(JTA) — From the moment of its spontaneous combustion on Nov. 21 and for weeks thereafter, the mass pro-European Union encampment in the center of Kiev appeared to represent the epitome of 21st-century European values. The activities of the vast, multi-ethnic crowd in Maidan Square quickly came to be called Euromaidan and celebrated themes of…
A Kiev rabbi has won a protracted legal battle against a Ukrainian governmental agency for his synagogue’s ownership of 18 Torah scrolls. The Kiev Economic Court of Appeals ruled last week that Rabbi Moshe Azman’s Central Synagogue in Kiev may keep the scrolls as its possession. Ukraine’s State Archive Service had transferred the scrolls to…
At about 1 a.m. on the second night of Passover, Alexander “Aron” Goncharov stepped from Brodsky Synagogue, in the center of Kiev, into the cold night air. The 25-year-old yeshiva student, who was staying at the synagogue’s hostel, never returned to his room. After hours of frantic phone calls the following day, yeshiva authorities finally…
There are Orthodox Jews versus secular Jews; accusations that wealthy philanthropists are trying to control Jewish organizations staffed by overworked, underpaid communal professionals; charges that certain Jewish institutions are sucking up the lion’s share of communal funds, leaving others to languish. Sound familiar? Something like New York, or any other large American Jewish community, in…
Image courtesy of Sanford Kearns Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree This year, or so it seems to me, the American Jewish community is awash in new editions of the haggadah, the age-old ritual text that structures the Passover seder. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the stunning Washington Haggadah, a facsimile edition of…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. The name Mark Epshtein (1899-1949) no longer occupies a prominent place in Yiddish cultural history, but a current exhibit in Kiev brought the artist back to the city where he created his most important work. “The Return of the Master,” which runs until February 20 at the…
“The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is,” writes Alexandar Hemon in The New Yorker food issue this past November. Until recently, I simply figured I’d never tasted “the perfect borscht.” My first impression of the Eastern European delicacy was the purple liquid my father would buy once a year on Passover….
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree There’s something about the sea that captivates. Perhaps it’s the play of light on the water’s surface or the inexorability of its motions: back and forth, back and forth, it goes. Whatever the reasons, the sea beckons. Its hold on us is even more irresistible when joined to rituals…
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