial step, “the leaders will choose life” by agreeing to a ceasefire. This could bring about an exchange of prisoners, and the return of citizens to their homes, jobs, and schools.

“This is the first step in restoring life to the 40 million residents of Ukraine who have not experienced a single quiet night in over three years of terrible war,” said Wolff.

Some Ukrainian Jewish leaders, taking a more neutral stance without taking sides, still hoped for peace, according to Kyiv Rabbi Simcha Levenharts of the Jewish Relief Network Ukraine (JNRU).

“We do hope that this negotiation will lead to peace, and we pray for it all the time,” he said. “The war impacts all aspects of life.”

The war, Bleich explained, was not a regular military campaign to seize territory, fought solely along battle fronts, but was a fight waged also against the Ukrainian people and state. Russia was bombing civilian sites throughout the war, killing non-combatants in a manner that didn’t advance the objectives of capturing land.

He detailed Russian war crimes, such as the torture and execution of prisoners of war, deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, and engaging in massacres in occupied territory, such as Bucha.

“They’re not fighting terrorists, they’re fighting civilians,” said Bleich. “Russia has been butchering and murdering innocent civilians since the beginning of the war.”

Since some remote communities didn’t have such shelters, IsraAID has provided semi-mobile shelters, with youngsters painting the outside walls, like kids have done in Israel. By bringing these shelters, other aid groups and programs have been able to operate in these towns.

Druzhynina said IsraAID also built “quokka huts” – named by Ukrainian children for the jovial Australian marsupial – filled with items to provide children activities out of concern for their psycho-social well-being. The mental health situation in Ukraine had been greatly impacted by the war, as the unending crisis has caused stress, depression, and physical exhaustion from sleepless nights, in addition to the traumas of war.

“There is such a huge need for mental health support. Before the war, there was a lot of stigma, so there are lots of efforts in this field, including from Israel,” said Druzhynina, who noted that IsraAID was conducting support programs for Ukrainian first responders.

The state of education was also critical in the country. Children in remote locations already received several years of remote education because of the COVID pandemic, and the war that followed. They suffer a gap in social skills when compared to their peers.

IsraAID has been trying to develop sanitation and water infrastructure projects, but the war is unending. The state of infrastructure in Ukraine that Druzhynina described sounds Sisyphean: bridges, roads, and power lines constantly being rebuilt, then destroyed again by Russian drones and artillery shells. The destruction of homes and the occupation of large swathes of land rendering many Ukrainians internally displaced persons, “who have basically lost everything.”

Lozhkin said the fate of Ukrainian Jews was the same as their countrymen, explaining how “Russian missiles and drones do not distinguish whom they kill – Ukrainians, Jews, or ethnic Russians. Everyone in Ukraine is equally at risk of being killed or wounded.”

In a July 31 attack of Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones, ballistic and cruise missiles on Kyiv, a nine-story residential building was destroyed, killing 32 people and wounding 159, according to Lozhkin. The same wave of attacks struck the building housing the JCU office. Since the Russian invasion was launched in 2022, the JCU office was reportedly damaged three times – fortunately, without casualties.

Also in July, Wolff’s younger brother narrowly avoided harm from a Russian attack. Kherson Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Wolff was traveling between Odesa and Kherson when the front of his vehicle was destroyed; he, his wife, and his daughter escaped without injuries.

On August 8, an Odessa synagogue was hit by a drone, which Wolff said was a reminder that there were no “sterile spaces” in the war. Just 12 days later, a drone wave caused damage to energy facilities and port infrastructure, which he said was an experience typical of cities throughout Ukraine.

“There are community members who have been killed or wounded; some on the battlefields, and some in bed during one or another shelling of their city,” recounted Wolff.

Many people in Levenharts’s Kyiv community have been drafted, and others have hid in their apartments out of fear they would be forcibly conscripted while walking the city streets. Levenharts said that recently his Jewish Simcha School had a ceremony to memorialize an alumnus killed in battle in January.

This was not the first former student to die fighting for Ukraine. The school once had 400 students, he said, but after many families fled, classroom attendance is now down 70%. To keep up the students’ education all lessons have been recorded, enabling the Jewish youth to learn remotely, regardless of where their families have sought refuge.

Goldschmidt said tens of thousands of Jews have joined their ethnic Ukrainian countrymen, relocating elsewhere in Europe. The occupied territories in Ukraine have been almost completely emptied of Jews.

Bleich estimated that a third of Ukraine’s Jewish population has remained in the country. Those who could leave, did so. He said they had just finished this summer’s camp sessions for children, which at times had been moved to other countries in Europe. He could see how much the nightly race to bomb shelters had traumatized the children.

Ukrainian Jews, like the country’s other citizens, have endured “all the hardships of war with dignity” and have not had many “specific problems related to this war” beyond age, noted Zissels.

More than half of Ukrainian Jews are senior citizens, he explained, and with advanced age they are more susceptible to illness. They have also suffered greater material and mental strains and have more difficulty being uprooted from their homes.

While outbreaks of antisemitism occur in European wars as much as any disease, the Ukrainian Jewish leaders insisted that their communities did not feel the same type of pandemic that has afflicted much of the world since the Oct. 7 massacre.

The JCU’s Lozhkin claimed that Ukraine had one of the lowest levels of antisemitism in Europe, and that for years there have been no recorded cases of physical attacks. He said that although there had been occasional acts of vandalism, he believed reports which indicated they were orchestrated by foreign intelligence services to discredit the state.

Levenharts said there were some isolated incidents of antisemitism, and that some places in the far west of the country are more antisemitic, but there was nothing extreme.

“I don’t feel much antisemitism in Ukraine, and I’ve lived here all my life,” he said.

In some ways, the war has made Ukraine’s Jewish community stronger. The war has drawn people closer to faith, according to Bleich.

Even though many Jews had fled the country, synagogue services, youth, community, and holiday events saw more participants than before the war.

Lozhkin said Jewish community life has continued throughout the war, with synagogues, schools, and kindergartens continuing to operate. Despite the constant attacks, Wolff said synagogues, kindergartens, and schools in Odesa have not closed even for a single day.

However, Goldschmidt noted that while the larger communities continue to operate on a restricted scale, smaller communities have been brought to a standstill. Levenharts also explained how the war could disrupt religious practice. With a curfew in place, late-night services compelled some Jews to sleep in his synagogue.

The state of the economy has been difficult for all Ukrainians. Eckstein noted that with the rising prices of basic necessities such as fuel, Jewish communities have had to consider where to cut corners.

Bleich said many Jewish communities had local supporters; but as expenses rose and incomes decreased, these community bastions were not faring well. With a reorientation of focus on antisemitism and Israel in late 2023, and the continued degradation of the Ukrainian economy, “things have gotten worse,” Eckstein said.

“The CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] Jewish community is paying the price for the rise in global Jewish insecurity,” she said. “The aid that is getting out there needs to be stretched further.”

Many Jewish organizations, communities, and individuals have continued to send aid, said the IFCJ head, but donors have been faced with an impossible decision as global Jewry’s needs have grown.

Levenharts said that JNRU continues to support Jews throughout the country, but while they used to receive donations from around the world, over time donations of vital items like generators have decreased.

Wolff’s community has thousands of Jews who are provided assistance with food, medicine, clothing, and housing. He urged the global Jewish community to continue to support the elderly, the 48 refugee families the community was supporting, and the 124 orphans at the Ukraine Family children’s home.

JDC said the humanitarian needs in the country remained urgent, and was caring for over 33,000 of the most desperate Ukrainian Jews, which included the poor, elderly, and internally displaced.

Eckstein said many aid workers and volunteers were contributing tirelessly, but their budgets were smaller than before, leading to the withdrawal of some services. IFCJ has had to make the same difficult decision: “In order to say ‘yes’ to one place you have to say ‘no’ to another.”

“Every day, the needs are significantly greater than the nonprofit can handle,” asserted Eckstein.

Druzhynina echoed the sentiment in regard to the humanitarian aid crisis facing broader Ukrainian society, where it was “so severe that all the aid organizations are not enough.”

IsraAID has been working with needy Ukrainians of all stripes, but some communities were not being reached. The humanitarian community had to prioritize, said Druzhynina, so the basic requirements of the entire Ukrainian nation could be met.

“We understand the world is getting tired of this war, but so are we,” he said.

Zissels said he didn’t think the rest of the Jewish world had forgotten Ukraine, and he is grateful for the help given so far, even after the Hamas-led Oct. 2023 pogrom. Lozhkin also thought this shift in attention was natural and that the Jewish community hadn’t forgotten them, but his community had to work to ensure that Ukraine remained in the spotlight.

Bleich said the Jewish world “should be paying more attention, not less attention” to Ukraine. While global Jewry’s eyes and hearts focused on Israel, the situation in Ukraine hasn’t gone away.

With the Jewish new year approaching, he stressed that the Jewish people were entering a period of judgment for the entire world, and urged all Jews to pray for peace. It would make the prayers even more meaningful, he said, “if we can bring about peace in our countries.”