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' (late 9th to mid-13th century).Kipiani, V. "Interesting Books": Jewish addresses of Kyiv. News Broadcasting Service (TSN). 6 April 2012 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.Ukraine. World Jewish Congress.
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 antisemitic 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 (1996) reported that 15,000–30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed.Paul Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, p. 350. University of Washington Press, 1996. More recent estimates (2014) report mortality of 3,000–6,000 people between the years 1648–1649. As a result of the massacres, by the 18th century virtually no Jewish population remained in Cossack-governed Ukrainian lands to the east of the Dnieper, although some were able to survive and integrate into the local society by converting to Orthodox Christianity. Many Jews fled to Polish-ruled areas to the west, but in those areas they also suffered from regular persecutions and attacks leading to thousands of deaths.
Following the Partitions of Poland, most of Ukrainian lands ended up part of the Russian Empire, which introduced various limitations against the local Jewish inhabitants and tied them to the so-called Pale of Settlement. During 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa, caused by the death of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople, 14 Jews were recorded killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom. During the second half of the 19th and into the early 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 comparison to Russian-ruled areas, Jews living in Austrian-ruled Galicia and other parts of modern-day Western Ukraine were more tolerated, but many of them still suffered from severe poverty, which led to mass emigration.
In the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1920), 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.National policy of the Central Council in conditions of Ukrainian independence (January–April 1918). Electronic library of handbooks. Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency between 1917 and 1920.Money with Yiddish labels. Hadashot by Vaad of Ukraine. January 2008 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.Сергійчук, В. Український Крим К. 2001, p.156
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 (within Ukraine's current borders). 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 (mostly to Israel). 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.
Name In modern Ukrainian language the accepted term for Jews is євреї (yevreyi), but other terms to denote the community have also been used. The word zhyd (жид) was historically the standard word for Jews used by the Ukrainian population, but it gradually started to be perceived as pejorative and went out of use under the influence of Russian language.
Medieval and Early Modern era Early settlement Jews are considered to be the oldest national and religious minority in Ukraine. Hellenized Jews appeared in Crimea and on the Black Sea coast already in pre-Christian times, and Hebrew inscriptions dating to the 2nd century AD have been preserved in those areas. Several inscriptions from Panticapaeum, dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, mention the local synagogue (sometimes described as belonging jointly to Jews and "God-fearers") as the supervising body for the manumission of freedom slaves. A similar practice is attested across the Kerch Strait, in the synagogue of Phanagoria. A third-century Hebrew funerary inscription for an individual named Isaac was discovered in Panticapaeum; it includes a blessing for peace, which was cited by archaeologist Anna Collar as evidence of a broad resurgence in the use of the Hebrew language among the Jewish diaspora. From this same period, examples of menorah imagery appear alongside Hebrew names such as Seimon and Samouelos.
The ruling elites of Turkic Khazar Khaganate, which based its territory on the Volga and Don rivers, adopted Judaism as their religion around 740. However, in 964 that state was defeated by Sviatoslav, Grand Prince of Kiev, and soon ceased its existence.
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, which aside from the majority Semitic names, also has names that are apparently Slavic, while others appear to be of Turkic origin. According to a chronicle, in 987 Khazarian Jews were reported to visit prince Volodymyr of Kyiv, attempting him to convert to Judaism. Anti-Jewish polemics are present in the writings of Kyiv metropolitan Hilarion.
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.Kevin A. Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, Second Edition, Rowman and Littlefield, pg. 198. One of the three Kyivan city gates in the times of Yaroslav the Wise was called Zhydovski (Jewish), and under 1124 a separate Jewish quarter in Kyiv known as Zhydove ("Jews") was mentioned.
Kyivan Jews engaged in trade and financial operations, and would be hired by princes to perform central administrative tasks, enjoying their protection. 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. There are mentions of cooperation between Daniel of Galicia and the Jewish population in his realm, and a chronicle reported that the death of prince Volodymyr Vasylkovych in 1288 was greatly mourned by his Jewish subjects.
Polish-Lithuanian rule
From the second part of the 14th century, Galician Jews became subjects of Polish kings and magnates. Meanwhile Volhynia, Kyiv and Podolia were incorporated by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and local Jews received equal rights with their Lithuanian counterparts. Starting from the late 14th century, active Jewish settlement from Poland and Germany started, and Jewish communities were established in Lutsk, Berestia and other cities. Jewish presence in Galicia was regulated by the 1334 Statute of Kalisz issued by Casimir the Great.
During the late 15th century the biggest wave of Jewish migration to Poland and Lithuania took place following the expulsion of Jews by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Most Jews migrating to Ukraine during that time were speakers of Yiddish. They were required to wear distinct clothing, and settled in separate urban quarters (ghettos). In 1495 Lithuanian duke Alexander ordered the expulsion of Jews from his realm, but after his election as King of Poland allowed them to return. In 1507 Sigismund I confirmed the rights of Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1529 those rights were included into the First Statute of Lithuania. The second statute in 1566 introduced several limitations against Jews, but those were removed after the adoption of the Third Statute of 1589.
According to Lithuanian-Ruthenian law, Jews enjoyed administrative and legal autonomy and were organized into separate communities (kahals) and had own courts using Jewish law in their proceedings. Special mixed courts were created to solve disputes between Jews and non-Jews, and the Statutes of Lithuania introduced equal penalty for the murder of Jews and szlachta. At the same time, Jews were prohibited from using serf labour. Gradually, Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania received the same rights as Jews in the Polish Kingdom. Jewish self-government was represented by the Vaad, which met annually to decide on important financial, cultural and religious questions. According to a 1565 report by Papal nuncio Giovanni Francesco Commendone, Jews in Ukrainian lands owned land, engaged in trade and worked as doctors, but their main activities were rent and gathering of taxes. Competition from Jews led to the decline in trading activities among Armenians, and many magnates and even kings were indebted to Jewish financiers. During the 16th century Jew Abram Rebychkovych served as chief treasurer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.