Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein offered support to Ukrainian Jewry Tuesday. In a discussion with Ukrainian Jewish leaders, Edelstein was told that anti-Semitism was in the air but there has been no systematic anti-Semitism following February’s nation-wide revolution.
Edelstein, who hails from Chernivtsi, a sizeable city in the Ukraine. said that he would continue to be in touch directly with the Jewish community there and offer his support.
Members of the Jewish community in the Ukraine are worried that due to the recent revolution and Russian takeover of Crimea, that there will be a drastic rise in anti-Semitism in the country. Rabbi Meir Stembler, a community leader in Dnipropetrovsk, told Edelstein, “There is tension in the air, but no one is hiding their Jewishness. Our situation is good for now, but it may get worse.”
The fear of war has returned to Dnipropetrovsk, the third largest city in the Ukraine. Fears are carried by the tensions surrounding Sunday’s referendum in Crimea that formally declared independence from Ukraine and the deadly clashes that erupted over the weekend near the eastern border.
With Russian forces massing along the frontier, worries run especially deep among the city’s Jewish population of 40,000 to 50,000 — including thousands of Holocaust survivors — which has enjoyed a renaissance in recent decades.
However, the Jewish community is uniting and attempting to live life as normally as possible. With the recent celebration of the Jeiwsh Purim holiday, the Jewish community in Dnipropetrovsk gathered together to celebrate.
Alina Tiplitzky of the local Jewish Community Center said that 5,000 Purim food packages (mishloah manot) were distributed to the community, no fewer than in previous years. Tiplitzky also said preparations for Passover have already begun.
Of the approximately 100 people killed during the protests in Kiev that swept Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yanukovich from power in February, three were Jews, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian anti-Semitism expert.
Alexander Scherbanyuk, 46, a construction worker and political activist from Chernivtsi, was killed by sniper fire on February 20. The same day, snipers in Kiev killed two more Jewish anti-government protesters, Josef Shiling, a 61-year-old construction worker from Drogobych, and Evgeniy Kotlyar, a 33-year old ecological activist from Kharkiv.
Each of the three men, whom the Ukrainians consider as martyrs to their revolution, were well known by their local Jewish communities, Likachev said.
David Fishman, an expert on the former Soviet Union at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, said that the experience of fighting alongside Jews may have had an effect on the Right Sector’s language towards Jews overall.
Ukrainian Right Sector’s leader, Dmitry Yarosh, recently met with the Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine to allay concerns andto pledge to fight racism and anti-Semitism in Ukraine.
