Jews Traveling TO the Ukraine To Rav Nachman

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

                                                      
Why would anyone brave traveling today with all the terrorists trying to blow up planes and go to of all places, Ukraine?  It's in the middle of a war between Russia and Ukrainian rebels.  If you happen to be one of New York's Breslov Chasids, you might be going there to make an annual pilgrimage.

Who was Rav Nachman to deserve such respect and daring?  His grave is in Uman, Ukraine.  He was born on April 4, 1772 and died on October 16, 1810 at the young age of 38.  Reb Nachman was the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov.
                                                                         

Now, who was the Baal Shem Tov?  He was Israel Ben Eliezer, born in 1700 in Podolia gubernia, Ukraine and died in 1760 and the founder of Hasidism.  In 1735, because of miraculous cures that he performed, he became known as the Baal Shem or Baal Shem Tov.  That means the master of the Divine Name, a title given to men who had the power to work miracles by using the Divine Name.

Rav Nachman had quite a grandfather to follow.  He managed to breathe new life into Hasidic movement by combining Kabbala with in-depth Torah facts.  He attracted thousands of followers during his lifetime and his influence continues to this very day. As a child, he followed the path of asceticism and prayer.  He warned his followers not to abuse themselves physically,  and emphasized having their life full of joy and happiness.  His famous saying is "it is a great mitzvah to be happy."  We can all adopt that one and benefit greatly.  I wonder if the flower children of the 60's weren't trying such a philosophy.

There are now many Hasidic movements besides the Breslov.  His religious philosophy was around the closeness to G-d and speaking to G-d in normal conversation "as you would with a best friend."  Tevia, in Fiddler on the Roof" written by Shalom Alecheim, did this.  This concept called hitbodedut is central to his thinking.  

Rebbe, as he was a Rabbi, was born in Medzhybizh, Ukraine.  Now, Jews went to Ukraine in the first place in waves from Khazaria, the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries and then again from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.  Then they came also from Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries.

There were terrible massacres there during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprisings in the 17th and 18th centuries.  In the 19th century the Jews came from Galicia and White Russia.  Ukraine was always an anti-Semitic center and the scene of many pogroms in 1905 and from 1918 to 1920.  The soviet government in the 1920's promoted Jewish settlement in the Ukraine using funds of the American Joint Distribution Committee in the regions of  Kalinindorf, Zlatopol and Stalindorf.  By 1930 there were 90,000 Jewish agriculturists there.  About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived there before WWII, but under Nazi rule, the Jews were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians fro 1941 to 1942.  Jews living there in 1970 numbered 777,126 and by 1989 there were 484,129.

This year in pilgrimage it is estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 Breslov chassidim will go to Uman from the USA and that about 20,000 to 30,000 will travel there from Israel.  There they will visit the gravesite.  They like to be there for the high holidays of Rosh Hashana, and at Chanukah and Shavuot.  It's because this was when Rav Nachman delivered his formal lessons to his flock.  On the last Rosh Hashana of his life, he stressed the importance of being with him for that holiday in particular.  That's why this annual pilgrimage began.  Uman is 400 miles away from the fighting, so they are not too worried.  Security has been stepped up in Ukraine.

One of the strange occurrences involving the Rav happened in 1800.  Rebbe Nachman moved to the town of Zlatopol and the townspeople invited him to have the final word on who would lead Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur prayer services.  A man was chosen to lead the final prayer service of Yom Kippur, the Neilah.  This man did not meet the Rebbe's approval.  Out of the blue, the man was struck dumb and forced to step down, causing him great embarrassment.  Rav Nachman explained after the fast ended that the man's true intentions were not good and the man was so angry about what was said that he denounced Rebbe Nachman to Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Shpola (the Shpoler Zeide), another prominent Hasidic rabbi.  This started a nasty campaign against Breslov Hasidism.  Well, even rabbis are human.

Being my family came from Lithuania and were closer to the Vilna Gaon (Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman 1720-1797) who practiced Mitnaggedim Judaism (the opposition to Hasidim) , we were not involved in Hasidism in those years.
                                                                           

However, I moved to Israel in 1980 and settled in Safed, in the north close to the Syrian border.  There was a large cemetery there of many famous Rabbis.  A story was told by my friend, Dov Silverman, who put this story into a book he published about when he was walking guard duty on the outskirts of Safed, he had as a partner, a Hasid of the Breslau sect of Hasidim.  The Hasid pointed to a hill on the left of the Safed cemetery and said, "See that hill?  Under it are buried 10,000 tzaddikim.  When the Messiah comes from Meron to Safed, they will all rise and go with him to Jerusalem.
Dov asked when that would be?
                                                                                     

"When our Rabbi moves to Safed and lives opposite Mt. Meron where the famous Rabbi Bar Yokhai and his son are buried," he answered.
Building was already in progress to house the Rabbi and his followers in Safed, located opposite Mt. Meron.  By the time I moved there, I could see it clearly at night in the beautiful black Safed .night-time sky loaded with twinkling stars as it also was lit up with lights.
The word in Safed was that  the time was soon to come; some stretched it to be within the next 200 years.

References: The Jewish Press
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachman_of_Breslov
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Legends of Safed by Dov Silverman
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Nachman.html

Kiev, Ukraine's Jewish Connections

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

Kiev is the capital of the Ukraine.  It was a Russian city at one time.  It's possible that the Khazars founded it in the 8th century.  Khazaria, ruled by Bulan, had selected Judaism for the Royal Court out of the 3 religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism to follow.  It had become a haven for Jews suffering from anti-Semitism in those days. They came to Ukraine from Khazaria, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries; from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, and from Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Severe massacres happened there during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprising of the 17th and 18th centuries.   This state lay in what is the southern part of Russia on today's maps.  Jewish merchants had visited the Kiev  in the 9th and 10th centuries causing the Jewish population there to grow steadily, despite persecutions which started in 1113.
                                                                         

Jewish scholars from Kiev were known from the 12th century.  The community was then destroyed by the Tatars of Russia in 1240.  From the end of the 14th century, Jews were encouraged to return.  Both a Rabbanite and Karaite community existed there during the 15th century.

Expulsions were decreed in 1495, shortly after the 1492 ones from Spain by the Catholic church.  It happened again in 1619.  Peter the great permitted Jews to trade in Kiev from 1708.
                                                                             
In 1827, Kiev was excluded from the Pale of Settlement, which was land set aside in 1791 by Catherine II.  where Jews were allowed to live. it included Ukraine, Crimea, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,  White Russia, Bessarabia, 25 provinces of Czarist Russia in all.   They were excluded from Russia.  Therefore Kiev became one of the largest Russian communities.
                                                                             

Sholem Aleichem (Shalom Rabinovich 1859-1916) wrote Fiddler on the Roof, about Jews in the Ukraine.  In his most difficult years, he created the character of Tevye the milkman in the story.

Many pogrom happened here in 1881 and on, and even in 1905.  1,200 Jewish families were expelled in 1910.

  The Beilis Ritual Murder Trial occurred in 1913, which is hard to imagine happening at that late date.   Jews do not use blood in any way.  They do not eat blood, either, like some people do.  It's part of the laws of kashrut (kosher) not to do so, so when people say they use blood in matzos at Passover time, it's against all reason.  Here the Russians, who were very anti-Semitic, were accusing a Russian Jew, Menahem Mendel Beilis,  of Kiev,  of this.

350,000 Jews lived in Kiev in 1939, at the height of the Nazi days where Jews were definitely not safe anymore.  Most of those trapped by the Nazi advance were massacred in 1941.  Babi Yar is an example.  This was a ravine outside of Kiev where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in September 1941.  The massacre was a horror.  No memorial was erected until the 1980's to remind people of what had happened which was caused by anti-Semitism.  The Soviet poet, Evgeni Yevtuschenko, used it in his poem, "Babi-Yar" in 1962.  Later the event was used in a symphony by Shostakovitch and the subject of a novel by Anatoly Kuznetzov.  Jews who had lived in Ukraine were wiped out by the Ukrainians and Germans  from 1942 to 1942.
                                                                         

In the post-war period, Soviet anti-Semitism has been felt strongly in Kiev.  In 1988 there were 152,000 Jews living there.  Today Jews are not safe again due to the Russian and Rebels fight over Ukraine as a independent state.  In February, "“The situation here is dire,” said Yossi Asman, a Chabad yeshiva student and son of the chief rabbi. “We have been gathering up families and shuttling them out to safer neighborhoods.”  Two Chabad Yeshiva students had been attacked in Kiev.  Even the food supply in the city was dwindling.  The Israeli Embassy told the Jewish community not to go outside their homes.  Too many attacks had been discovered that were planned on Jews.  Again, 2014, Jews are still the scapegoats  of attacks in the battle between Ukrainians and Russia.   Perhaps Israel is the only answer for them.  

Resource: The New Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ukraine
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/21/chief-rabbi-of-ukraine-urges-jews-to-flee-kiev-after-attack-on-students/

Who Were the Jews of Ukraine? Khazars?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                            

                                                                                                   Kiev, Russia
Jews from Judah have lived in the Balkans, in the Caucasus including Georgia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea and in other areas of eastern Europe since Roman days, probably even before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell and people were either slaughtered or taken as captives destined to be slaves.  Jews have been traders for ages as they lived in the crossroads of civilization.  There were large Jewish communities there before the Khazar empire was established.  Romans and Byzantines took control over ancient Greek colonies, and the Crimean Jews began to trade often with the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.  Later, most of the Crimea became part of the Khazarian empire.  The descendants of the early Jewish populations of the Crimea and Caucasus could have influenced the decision of the Khazars to convert to Judaism.  It was the Crimean Jews that came into direct contact with the Khazars.

Southern Russia back in the 600's was known as Khazaria.  They were Turkic horsemen from the steppes of central Asia, or the mountains of the Urals or Caucasus who believed in shamanism, the worship of spirits,  and the sky,  and lived as nomads. Trees were sacred.  They came to settle down as the centuries went by and a Kagan (king), named Bulan,  chose Judaism for the royal house and converted.  Only the king, leaders and members of the upper class converted to Judaism as reported in 903, by a Persian historian named Muhammad ibn Rustah, in Kitab A'laq an-Nafisa. He said that Judaism later spread to the general populace.   His people were able to choose for themselves whether they wanted to be Christians, Muslims or Jews as everyone was replacing their former Tengri beliefs.  It's thought that he chose Judaism as it was more politically correct at that time since then he didn't have to side with the many Muslims against Christians in trading.  There  was no anti-Semitism and the people were very liberal in Khazaria.

After the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity, conversion to Judaism became prohibited. "Many Greek and Roman women married Jewish men before conversion to Judaism was outlawed by the Roman Empire, and many of the Southern European ancestral lines in Ashkenazic families come from these marriages." In 315, Emperor Constantine I issued the first Roman edict forbidding Jews from seeking converts.  No wonder it isn't our thing to do.  Even today we do not  practice this.  The punishment for doing so was that property would be taken away from  Jews caught assisting anyone to convert.  However, Judaizing movements did continue to spring up in many lands.   Bulgaria proselytes converted others to Judaism in the 800's.  There were even some Christian clergy members who converted.

The Byzantine Empire from 324-638 had strong anti-Jewish policies where they forced many Jews to leave for less dangerous places such as Khazaria.  Some of their emperors' policies were of forced baptism.  By 632, the emperor Heraclius said that all Jews must convert to Christianity.  Emperor Leo in  722 had the same policy.  Jews could not live in that empire.

Everyone referred to The Khazars as Turks.  They were described as having blue eyes, light or white skin and reddish hair.  Other Turkish tribes also had red hair.  Other writers said they had black hair and that there were black Khazars and white Khazars, light and dark skinned.  In an excavation of burial mounds from the 10th to 12 centuries, archaeologists found Khazars belonging to the Slavic people while others were short-skulled Europeans.  Only a few Mongolian types were found.  Another theory was that they originated from Khorasan which was eastern Persia who united with the Sabirs in the 6th century.  One claim is that they are related to the Georgians and Armenians.  Some of the Turkic people believe that they descended from Noah through Japheth and son Gomer to Togarmah who had 10 sons and that the Khazars were descendants of the 7th son.  According to what I find in the Bible, Noah leads right from Shem to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he leads to Moses and Aaron.
                                                                     

Khazaria was on the Silk Road and a lot of trading with everyone, east and west, went on.  Jews came to live in Khazaria from other places who had been persecuted and found a haven there. Being it was a trading center, people of all types lived there.   Ancient Russian chronicles say that some Jews from Khazaria visited Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, which became the capital of Ukraine, to try to convert him to Judaism in 986.  Jews were already living in Kiev by then.  It lay on the River Dnieper which was the commercial crossroads of Western Europe and the Orient which attracted Jewish traders in the 8th century.  Jewish merchants from the West called Radanites were traders in the city and were referred to in Hebrew as "goers to Russia."

Khazaria was a large empire with many large Jewish settlements.  At its maximum size, it took in the northern Caucasus and the Volga delta, and went as far east as the steppes of Khwarizm/Khorezm and as far west as Kiev. Between 730 and 750, the city of Atil, which was serving only as a royal camp, became the 3rd and final capital of the Khazar Empire. Here the kagan lived with the bek, members of the army, 4,000 attendants and "pure-bred Khazars.  A brick wall surrounded the city.  This could have been a Jewish camp.  Khazaran-Atil sat on the lower Volga near the Caspian Sea in eastern Khazaria and was the most important trading center of the empire and also was the center of religion and government.  It had many markets and baths.  People of all 3 religions lived here in harmony!  Iranians and Khwarizms, Muslims lived in the eastern half of the city which was known as Khazaran.  30 mosques were in the capital in the 920's.  There were still pagans who lived here.  In the 920's the ruler was Khaz, a Muslim.

  Starting in the 10th century the empire started to get smaller and eventually ended.  In the year 930, Kiev was under Khazarian rule.  Two Jewish suburbs of Kiev were Kozary and Zhidove.  There were riots that broke out on the the death of Prince Svyatopolk in 1113 when the people attacked Jewish homes and burned them down.

In comparing Ashkenazis to Sephardim,
1. Ashkenazi showed twice the amount of R1a haplogroup DNA than Sephardim-10:5. and is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia.
2.  J1, called the Cohen gene,  was almost even with a few more in Sephardim-22:19. found in Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds, higher % in Iran and Iraq, carried by traders into Europe, central Asia, India, Pakistan
3. E showed up twice as much in Ashkenazim-20.5:9 but is found in the Middle East.
4. Q showed Ashkenazim being more prominent-5:2. found in northern and central Asian population, native Americans and 5% of Jews have this haplogroup.
5. Neither showed any N which was 0:0, found in northern Eurasia in Finns, Russians and Hungarians.  It's a common line in western Siberia.

The Jews tested today from Ukraine for their DNA most likely are showing genes inherited from Khazaria along with genes from Judea and Israel itself besides other possibilities.  Not all Ashkenazi Jews originated from Khazaria from the royal house that were converts.  Many Jews had lived in this empire from all sorts of other places.  It is possible that Jews whose ancestors had resided in Ukraine back to the 600's could have have Khazarian ancestors.  There are Jews whose haplogroup is an R1a1 who might show this distinction as this haplogroup is thought to come from southern Russia.    At one time I thought my father's line of Q1b1a could be the royal descendants, but that theory has been discarded even though we are connected to other Q'a who are the native Americans and we both originated from Mongolia, Siberia and parts of  Turkey and make up only 5% of today's Jews. My grandfather came from Lithuania.   Whatever ancestors reside in the Jews from Ukraine, they have turned out to be some of the most intelligent people with great leadership skills such as Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meier and Yitzhak Rabin, former prime ministers of Israel.    A Jew from Ukraine should feel most proud of his rich heritage.

Resource: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11117.html
The Jews of Khazaria, 2nd edition, by Kevin Alan Brook
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_European_populations
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
http://www.khazaria.com/

Ukraine's Massacre of Jews-Worse Than Nazis

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

The Chmielnicki Massacre in Ukraine from 1648 to 1649 beats anything I've ever read about massacres.  The behavior of the Cossacks, led by Bohdan or Bogdan Chmielicki/ Khmelnitsky was to begin a series of campaigns by instigating the uprising of the Cossacks against the Jews.

 Chmielicki told people that the Polish had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews."  The Cossacks, a military class of Ukranian-southern Russians were so angry when they heard this that they massacred tens of thousands of Jews during 1648-49 in a war that would later be known as among the worst of that time period.  To me, it's the worst of any time on earth.  Barring the recent reports out of Syria of a Syrian eating the heart of another Syrian enemy, this description of what happened in Ukraine is the most  barbaric that I have ever heard.    This leader, Bogdan, was against Polish landowners, the Catholic clergy and the Jews.  Hundreds of Jewish communities were annihilated and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed brutally.
                                                                         

                                                       Where Chmielnicki Massacres Took Place

One result was that the horror of this massacre sent a shock wave throughout Jewry and the consequent messianic impulse served to gather support for Shabbetai Tzevi, considered a false messiah.  One was certainly needed after this experience.  The gentile Ukrainians regarded Chmielnicki as a national hero.

At the close of the 16th century there were about 45,000 Jews out of the 100,000 Jews were lived in Poland living in the eastern region where Ukrainian Catholics lived.  Before the massacre, they had increased to about 150,000.  In the census of 1764, 258,000 Jews were listed, but it is known that their number was over 300,000.

From the Jewish Virtual Library are excerpts describing eyewitness accounts of the atrocities that took place in regions of Mogila, Zaslav and Nemirov from 1648 to 1651; 3 years of hell.
                                                                         

The Cossacks wanted to free Ukraine from Polish domination and to be the rulers themselves.  In Mogila 700 Jews with their wives and children were slaughtered.  Some were cut into pieces.  Others were ordered to dig graves where Jewish women and children were thrown in and buried alive.  Jews were given rifles and ordered to kill each other.  Cossacks surrounded young women and cut their clothes off their bodies and then performed abominations on them until they died screaming.  It was probably gang rape.  Cossacks came dressed as Poles to get in through the gates of the fortress and massacred about 6,000 townspeople.  They drowned several hundreds in water.  In the synagogue before the Holy Ark they slaughtered people with butcher knives.  Afterwards they destroyed the synagogue and took out all the Torahs and books and tore them up then laid them out for men and animals to trample.  They also made sandals out of them and several other garments.

Some were skinned alive and the flesh was thrown to the dogs to eat.  Some had their hands and limbs chopped off and their bodies thrown on the highway to be trampled on by wagons and crushed by the horsses.  some had wounds inflicted and were then thrown on the street to die a slow death.  They tore open women and whipped them, forcing them to crawl to their deaths while others were buried alive.  The cossacks slaughtered infants in their mothers' laps.  They were sliced into pieces like fish.  The infants were hung on the breasts of their mothers.  some children were pierced with spears.

Jews had moved to Ukraine from Poland's western provinces.  This was due to the economic opportunities because Poland was expanding with the consolidation of Poland-Lithuania.  By the end of the 15th century, between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews were living in 60 communities throughout Poland-Lithuania, mostly in cities.  Ukraine became the center of Jewish life in the area of Poland-Lithuania.  Ukraine was part of it.

Life in Poland-Lithuania wasn't easy for Jews.  The Catholic  church continued  to pressure nobles to punish and limit Jewish influence.  The nobles were on the spot as they saw the economic contribution made by Jews in society.  Jews became prominent in the trade business of Ukraine.  They sold dye, cloth, horses, cattle and estates.  They were ones who had connections with other Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire and served as liasons between the east and the west in economic trade.  What Jews were known for was the job they had with the Polish government:  collectors of customs, duties and taxes for the Polish landlords, bankers and physicians.  There were so many things they were not allowed to do, and this was one bestowed up them because the Christians didn't want the job.

The Jews prospered as they didn't throw their money away on drinking or gambling, and thus anti-Semitism grew.  The lower classes of Ukrainian Cossacks saw Jews as workmen for the nation's wealthy landowners and accused Jews of robbing the wealth of poor people to better enrich themselves.  By the end of the 16th century, Poland tried to get more control over the Ukrainian Cossacks by rising up against them along with the Jews in the Chmielnicki Massacre.

Such hated!  Such violence for a people.  Where did it come from?

In 965 CE, the Khazar Empire, which had experienced a shift of the royal family to convert to Judaism, had become a haven for Jews escaping persecution.  The Russians ransacked its capital.  By 1241 the Khazars were defeated by the Mongol invasion which also devastated all of Poland.  Poland recruited immigrants from Germany and promised to help them settle in villages and towns.  German Jews who had ancestors who suffered from the Crusaders in 1200 and then the Black Death in 1300, immigrated to Poland.  There were Jews already living in Poland, and they shared a heritage with the new immigrants.  This is when Yiddish was developed which was a mixture of Middle German, Hebrew, Polish and German-Hebrew and beame the Ashkenazi national Jewish language.

Resource: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/ukraine.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20168.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9IRn5b0aik&feature=youtu.be Syrian atrocity
Update 3/7/14:  http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/100-ukrainian-jews-want-to-make-aliyah-settle-in-judea-and-samaria/2014/03/07/