Monty Hall’s best deal

By David Suissa
Published on May 1, 2013

For over 30 years, starting in the early 1960s, Monty Hall hosted “Let’s Make a Deal,” one of the most popular game shows in television history. He was not only the show’s impresario, he created and produced it, and today, at 91, he is still involved with its creative evolution.

Jewish Agency to hold Kiev meeting despite qualms by some local Jews

Published on March 14, 2013

The Jewish Agency and a chief rabbi of Ukraine have disputed claims that Kiev is ill-suited for hosting a Jewish Agency event due to rising xenophobia and civil liberties issues.

Ukrainian city agrees to stop using Jewish headstones as pavement

Published on March 1, 2013

The city of Lviv in Ukraine agreed to remove Jewish headstones currently used as pavement.

Jonathan Safran Foer Named to Holocaust Memorial Council

Published on February 7, 2013

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer was appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. President Obama tapped Foer, 35, also a New York University professor of creative writing, last Friday.

Anti-Semitic political party makes gains in Ukrainian elections

Published on October 29, 2012

The Ukrainian ultranationalist Svoboda Party has made unprecedented gains in the country’s parliamentary elections, where it garnered 12 percent of the vote.

Journeying to a Jewish Cemetery in Ukrainian Transcarpathia

By Ruth Ellen Gruber
Published on August 26, 2012

Shopping center construction damaging historic Lviv synagogue

Published on August 8, 2012

The Jewish community in Lviv, Ukraine, has warned that construction of a new shopping center could seriously damage a historic synagogue next to the site.

Israel backs lifting Jackson-Vanik

Published on June 22, 2012

Israel endorsed Russia's graduation out of Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions. "Israel supports Russia's graduation from Jackson-Vanik," a senior Israeli official told JTA this week. "The reasons Russia is included in Jackson Vanik are no longer relevant."

Jewish leader ‘shocked’ French soccer team skipped Auschwitz

Published on June 13, 2012

The president of the umbrella organization of France’s Jewish communities said it was “shocking” that France’s soccer team did not visit Auschwitz.

Wiesenthal Center: Lviv mayor covers up anti-Semitism

Published on June 12, 2012

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned a statement by the mayor of Lviv, Ukraine, in which he said that in his city "there has never been anti-Semitism and there will never be."

Ukraine police nab 3 teens suspected of desecrating Jewish mass grave

Published on June 8, 2012

Ukrainian police on Thursday arrested three teenagers suspected of desecrating a mass grave of Holocaust victims near Rivne

Actress Mila Kunis opens up about Jewish history

Published on May 7, 2012

Actress Mila Kunis said she had to hide her Jewishness as a youngster in Ukraine and was miserable during her early years in the United States.

Ukraine parliament speaker wants to see better interfaith ties

Published on April 30, 2012

Jewish man in Kiev attacked after seder

Published on April 9, 2012

A Jewish man was attacked after he left a seder at a synagogue in Kiev.

Alexander Levin’s got a name (and cash), but does he have a plan?

Published on January 30, 2012

Ukrainian Jewish leader and real estate mogul Alexander L. Levin came to New York last week to launch the latest international Jewish organization with a grandiose name. Called the World Forum for Russian Jewry, this one aims to harness the power of Russian-speaking Jews the world over.

Back to Ukraine: A filmmaker’s diary of living in her ancestors’ land

Published on November 23, 2011

Naomi Uman is a woman of many talents, but drawing is not one of them. “I always knew that I was an artist, but I can’t and I couldn’t draw realistically,” Uman said during a phone interview from New York where she was visiting her mother. And so, rather than pursuing a career as a painter, she became a chef. Cooking in the kitchens of society fixtures like Gloria Vanderbilt and Malcolm Forbes, Uman carved out a fine, if unfulfilling, career for herself. “Eventually, watching all of my creations being consumed became frustrating.”

Ukraine marks Babi Yar massacre anniversary

Published on October 3, 2011

Ukraine marked the 70th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar, one of the deadliest of the Holocaust.

Ukrainians protest Chasidic pilgrimage to Uman

Published on September 26, 2011

Dozens of Ukrainian nationalists protested the annual pilgrimage of Jews to the grave of a Chasidic rabbi in Uman.

Lawmakers from around the world gather at Babi Yar

Published on September 20, 2011

International parliamentarians from Europe, Israel, Turkey and other nations gathered at the site of the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine.

Ukraine razes the ruins of 16th century shul to build a hotel

Published on September 6, 2011

The Ukraine government has begun the allegedly illegal demolition of a 16th century synagogue to build a hotel.

JCC opens in Kharkov, Ukraine

Published on April 5, 2011

A new Jewish Community Center opened in Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkov. Donors, volunteers and staff of World Jewish Relief, which raised the funds for and oversaw construction of the building, were among those on hand for the official opening March 30 in the northeastern Ukraine community.

Israel indicts captured Gazan engineer

Published on April 4, 2011

Israel has filed an indictment against a Gaza Palestinian engineer that it secretly captured in Ukraine and brought back to Israel. Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, was indicted Monday in Beersheba District Court on charges of activity in a terrorist organization, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and production of weaponry offenses.

Badkhn Belt? Jewish humor was born in 1661, prof says

Published on February 28, 2011

The Chmielnicki massacres weren’t particularly funny. From 1648 to 1651, nearly 100,000 Jews were slaughtered throughout Ukraine by Bohdan Chmielnicki and his roving bands of Cossacks. It was arguably the worst pogrom in history, leaving hundreds of Jewish communities in ruins.

Hitler’s Ukraine headquarters to be museum

Published on February 2, 2011

Hitler's Eastern front military headquarters in central Ukraine will be turned into a museum. The opening is scheduled for May 9, known as Victory Day, which marks the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union in World War II.

I speak Latin, therefore I speak English

By Julia Bendis
Published on January 26, 2011

20 years on, Russians in Germany flocking to big cities

Published on January 24, 2011

When Yuri Rosov immigrated to Germany from Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 1997, the city in which he ended up, Rostock, had no synagogue, no infrastructure and virtually no money. Rosov now heads that Jewish community in the former East Germany, which has about 700 members, nearly all of them Russian speakers. “We have a synagogue and a strong community,” said Rosov, 50, who works for the Maccabee sports association. In recent years, however, a new challenge has emerged that threatens the future of the Rostock Jewish community and many other similar ones across Germany populated mostly by Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants and their families: Young people are leaving.

Helping an orphan of history recover its past

Published on January 20, 2011

It's not every day that you can help a city recover its history. But that's what happened recently in Lviv, in western Ukraine, when I served on the jury for an international design competition to mark and memorialize key sites of Jewish heritage. Sponsored by municipal authorities in association with the Lviv Center for Urban History and the German Society for Technical Cooperation, the competition was aimed at counteracting widespread, and sometimes willful, amnesia about the city's rich and convoluted past.

Helping an orphan of history recover its past

Published on January 18, 2011

It's not every day that you can help a city recover its history. But that's what happened recently in Lviv, in western Ukraine, when I served on the jury for an international design competition to mark and memorialize key sites of Jewish heritage. Sponsored by municipal authorities in association with the Lviv Center for Urban History and the German Society for Technical Cooperation, the competition was aimed at counteracting widespread, and sometimes willful, amnesia about the city's rich and convoluted past.

Ukraine strips nationalist leader Bandera of honor

Published on January 12, 2011

A Ukrainian court reportedly has annulled a decree that posthumously granted nationalist leader Stepan Bandera the Hero of Ukraine award. The announcement of the decree's annullment was released Wednesday by the office of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Former President Viktor Yuschenko last year granted the prestigious award to Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, shortly before national elections, which he lost. The award recognizes either heroism or achievement in labor.

In saving Jewish remnants in Galicia, an effort to enlist Ukrainians

Published on December 20, 2010

On a sloping green hill tucked between small farmsteads, the mottled graves of Jews buried here since the 1600s rise up like a forgotten forest.

Graphic photos chronicle Babi Yar massacre

Published on November 8, 2010

A graphic photo exhibit chronicling the Nazi massacre of Jews at Babi Yar is on display at a meeting against anti-Semitism in Canada.

Israel, Ukraine now visa free

Published on July 22, 2010

Israel and Ukraine signed an agreement canceling visas between the two countries.

Unearthing mass graves in Ukraine unveils history

By Michael J. Jordan
Published on November 8, 2007

In May, Ukrainian workers laying a gas pipe in a southern village dug into a buried chamber of thousands of Jews killed during the Holocaust. That same month, a construction crew building a new office complex in western Ukraine burrowed into the corpses of several dozen more Jews. Stumbling upon such mass graves is not particularly unusual in Eastern Europe. Less well known is how many more "martyr sites" lie undiscovered and unmarked in fields and forests across the region -- wherever mobile Nazi killing units scorched the earth in the so-called "Holocaust of bullets." It seems momentum is growing in the search for such sites.

Cafe Hillel marks new tactic to reach out to young people—in Odessa

By Matt Siegel
Published on November 1, 2007

Kiril Alexandrovich's Cafe Hillel, which was expected to open last week, is the first effort in Odessa at co-branding undertaken by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. The partnership aims to transform Jewish youth organizing in the former Soviet Union, leaving behind the club model and heading out into the cities, where young Jews work and play.

School in Ukraine resists alleged Chabad takeover

By Vladimir Matveyev
Published on June 7, 2007

A pluralistic Jewish school in Ukraine fended off what its sponsors say were attempts by Chabad to take over one of the oldest Jewish day schools in the former Soviet Union.

Briefs: Mass Shoah grave discovered in Ukraine; Report: Israel wants to talk with Syria; German Jews decry aliyah push

Published on June 7, 2007

News briefs.

Israeli police want to charge Katsav for rape; U.S. funding Hamas opponents

Published on October 19, 2006

News Updates.

‘Ace’ holds all the cards when it comes to cakes

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on September 14, 2006

Duff Goldman is the "extreme baker" of the Food Network's reality series, "The Ace of Cakes."

Filming on Babi Yar Genocide Underway

By Yulianna Vilkos
Published on April 13, 2006

A new Holocaust documentary, co-produced by the Los Angeles-based Shoah Foundation, is being filmed in Ukraine and targeted mainly toward a Ukranian and Russian audience. The film should be completed by September, in time for the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre.

Tommywood - Grossman Revealed

By Tom Teicholz
Published on March 30, 2006

Vasily Grossman's stories helped him gain admittance to the Soviet Writer's Union. As a successful writer, the state treated him well: He was paid handsomely, had good housing (an apartment in the center of Moscow) and was invited (and allowed) to take his family on vacation to a dacha on the Black Sea.

Dueling Ukranian Rabbis

By Jewish Journal Staff
Published on October 27, 2005

Nation & World Briefs

Published on September 22, 2005

Nation and World Briefs

The Great Jewish Hope

By Carin Davis
Published on September 18, 2003

Dmitriy Salita doesn't fight on the Sabbath, which gives his competition a much-needed day of rest from this powerful junior welterweight.

Ghosts of Passovers Past

By Amy Klein
Published on March 28, 2002

I have never quite gotten used to celebrating two seders.

After doing only one seder for each of the nine Passovers I was in Israel, the second night now seems like religious deja vu, a "Groundhog Day," where I'm setting the table yet again, rereading the haggadah and singing the same songs, thinking that if only I get it right this time, I won't have to relive the night once more.

A World Away

By Tom Tugend
Published on January 10, 2002

When the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks suddenly put Afghanistan in the headlines and people searched their atlases for the bordering countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Dr. Robert J. Meth had the answers.

Pope Pays Homage at Babi Yar

By Ruth E. Gruber
Published on June 28, 2001

In his first visit to a Jewish site since a controversial May appearance in Syria, Pope John Paul II paid tribute this week to thousands of Ukrainian Jews killed by the Nazis in one of the bloodiest slaughters of the Holocaust.

Journey to America

By Yosif Kirtsman
Published on August 12, 1999

My father Illya Pinhkus Kirtsman was born in 1909 in Odessa, Ukraine, the youngest of 11 children. His older sister and brother immigrated to America in 1912. The whole family planned to follow them. It was their dream for many years. In the 1930s, my father received few letters from his American siblings, and only after W.W.II did he establish communication with them again. By this time, only he and his sister Sonia (the 10th child) were alive. When we received a letter, my father took it to a translator (letters were written in Yiddish) and the whole family would listen to the news from America. We kept the door to our apartment locked. My mother was afraid that people from the KGB might come over, see us reading the letters, and put us in jail.

The Arts

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on April 19, 1998

In March 1996, John Turturro packed a trunk filledwith Primo Levi's books and traveled to a remote part of the Ukraine.His destination was the set of "The Truce," Francesco Rosi's filmbased on Levi's searing 1963 memoir "The Reawakening." Portraying theHolocaust author, Turturro sensed, would be the most difficult roleof his life.