78. The Ukrainian Jewish population is in a state
of catastrophic demographic decline. Its average age is about 56.
Its death to birth ratio is 13:1. Its numbers diminish by about
40,000 every year due to emigration of the more vital segments of
the population and the low birth rate, high mortality rate, and
assimilation of those who remain. Although the total Jewish population
of Ukraine is popularly reported to be between 300,000 and 400,000,
a forthcoming report from the Division of Demography and Statistics
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem places the “core”
Jewish population of Ukraine at the beginning of 1998 at 132,000.
Emigration, which occurs disproportionately among
younger segments of the population, is likely to continue at a high
rate and, in some areas, to grow. Departures are spurred by local
economic distress, greater opportunities in other countries, desire
for reunification with family members already abroad, and local
antisemitism. Interest in emigration to Israel is substantial, as
is shown by pressure exerted on the Jewish Agency to open additional
Hebrew ulpan classes in many cities. Similarly, enrollment in Jewish
day schools, another indicator of interest in Hebrew and Israel,
remains stable in most areas and is growing in some regions, notwithstanding
emigration of many young families.
Jewish demographic decline has obvious implications
for community-building and for such pragmatic issues as communal
property acquisition. It does not appear that all Jewish organizations
active in Ukraine have devoted adequate attention to this situation.
As the “core” Jewish population declines,
the issue of the high rate of intermarriage among Ukrainian Jewry
looms ever larger. Whereas almost all day schools under Chabad auspices
declined to accept non-halakhic Jewish children during the first
half of the 1990s, many record a substantial minority non-halakhic
Jewish enrollment as the decade ends. Representatives of the Jewish
Agency for Israel and the State of Israel report that the Jewish
identity of large numbers of individuals planning aliyah is increasingly
tenuous.
79. Among the differences between Russian and Ukrainian
Jewry is the existence in Ukraine of several major and influential
Jewish population centers outside the national capital. In general,
this pattern corresponds with the demographic pattern for the larger
Soviet and post-Soviet Ukrainian population. Casual Western observers
of Ukrainian Jewry rarely venture beyond Kyiv, Odessa, and one or
more former Kyiv-region shtetls, ignoring the large eastern industrial
cities of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk. Just as these cities
produce significant leadership in the national government of Ukraine,
they also are producing notable Jewish
leadership. For the immediate future, this leadership appears vested
in rabbinic ranks -- especially Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki of Dnipropetrovsk,
Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski of Donetsk, and Rabbi Meir Stambler, the
Dnipropetrovsk-based head of Chabad operations in Ukraine -- but
lay leaders may emerge from this region as Ukrainian national Jewish
organizations stabilize. In contrast, it is difficult to envision
national Russian Jewish leadership, rabbinic or lay, rising outside
Moscow.
80. Antisemitism, too, differs in character and
extent between Russia and Ukraine. Contemporary Russian antisemitism
appears to be driven by a number of circumstances, including: a
generalized bigotry and intolerance in Russia directed toward various
minority groups; escalating Russian nationalism, fed in part by
a sense of humiliation and frustration at the loss of Soviet superpower
status; a need in some sectors of the population to find scapegoats
for current economic distress; prominence of Jews among “oligarchs”
with broad influence in the Russian economy and media; a strong
Communist party characterized by steadfast Russian nationalist and
antisemitic dogma; an underdeveloped legal culture; a legal system
unable to protect human rights; and a readiness to exploit these
conditions in political rhetoric for election campaigns.
Despite some expansion in visible Ukrainian anti-Jewish
bigotry in recent months, its expression appears much more muted
than is the case in Russia. Except in western Ukraine, long an incubator
of Ukrainian nationalism, popular antisemitism is much less generalized.
Superpower status -- past or present, real or perceived -- is not
an issue in Ukraine. Ukrainian oligarchs, Jewish and non-Jewish,
are less flamboyant than their counterparts in Russia. Ukrainian
Communists are weaker and less dogmatic than Russian Communists.
Although antisemitism did erupt in the last stages of the recent
Kyiv mayoral campaign, it appeared episodic and limited.93
81. Although continuing to permit Jewish departures,
Ukraine has raised more impediments to Jewish emigration than has
been in the case in other post-Soviet states in the western area
of the former USSR. Harassment of Jewish Agency emissaries and Jewish
Agency operations has increased in recent months. Complaints against
‘brain drain’ are common and reflect the high rate of
Jewish departures from Ukraine. Most observers believe that Ukraine
will continue to allow emigration if only because the right to free
emigration is a critical issue in both Israel-Ukraine and United
States-Ukraine bilateral relations. However, tension is likely to
continue between the Jewish Agency for Israel and Ukraine.
82. The issue of Jewish children in distress persists
in Ukraine and may even intensify as the Ukrainian economy remains
paralyzed. The four residential programs in Ukraine for Jewish children
-- in Dnipropetrovsk, Korosten, Kyiv, and Odessa -- are overextended
and underfunded, without assurance of ongoing support. (The Orthodox
Union program in Kharkiv may be considered a fifth program as some
of its boarding pupils are from troubled homes; however, the intent
of Lycee Sha’alvim is much less social welfare than education
and aliyah.) The Ahava day program in Kyiv that works with both
able and disabled Jewish children from economically-disadvantaged
families also has been unable to attract comprehensive assistance
from either domestic or foreign sources.
83. Ukrainian Jewish organizations and institutions
continue to be troubled by a dearth of responsible indigenous leadership.
Individual initiative, tolerance, and accountability were little
valued in Soviet society and are scarcely understood in post-Soviet
Ukraine. Consensus-building, planning, and priority-setting are
elusive skills. Whether in an indigenous organization or in a local
branch of an international agency, effective and honorable native
leadership has been slow to emerge. Rabbi Yaakov Bleich of Kyiv
and Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki of Dnipro-petrovsk are rare in their
commitment of time and energy to mentor local individuals in developing
communal leadership skills.
Too often, those who step forward as leaders are
motivated by visions of economic gain, raw power, or, in the case
of Vadim Rabinovich of United Jewish Community of Ukraine, the hope
of legitimacy and credibility against potential prosecution for
criminal activity.94
Although Mr. Rabinovich, as well as Eduard Khodos of Kharkiv,95
are extreme cases, numerous other indigenous Jews have emerged as
local tyrants, obstructing community as they claim to build it.
Their shortcomings are magnified by respect conferred upon them
by poorly informed representatives of foreign organizations.96
In at least a half dozen cities across Ukraine, disreputable individuals
have been accorded recognition as legitimate Jewish leaders by organizations
attempting to operate Ukrainian programs by remote control from
Jerusalem or other distant centers.
Several organizations, from Chabad to more secular
groups, have found that even two-year programs of leadership education
are inadequate for the transformation of Soviet-style bosses into
responsible civil leaders. For the Joint Distribution Committee,
the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and even the few local
efforts of B’nai B’rith, eagerness to create local representations
without the investment of substantial resources in leadership selection
and training has undermined potentially credible programs and created
local autocracies reflecting badly on the parent organizations.
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Committee,
the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and even the few local
efforts of B’nai B’rith, eagerness to create local representations
without the investment of substantial resources in leadership selection
and training has undermined potentially credible programs and created
local autocracies reflecting badly on the parent organizations.97
84. From Jewish communities in eastern Ukraine
to those with both local and national perspectives in Kyiv, hostility
and resentment in the Jewish community toward the institutional
demeanor and spirit of the Joint Distribution Committee are mounting.98
On one level, the exasperation reflects organizational jealousy
borne of the extraordinary resources and authority granted to JDC
by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. However,
antipathy extends beyond classic institutional rivalry and addresses
a number of basic Jewish community issues. For example, it is broadly
felt that JDC seems more concerned with fulfilling specific centrally-determined
program objectives than with relating to individuals in need. Similarly,
JDC is perceived as imposing its own institutional models (such
as heseds, Jewish community centers, or Hillel student organi-zations)
upon local communities, often ignoring and eventually overwhelming
parallel nascent indigenous groups with potential to thrive if patiently
nurtured. Further, most communal organizations formed under JDC
guidance appear remarkably similar from community to community,
even when conditions between communities differ substantially.99
By the sheer size of its externally-imposed agenda, it is not surprising
that JDC is perceived by some to be destroying the local community
that it claims to be building.
JDC is viewed as being condescending and patronizing
toward smaller organi-zations, even as some of these grass roots
groups are accomplishing tasks at which JDC itself has had only
limited success, for example, distributing pharmaceutical products
to elderly Jews in smaller population centers. It has shown a marked
reluctance to consult with locally-based hasidic rabbis on policy
issues, although many of these rabbis have been in their positions
for eight or more years, building relationships with local Jews
and government authorities that elude representatives of JDC and
other external organizations, who usually remain in a locale for
periods of one to three years.
Its lack of internal research capacity, combined
with an apparent unwillingness to consult external Soviet/post-Soviet
area specialists, has generated some questionable JDC policies.
For example, the cited decision to form a “northern Ukraine”
operational region when basic political and economic conditions
suggest the greater practicality of other regional configurations,
the primacy accorded various community-building initiatives when
local conditions indicate that aliyah-oriented programs for younger
segments of the Jewish population might be more prudent, and its
often nonchalant approach to local Jews of questionable back-ground
all bespeak a strange indifference to its own institutional credibility.
85. The public resignation of Yaakov Kedmi (Kazakov),
a former refusenik, as chief of Nativ after 22 years in the organization
occurred while the writer was visiting Ukraine. His forthcoming
departure was greeted with great satisfaction across the spectrum
of individuals with whom the writer conferred. Mr. Kedmi is widely
perceived as small-minded and living in the past -- a past dominated
by the Soviet Union that no longer exists.100 The appointment of Zvi
Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to both Ukraine and Russia, as
Mr. Kedmi’s successor, was widely applauded. The installation
of Mr. Magen as the new chief and concurrent installation of a new
Israeli government have created expectations of a comprehensive
review of Nativ operations and subsequent new mission state-ment
defining significantly circumscribed Nativ responsibilities.
Betsy Gidwitz
June 30, 1999
All translations
and photographs in this report are by the author.
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93.
Some have theorized that the presence of dozens of Holocaust memorial
sites throughout Ukraine reminds even those Ukrainians who do not
care to be reminded that antisemitism can bear terrible consequences.
Whereas German forces occupied all of Ukraine during World War II,
only a small portion of Russia came under Nazi control.
94. As
this report was being completed toward the end of June 1999, Mr.
Rabinovich’s apparent strategy had failed. He was denied entry
to Ukraine for five years because he engaged in “activities
[that] seriously damag[ed] the [Ukrainian] economy”. He was
permitted to leave for Israel, where he had acquired citizenship
and owned property, several hours before Ukrainian secuirity forces
announced his banishment. See pp. 4-6.
95. See
pp. 62-64.
96. See
p. 16 regarding the attitude of Hillel in Ukraine toward Mr. Rabinovich.
It is possible that Mr. Akselrod was reflecting the policy of JDC,
the local supervisor of Hillel in the successor states.
97. Rabbi
Bleich has approved inclusion of several individuals with questionable
track records in the administration of the Jewish Confederation
of Ukraine, fearing that their exclusion might create enemies for
the nascent organization. Unlike organizers of the agencies named
above, Rabbi Bleich is aware of the leadership styles of specific
individuals. His own base in Ukraine is more likely to enable careful
monitoring of Confederation activities and intervention in a timely
manner when such becomes advisable.
98. Institutional
demeanor and spirit should not be confused with certain specific
JDC programs, especially those that address the needs of elderly
Jews, which are broadly admired by many in local and national Jewish
communal organizations.
99. For
example, the general competence and institution-building capacity
of local rabbis differs markedly from one Jewish population center
to another. Similarly, emigration is greater from some Jewish population
centers than from others.
100. Nativ,
formerly known as the Lishkat Hakesher
(in English, Liaison Bureau),
was established in 1952 as a semi-clandestine entity attached to
the Office of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Its purpose
was to develop and manage Israeli state policy concerning the large
Jewish population of the then Stalinist Soviet Union. It has continued
to operate in the post-Soviet era, although its mission is unclear
and many of its self-designated tasks appear better suited to other
organizations with defined standards of accountability, such as
the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Jewish Agency Department
of Jewish Zionist Education. Nativ’s methods of operation
have been criticized severely in periodic reports of the Israeli
State Comptroller.
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