In Bomb Shelters and Without Power, Ukrainian Jews Translate the Torah Into Their National Language for First Time

[C0RI0LANUS]

Ukrainian Jews at the Beit Grand Jewish Community Center in Odessa, 1 Nov 2019. (Photo: Cnaan Liphshiz)

When Oleg Rostovtsev hovered between life and death after a serious operation last April, he asked friends and family to do something that, until recently, had been impossible — to pray for him by reading the Tehillim, the Hebrew Book of Psalms, in Ukrainian.

Hebrew or Ukrainian, he requested, just not Russian.

“For someone who is sick, someone who is in trouble, you have to do something. We (Jews) read the Tehillim. If we don’t know Hebrew, why should we read the Tehillim in the language of an aggressor?” said Rostovtsev, a prominent member of Ukraine’s Jewish community and well-known local journalist and historian.

Ukraine is the birthplace of the Hasidic Jewish movement, played a key role in the development of Yiddish literature, and has deep roots in Jewish history stretching back more than a thousand years.

Yet crucial sacred texts — including the Torah — have never been translated into Ukrainian.

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Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky meets with rabbis in Kyiv, 6 May 2019. (Courtesy of the Jewish Community of Kharkov)


Putin claims that the war on Ukraine is to target Nazis. "Fiddler on the Roof" (with Topol or Zero Mostel) takes place in a fictional Ukrainian village called Anatevka. If these poor guys are sitting in bomb shelters, they know what it's like for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.


Trumpf is sanctioning the ICC for issuing international arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Despots of a feather flock together.


Sources:

https://kyivindependent.com/what-i-can-offer-my-motherland-ukrainian-jews-translate-the-torah-into-their-national-language-for-the-first-time/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/analysis-putins-claim-that-war-on-ukraine-is-to-target-nazis-is-absurd-heres-why