Welcome to the Forward’s news covrage and posts about the Ukraine.
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News Ukrainian City Braces for Hasidic ‘Invasion’
Balancing her voluptuous figure on high heels, Alexandra Rostov boards a minibus at Kiev’s Moskovskyi bus station, setting down her zebra-patterned bag as the driver starts the Soviet-era clunker. Like thousands of Ukrainians, Rostov is heading to Uman, a sleepy city of some 85,000 in central Ukraine, to find work associated with the annual pilgrimage…
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Culture How ‘Hava Nagila’ Became a Global Hit
One day, in the summer of 2008, the question “‘Hava Nagila’ — what is it?” popped into Roberta Grossman’s head. Although she was familiar with the ubiquitous song, she was clueless about its origins. Thus began the filmmaker’s four-year quest to investigate the Jewish standard’s century-and-a-half journey, from Ukraine to YouTube. The result is her…
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News Was Kiev Beating Anti-Semitic Act?
At about 1 a.m. on the second night of Passover, Alexander “Aron” Goncharov stepped from Brodsky Synagogue, in the center of Kiev, into the cold night air. The 25-year-old yeshiva student, who was staying at the synagogue’s hostel, never returned to his room. After hours of frantic phone calls the following day, yeshiva authorities finally…
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News Russian Jews Organize Against Iran
Sitting at the head of an expansive boardroom table at the luxury Setai hotel in Manhattan, Alexander Levin ponders the 300-square-foot room in Odessa, Ukraine, where he was raised. It is January 23, two days before Levin will address up to 600 guests at the United Nations in a ceremony organized by the Ukrainian and…
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The Schmooze Ukrainian Nationalists Protest Rosh Hashanah Pilgrimage
As an expected 50,000 Breslov Hasidim descend on Uman, Ukraine for their annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Nachman there, they are being met with protests from local Ukrainian nationalists. According to reports by the Moscow Times and Kyiv Post, the Svoboda nationalist party held an “Uman Without Hasidim” rally to demand…
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Opinion The Cossacks Are on the Rise Again. For Real.
Time magazine has one of the scariest news reports I’ve read in a while. It seems the Cossacks are on the rise again. No, not figuratively — literally. The fanatically religious pan-Slavic paramilitary tribe that terrorized your great-grandmother’s great-grandmother in the old country is recruiting, operating youth training camps, running for office (successfully) in Russia…
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The Schmooze Israel Is Laid-Back, Study Finds
Apparently, there’s no need for Israel to loosen up. So say the results of a psychological and cultural study published on May 27 in the journal Science looking closely at 33 different countries in an effort to better understand cultural differences, and consequently foster better cross-cultural communication and cooperation. A large international team of scientists…
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The Schmooze Almost Contemporary Kiev
There are Orthodox Jews versus secular Jews; accusations that wealthy philanthropists are trying to control Jewish organizations staffed by overworked, underpaid communal professionals; charges that certain Jewish institutions are sucking up the lion’s share of communal funds, leaving others to languish. Sound familiar? Something like New York, or any other large American Jewish community, in…
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Music 50 years later, Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood on the Tracks’ remains the standard by which all albums are measured
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Opinion Why is Netanyahu poised to OK a ceasefire that’s favorable to Hamas? One word: Trump
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Fast Forward Elon Musk appears to do Nazi salute at Trump inauguration rally
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Music In lawsuit, Drake accuses Kendrick Lamar of picking on ‘Jewish heritage’
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Fast Forward Elon Musk appears to do Nazi salute at Trump inauguration rally
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Opinion As a new Trump administration begins, I’m looking to this Soviet Jewish dissident for guidance
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Yiddish דאָס לעבן אויף דער איסט־סײַד, 1902 — באַשרײַבונגען פֿון אַ יענקיLife on the Lower East Side in 1902, from the eyes of a Yankee
דער ערשטער פֿון אַ סעריע אַרטיקלען אויף אַ גרינגן ייִדיש, וועגן דער מחברטעס אַנטדעקונגען ווי אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע און פֿאָרשערין.
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