History of the Jews in Ukraine
The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus'. Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine is Europe's fourth largest and the world's 11th largest.
The presence of Jews in Ukrainian territory is first mentioned in the 10th century. At times Jewish life in Ukrainian lands flourished, while at other times it faced persecution and anti-Semitic discrimination. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising between 1648 and 1657, an army of Cossacks massacred and took large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Uniate Christians into captivity. One estimate reported that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed. More recent estimates report mortality of 3,000-6,000 people between the years 1648–1649.
During 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa followed the death of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were recorded killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom. At the start of the 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued, leading to large-scale emigration. In 1915, the imperial Russian government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas, including parts of Ukraine.
In the Ukrainian People's Republic, Yiddish became a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted autonomous status. Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency between 1917 and 1920. Nevertheless, between 1918 and 1920 in the period after the Russian Revolution and ensuing Ukrainian War of Independence, an estimated 31,071 but possibly up to 100,000 Jews were killed in pogroms perpetrated by a variety of warring factions, one of which was the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, formally under the command of Symon Petliura. Pogroms erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia and spread to many other regions, continuing until 1921. The actions of the Soviet government by 1927 led to a growing antisemitism.
Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews. Total civilian losses in Ukraine during World War II and the German occupation are estimated at seven million. More than one million Soviet Jews, including 225,000 in Belarus, were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and their many Ukrainian supporters. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part. The major massacres against Jews occurred mainly in the first phase of the occupation, although they continued until the return of the Red Army.
In 1959 Ukraine had 840,000 Jews, a decrease of almost 70% from 1941 totals. Ukraine's Jewish population continued to decline significantly during the Cold War. In 1989, Ukraine's Jewish population was only slightly more than half of what it was in 1959. During and after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, the majority of Jews left the country and moved abroad. Antisemitism, including violent attacks on Jews, was still a problem in Ukraine in 2012, according to UN report. The country's current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
Medieval and Early Modern era
Kyivan Rus
The presence of a Jewish community in the territory of modern-day Ukraine is first mentioned in the Kievan Letter, which was composed in the 10th century and became the first written mention of the Ukrainian capital. The document is especially valuable because it mentions the names of members of the city's Jewish community, some of them of obvious Slavic and Turkic origin.By the 11th century, Byzantine Jews of Constantinople had familial, cultural, and theological ties with the Jews of Kyiv. For instance, some 11th-century Jews from Kievan Rus participated in an anti-Karaite assembly held in either Thessaloniki or Constantinople. One of the three Kyivan city gates in the times of Yaroslav the Wise was called Zhydovski.
Popular dissatisfaction with the influence of Jewish financiers was claimed by chronicles to be one of the causes of a popular uprising, which engulfed Kyiv in 1113 after the death of prince Sviatopolk Iziaslavich. The rebels plundered the houses of Kyiv's Jews, who were accused by them of usury.
In Galicia, Jews were mentioned for the first time in 1030. From the second part of the 14th century, they were subjects of Polish kings and magnates.
Polish-Lithuanian rule
Founded in 1569, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth became one of the most diverse countries in Europe. Massive settlement of Jews in lands under Polish rule started in the 14th century in the aftermath of the adoption of the Statute of Kalisz. As a result, the kingdom became home to one of the world's largest and most vibrant Jewish communities. Jewish settlement also began in nearby Lithuania, which controlled many lands of today's Ukraine during that time.The Jewish community became one of the largest and most important ethnic minority groups in the territory of Ukraine during the Commonwealth era. Jews constituted 3 to 5% of the entire population of the Commonwealth, but in cities their share reached up to 20%. Many Jews worked as traders, but some also managed the estates of noble landowners, which made them especially unpopular among Ukrainian peasants. Unlike the rest of the population, Jews spoke their own language - Yiddish, and governed themselves through autonomous communities, whose leaders were elected in a democratic manner. On the other hand, many elements of Jewish culture, such as folk beliefs, clothing and architecture were shared with the Christian majority. The supreme representative organ of Jews in the Commonwealth, including Ukrainian lands, was the Council of Four Lands, which included members of Jewish communities from Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Volhynia and Podolia.
17–18th centuries
Khmelnytsky Uprising
In 1648-1657 Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a Cossack and peasant rebellion, known as Khmelnytsky Uprising, during which Jews were targeted for their role as managers of noble estates, which was seen as oppression of Orthodox population on behalf of Catholic Poles. It is estimated that at that time the Jewish population in Ukraine numbered 51,325. As a result, hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by the rebels, and tens of thousands of Jews were killed or sold as slaves.File:CossackMamay.jpg|thumb|Cossack Mamay and the Haidamaka hang a Jew by his heels. Ukrainian folk art, 19th century
Historians consider the massacres under Khmelnytsky to have been the bloodiest episode of anti-Jewish violence until the 20th century. A 1996 estimate reported that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were destroyed. A 2014 estimate reduced the toll to 3,000-6,000 from 1648 to 1649; of these, 3,000-6,000 Jews were killed by Cossacks in Nemyriv in May 1648 and 1,500 in Tulczyn in July 1648. Among contemporary Jews the effect of Khmelnytsky Uprising was compared to the destruction of the First and Second Temples. As a result of the massacres, many Jews from Ukraine moved to western regions of Poland, or emigrated to German lands, Amsterdam and the Ottoman Empire.
Rise of Hasidism and internal struggles
The Cossack Uprising and following massacres left a deep and lasting impression on Jewish social and spiritual life and led to the rise in popularity of Jewish mysticism including Kabbalah. The 1648 events in Ukraine played a role in the development of a number of messianic movements in Judaism, such as the sect of Sabbatai Zevi. These movements opposed traditional rabbinism and put an emphasis on magical healing practices, amulets and physical activity such as singing, dancing and prayer.The teachings of Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov, or BeShT, who lived in the Ukrainian town of Medzhybizh, produced a massive religious movement which had a profound effect on Eastern European Jews. Known as Hasidism, it influenced Haredi Judaism, with a continuous influence through many Hasidic dynasties. The emergence of Hasidism with its specific rules and rites produced a strong opposition from traditional Ashkenazi Jewish circles. As a result of a split between Hasidic Jewish communities and their opponents in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a teritorial division emerged, with Hasidic rites dominating among poorer and less educated Jews in Volhynia, Podolia, Galicia and Hungarian-ruled territories of modern-day Ukraine.
A different movement was started by Jacob Frank in the middle of the 18th century. Frank's teachings were unorthodox and were supported by part of the Catholic clergy, including the bishop of Kamieniec Podolski, which led to his excommunication along with his numerous followers. In 1759 Frank and his supporters converted to Catholicism in Lemberg. As a result, a group of up to 20,000 Jewish converts emerged, who gradually assimilated with Christians, but preserved some peculiar traditions. In 1817 Frankists were officially recognized as Catholics by the Russian imperial government.
19th century
In the Russian Empire
In Russian Empire until the partitions of Poland Jewish communities were not officially recognized. However, as a result of the partitions, between 1772 and 1795 around 750,000 Jews in Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania became subjects of the Russian Empire, followed by Jews of Central Poland, which also came under Russian control as a result of the Congress of Vienna. As a result, Imperial Russia became home to the largest Jewish community in the world. Empress Catherine the Great, a follower of the European Enlightenment ideas, initially provided the Jews equal rights with the rest of her subjects, categorizing them as burghers. However, due to protests of Moscow merchants, whose businesses suffered due to competition with their Jewish counterparts, in 1791 the Jewish right of residence was limited to the Pale of Settlement, which included territories annexed from Poland-Lithuania, as well as the Black Sea region.The 1804 Statute for the Jews obliged Jews in the Russian Empire to adopt surnames, required them to use official languages in documentation and put rabbis under special supervision of the state. In rural localities Jews were limited in their right to act as tavernkeepers, and the government made unsuccessful attempts to expel Jews from villages to cities. Under the rule of Nicholas I Jewish families were required to provide recruits for the army, with boys as young as 12 years old having to leave their families to receive military training; many of them later converted to Orthodox Christianity. In 1844 the government abolished the kahal, depriving Jewish communities of their officially recognized autonomy. Special taxes were also introduced on kosher meat and sabbath candles. Those rules were partially relaxed under the rule of Alexander II of Russia, but after 1870 Jews were still limited from executing rights in many areas. For example, Jewish members were banned from taking more than one-third of places in local councils, even if the locality had a Jewish majority, and Jews were also banned from being appointed mayors.
Odesa became the home of a large Jewish community during the 19th century, and by 1897 Jews were estimated to account for some 37% of the population. The city also became known as a centre of publishing and education, with the first Jewish magazines in Russian and Yiddish being published there.