(Jewish Group) The stormy, yet rich history of the Jews in Ukraine

[elleng]

1. *Currently, Ukraine has the fourth largest Jewish community in Europe

following France, Great Britain and Russia but ahead or equal to Germany. . .

There is literally a new shtetl-like community in “the old country”, in addition to the massive annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage. . .

Historians speculate that Jews have lived in the Ukraine at least since the 9th century. By 1648, the Jewish population of Ukraine, then part of Poland, was massive and as many as 20,000 Jewish civilians (revised from earlier estimates of as high as 250,000) were killed during the Khmelnytsky Cossack Uprising, 1648-1655. . . The classic writer Sholem Aleichem was born in the shtetl of Pereiaslav, south of Kiev; the “father of the Yiddish theater”, [Avrom Goldfaden[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Goldfaden) (1840-1908), was born in Starokostyantyniv, western Ukraine, and the poet and songwriter Itzik Manger (1901-1969) was born in Czernowitz (Tshernovits), which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is now Ukraine. . .

Long caught in the crosshairs of history, Ukraine’s Jewish population suffered terribly during the pogroms of the late 19th century, leading to massive Jewish emigration, principally to the United States. They also sparked the development of the Zionist movement. Odessa became a leading port city for early Zionist pioneers on their way to Turkish Palestine, some of whom trained in Jewish agricultural schools in the region. They went on to help create some of the original kibbutzim. Indeed, a number of Zionist leaders including Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Golda Meir and Natan Sharansky were born in Ukraine.'>>>

((Gotta light some candles.))