One Ukrainian’s Appeal to Fellow Jews Throughout the World
Urge the Israeli government to act immediately to save our lives.
My name is Ilya, I am 29 years old, I was born to a family of a Ukrainian army officer, Ukrainian by nationality, and a teacher of Jewish tradition and history. My wife is originally from Belarus and moved to Ukraine on the darkest day of the Revolution of Dignity. Our firstborn, Grisha, is 4 y.o. We named our son to honor my grandfather, the head of the Jewish community of my hometown, Grigory Izrailevich Aizenshtat.
My grandfather stood at the origins of the revival of Jewish life in our region of Ukraine. He was one of the most prominent ambassadors of Jewry in northeast Ukraine. An Orthodox cross, Magen David, and a Muslim crescent are on the flag of my hometown — Konotop (Sumy region). Ukrainians, Jews, Tatars, and others lived together in our city for hundreds of years. The house where my ancestors lived was called Palestine because a lot of Jews lived there. However, everyone spoke Yiddish there, regardless of nationality, as well as Ukrainian and Tatars.
In the early 1990s, with Ukraine gaining independence, Jewish life began to revive in our city. Our community has become vibrant and active again, even Shalom Aleichem once wrote about the famous Konotop Klezmers. Our community was visited by outstanding people of the Jewish world: genealogists, historians, Yiddish experts, famous rabbis, and activists of Jewish communities from all over the world.
From the age of 16, I visited Israel almost every half a year, representing the Ukrainian Jewish youth at various forums, conferences, and seminars. Together with Israeli peers, we dreamed, created, philosophized about Jewish values and Zionism. For more than eight years, my wife was the head of the educational programs of the Jewish Agency for Israel in the Republic of Belarus. She grew up not one generation of Jewish leaders. We have always talked about Israel as a state that is the only protector of all the Jews of the world to our chanichim in summer camps and youth Jewish clubs. The Knesset passed a law confirming this on July 19th, 2018. This constitutional act declares the nature of the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and the state undertakes to take care of the welfare of Jews and Israelis “in trouble abroad.”
“Israel is the most humane state in the world, Israel does not abandon its people, Israel is a friend of Ukraine” — a mantra that I repeated in dialogues with my Ukrainian friends. After all, the Jewish community of Ukraine is the biggest group of advocates and ambassadors of Israel to Ukraine. Not diplomats, but local Jews: teachers, businessmen, salesmen, scientists, pensioners — all of us, in our stories about the Jewish state, built the image of this country in the eyes of Ukrainians for decades. That is why the people of Kyiv proudly say “our Golda Meir”, the people of Vinnytsia remember Levi Eshkol, and in Kherson, they do not forget about Moshe Sharet. Thanks to our efforts and our friends in Israel, hundreds of Israeli entrepreneurs came to Ukraine. It was we who did it.
On February 24, 2022, the “Yom Kippur War” began for Ukraine. Vilely, without a declaration of war, war came to our homes.
Since then, Ukrainians have been dying from cluster shells, multiple rocket launchers, and thermobaric shells.
At that moment our life was destroyed. By “our” I mean the lives of Ukrainian citizens: Jews, Ukrainians, Tatars, Ruthenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, all those who live in our multinational tolerant country.
All this time, you, as the leader of the Jewish state, have been silent. And your government ministers shift responsibility from each other
For more than a month, representatives of the diplomatic corps of Israel did not appear on the territory of Ukrainian cities.
For more than a month, your ministers are imitating assistance in social media with no real involvement. While Ukrainian refugees in Ben Gurion Airport are treated as Jews in the infamous Polish city.
Since February 24, your hotline phones are silent with short and long beeps.
All this time, our volunteers and friends in Israel have been collecting aid and sending tons of it to Ukraine, not to Moldova as your government did.
On the 38th day of the war, your Foreign Ministry cowardly “denied” the ambassador’s statements about war crimes committed by the Russian army in the Kyiv suburbs. And only late in the evening, they decided to state something.
By this moment, 410 bodies of civilians were found with signs of torture and execution. What is this different from the Babi Yar massacre? No need to answer, I’ll tell you, the uniform and language of the occupier, this is where the differences end. The Holocaust does not belong only to Israel — it is a world tragedy, and we, the Jews of Ukraine, the blood of our ancestors, with which the land of Ukraine is sprinkled, ask why you keep silence?
Dear Jews of the World,
I have never asked anything from Israel, on the contrary, I was willing to give led by Hillel’s words “if I am only for myself, then who am I?”
I haven’t asked anything from Israel when together with friends we gathered people to join rallies in support of Israel during every military operation; neither did I ask when we helped the Israelis who were in trouble in Ukraine; nor when I cleaned up the garbage and distributed food around the Tel Aviv bus station neighborhood to help African refugees sheltered by Israel; I also haven’t asked for anything from Israel when I helped representatives of our Foreign Ministry to work out the policy of interaction with Israel within the framework of the UN and UNESCO.
We did all of this for the sake of our countries, for our two homelands to be true friends, not just formal ones.
We, the Jews of Ukraine, see the help of the civil society of the State of Israel to the Ukrainians. We are infinitely grateful for this aid and will remember this friendly hand for hundreds of years to come. When I say “Ukrainians” — I mean the entire Ukrainian political nation, Ukrainians, Jews, Tatars, and others living on the same territory and united by one idea and dreams for the development of our country.
Nevertheless, we, the Jews of Ukraine, also see the problems, which partially led the Israeli society and the Politikum to react ambiguously to the war in Ukraine. There are two of them, and both are fundamental:
№1 The problem of the education system. The image of Ukraine is being solely built based on stories about Bohdan Khmelnytsky, pogroms, and other dark pages of our Ukrainian-Jewish history. I doubt that the same approach is used when teaching the history of England, France, and Spain e.g. in Israeli schools. At the same time, it is being forgotten that Ukraine is the Motherland of Hasidism, home to outstanding Jewish writers, poets, and politicians. The first written mention of Kyiv was made in Hebrew here, Baal Shem Tov smoked a pipe with Oleksa Dovbush, and the only currency in the world with a Yiddish text was also found here. Let’s learn the whole palette of the relationship and not just the dark part of it. Give Israeli students the opportunity to understand the history and role of Jews in Ukraine not based on Russian/Soviet narratives, but based on real ones. Meanwhile, when studying history, teachers should not forget about the present, and the understanding of what is happening now, and how the modern multicultural Ukrainian society lives.
№2 The problem of the system of values that you have been building for decades through honoring the Righteous Among the Nations, through creating the museum and the institute for the study of the Holocaust Yad Vashem, and identifying the principles of humanity in society based on that. How can a state and a society created by people who witnessed and survived the Holocaust, generations brought upon learning the lessons of the Shoah and have been saying “Never again”, can stand aside from the repetition of history? Why and where did the value system, so carefully crafted by the State of Israel, has failed?
Once, an outstanding Kyiv resident Golda Meir said, “If Israel stops shooting, then there will be no Israel, if our neighbors stop shooting, there will be peace.”
I’m appealing the World Jewry in order to urge the Israeli government to act immediately. Replace Israel with Ukraine, that’s the whole point of what is happening in Ukraine now in 2022. Not in 1948, not in 1956, not in 1973, not in 1982, and not even in 2006.
Don’t be silent, don’t the Jews of Ukraine deserve the Government of the Jewish State to take the side of the truth?
I know that Israeli officials are afraid that without Russia, Syria and Iran will play by different rules. But Russia never plays by the rules, it messes around with rules.
I know they are afraid for the lives of the 200,000 Jews in Russia, and what will happen to them in case you support Ukraine. However, 200,000 Jews in Ukraine are already being killed right now. Russian Grad missiles, the same ones that were hitting Israeli cities not so long ago, destroyed the Jewish youth center in Kharkiv. Russian Iskander missiles that are used to protect the Assad regime in Syria are falling near the grave of Rabbi Nachman in Uman and Babi Yar.
My personal story is a story of the person that had to leave everything behind and bring my family to the East saving the life of my son and wife from rockets that shelled our beloved Kyiv. This is a “happy end” I managed to send my to Israel and save their lives. So my duty is to become the voice and assistant to those who can not speak for themselves, those thousands of Jews in Chenigov, Mariupol, and Kharkiv. Young Jewish activists all over Ukraine serve in the Ukrainian army, working as volunteers and fundraisers for Ukraine. We led on our personal paths by words and lessons from Torah. Each and every one of us is doing maximum to help those in need and protect the lives of people around us. I never thought that I will change my routine to the challenges like finding the body armor in 1 day for a big squad, or how to get tonnes of medical aid through the border to the military hospitals in Kyiv. So I am asking myself why the State of Israel, the country created after the Holocaust as a symbol of the revival of the Jewish people as Phoneix was raised from the ashes, still keeps silent. Where are the sanctions, and why the Israeli officials are not arranging any special rescue operations or humanitarian corridors for those who are 24/7 are under heavy fire? We recognize the Israeli efforts in the peace process, but it’s unclear is there any progress, as the only thing that led to the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Ukraine — is the powerful response of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We do understand a lot of inner and outer threats that Israel is facing now as well, but. Once, President Kennedy stated that:
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality”
That is why I appeal to the world Jewry to urge the Israeli Government not only according to their inner political game but following the Jewish morality and lessons of Torah and our tzadikim. I ask you, the People of Israel, to sign the Petition to the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and call his Government to action.
