Tagged Ukraine

Rabbis on a Jewish Federations of North America mission to Tbilisi, Georgia, brought a food basket to the family of 10-year-old Nodar Abramishvili, who immediately shared a bag of M&M candies with the visitors. (Courtesy Rabbi Robert Eisen)

On Thursday, March 27, Rabbi Robert Eisen will share insights from his recent visit to the Jewish community of Tbilisi, Georgia, as part of a “Between the Headlines: Tbilisi, Ukraine and the Global Jewish Community” briefing sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. It also will feature Danny… Read more »

Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum spoke at the Mobile World Congress on Feb. 24, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Jan Koum’s birthday was Feb. 24, but he received his big gift early. The Ukraine-born CEO and founder of WhatsApp has catapulted from relative unknown to a poster boy for rags-to-riches immigrant triumph since his rapidly growing messaging company was sold last month  to Facebook for a record-breaking $19… Read more »

A wounded individual os transported to a waiting plane, where he will be flown to Israel to receive medical care. (Shimon Briman)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For 17-year-old Bolodimir Bedyuk, a Ukrainian who was severely wounded in clashes with Ukrainian police on Feb. 18, Israeli medical care may be his only hope. After a pitched battle with Ukrainian police forces on Institutskaya Street in Kiev, Bedyuk suffered chest wounds and extensive… Read more »

Dmitry Gerasimov raises his clarinet as he plays with the Pushkin Klezmer Band. (Vadym Yunyk)

(JTA) — Kiev’s Maidan, or Independence Square, has been the heart of the Ukrainian protest movement that last week brought about President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster after deadly street battles. Russian officials and other Yanukovych supporters have accused the Maidan protesters of being fascists and neo-Nazis. But while Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, including… Read more »

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — As I stood as one of the few Americans among the masses of protesters at Kiev’s Independence Square, the frigid cold reminded me that this was my fourth year trying to survive a harsh Ukrainian winter. The crowd seemed be warming up thanks to the… Read more »

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — The explosion that ripped through Vadim Rabinovich’s luxury SUV in central Kiev was strong enough to send a shock wave from the parking lot up to his third-floor office in the heart of the Ukrainian capital. “It was a shock for a day or two,”… Read more »

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — The police station on Stefan Bandera Street in Lviv used to be just another government building to Dmitry Flekman. But that changed earlier this month following a nine-hour interrogation by two detectives, who were accused of torturing and humiliating the 29-year-old Jewish businessman. It’s an… Read more »

Left to right, Juice co-organizers Inna Yampolskaya and Igor Kozlovskiy, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich and the American Joint Distribution Committee's Lilya Vendrova at a Juice event in Kiev, November 2012. (Courtesy Juice)

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Hours after assailants shot Rabbi Artur Ovadia Isakov on a street in the Russian republic of Dagestan last month, mainstream Russian media were still scrambling to ascertain his identity. But Isakov’s name and condition  already were known to the readers of Jewishnet.ru, a growing social… Read more »

Svoboda supporters attending a party rally in western Ukraine, 2012. (Svoboda.org.ua)

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Marching in formation, six young men in dark jackets approach an anti-government rally in Cherkasy, a city some 125 miles southeast of Kiev. At the appointed moment, they remove their windbreakers to reveal white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Beat the kikes.” Their jackets carry… Read more »

Holocaust survivor Larisa Rakovskaya in her Odessa apartment, Sept. 14, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — In her dilapidated apartment, Larisa Rakovskaya examines a stack of unpaid heating bills. Sick and alone, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and widow is preparing for another encounter with the cold, her “worst and only fear.” Rakovskaya says her hope of staying warm this winter lies… Read more »

(L-R) Tucsonans Donna Moser, Audrey Brooks, Marlyne Freedman and Deanna Evenchik at the Birthright Israel Mega Event at Haifa Naval Base July 12

The faces of our grandparents are with me in early July as I leave for the Jewish Federations of North America Campaign Chairs and Directors Mission to Odessa and Israel with my sister, Donna Moser. Grandpa Nathan and Grandma Sadie came to the United States in 1899 from Odessa;… Read more »

ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — In a colorful room at the Tikva Children’s Home here, 30 young boys stand in two straight lines and wait for the cue signaling that they are to start singing. The children, students in a music class, are performing “Mind Your Manners” by the Philadelphia-based… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Ukrainian Jewish leader and real estate mogul Alexander L. Levin came to New York last month 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… Read more »

Alex Dunai, second from right, has become a leading purveyor of Jewish heritage tourism in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) — Alex Dunai is not Jewish. But over 15 years of leading Jewish tourists searching for their roots in Ukraine, he’s built up a serviceable knowledge of Yiddish — though sometimes he has to make things up. “I make up sayings — you have highway roads, we… Read more »

Reporter Alex Weisler, second from right, and his mother, second from left, unite with lost relatives in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) — The more I thought about it, the more it began to seem like a reasonable choice: I would roam around Europe for six months, visiting Jewish museums, talking to youth groups and covering various community happenings. I would travel from vibrant London to the post-Communist… Read more »

The remains of a Jewish cemetary dating back to the 16th century in the Ukrainian village of Solotyvn. Dina Kraft

SOLOTVYN, Ukraine (JTA) — 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. Trudging through the mud between the tilted stones, their chiseled Hebrew lettering and renderings of menorahs sometimes barely visible, Vladimer… Read more »

Ella Starobinska [Sheila Wilensky/AJP]

Ella Starobinska is an enthusiastic 20-year-old college student at the University of Arizona, but her path to the Tucson campus took a different route than most. On March 1, 2005, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society brought Starobinska and her parents from Kiev, Ukraine, to Tucson to join her brother,… Read more »