Examining the relationship between Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920. Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. Centennials offer moments for reflection. The one hundredth anniversary of a major turning point in history provides an excellent opportunity for re-evaluation and reconsideration. In the spring of 1917 the Russian Empire came to an abrupt end. The […]

Written and narrated by Peter Bejger A quiet village set amidst rolling hills, forests, and ravines. A revered monastery. And four stories of salvation. A compelling article by Oksana Sikorska in the Ukrainian journal Zbruch outlines the remarkable role of the small western Ukraine village of Univ during the horrors of the Second World War […]

Franko and Jabotinsky: Setting the stage for cross-cultural understanding between Ukrainians and Jews -Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. Two writers, two politicians. Two outstanding public figures. And two intriguing viewpoints on the historic challenges of Ukrainian-Jewish relations. The Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko passed away in 1916. The Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky was from a […]

Today, two perspectives on loss and memory. “I close my eyes and I can hear the bells…ringing; each one rings differently. I can hear the splash of the fountains on the Marketplace, and the soughing of the fragrant trees, which the spring rain has washed clean of dust. It is coming up to ten o’clock […]

“Wherever I went I found, as in few other places I have been, just how happy ordinary people were happy to talk. Then I understood that this was because no one ever asks them what they think.” So writes Tim Judah, a reporter for The Economist, in his compelling book In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine. […]

A young woman working in an office in New York City writes: “I was just another girl in a cubicle, doing the usual two years before leaving for graduate school. I was a mass produced good. My row of cubicles was almost entirely female, dark-haired and petite. We all wore colorful pashmina shawls to protect […]

Ukrainian folk songs and Hasidic music. Mutual borrowings between the Ukrainian and Yiddish languages. Striking similarities in the architecture of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues and Ukrainian wooden churches. A fascinating new book, The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions, documents the vivid highlights of two formerly stateless peoples with strong national aspirations. This collection of essays by a […]

Leszek Allerhand vividly remembers that day in the summer of 1941, when he was a ten-year-old boy. The Germans had recently occupied the city of Lviv. Two civilians wearing armbands came to his family’s flat and warned them not to leave the building. The Allerhands were puzzled when they watched a giant water tank roll […]

Today we begin with a dispatch from the past. “Kiev in the morning. A lot of people are already walking on the main street Khreshchatyk, now called ‘Vorovski.’ Everybody holds under their arm a stick of plain black bread, and everyone picks crumbs from it and drops it in their mouth. This applies to men, […]