5 books with insight into Ukrainian-Jewish history
There would be no modern Ukraine without Jews. And there would be no State of Israel without Ukraine.
This should be a truism. Yet, for many in the 21st century, the tie is not immediately obvious. Often, Ukraine is remembered as a place where Jews were killed, both by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi in the 17th century and by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and local collaborators in the 20th.
Meanwhile, fewer recognize that many of the founding fathers of Israel came from what is today Ukraine. Many are unaware that Zionism and Ukrainian nationalism both emerged as national liberation movements for minorities in the Russian Empire.
Few know that Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky — the founder of revisionist Zionism and the spiritual father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party — was a Russian-language writer from Odesa who viewed Jews and Ukrainians as allies in the struggle for democratization in the empire.
Often, the hard facts of history obscure the lives lived amid its cataclysmic events. The following are five books — both novels and memoirs — that offer a unique and engaging window into Jewish history in Ukraine from the late 19th century to the present.
1. The Complete Works of Isaac Babel
2. The Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of-the-Century Odessa
3. From Odessa to Jerusalem
4. Panic in a Suitcase
5. When the Menorah Fades
For more details about each book, go to https://www.kyivpost.com/business/5-books-with-insight-into-ukrainian-jewish-history.html
Matthew Kupfer
