I've listened to all the lectures now. They are very powerful. It occurs to me that Timothy's understanding of nations is a little like romantic love which begins by chance and in retrospect can seem destined and inevitable. Nations seem to occur out of complex and unpredictable circumstances but seem in retrospect to seem inevitable? I was also thinking of the Buddha's comment about karma. If you want to know who you've been, consider who you have become. If you want to know who you'll be, consider what you will do. The past is what it is but the future is open to human agency. In that way you are always free.
My grandparents on my mother’s side -- Ukrainian Jews from around Odessa came to the United States in 1901. One step ahead of the pogroms. My grandfather and great grandfather WALKED from Odessa to Constantinople. Today’s freedom loving Ukrainians are not the same as the Ukrainians of 120 years ago.
Plenty of Ukrainians participated in pogroms, many Jews participated in the colonization of Ukraine and the Holodomor. Today's Ukraine is one of the safest countries for Jews, ruled by the Jewish President (the previous prime-minister was also a Jew, as well as half of the oligarchs). History is much more complicated than just black and white.
I did not mean to imply today’s Ukrainians were the same as those of 120 years ago when my grandparents fled for their lives. Just the opposite. And I fully support Ukrainian independence from Russia. Or anyone else for that matter.
I also meant that in parallel to the pogroms, 1 million plus Ukrainians were killed (including countless women and children), mostly by tsarists and communists, also by bandit groups. Women were raped, villages were burned. It was a time of incredible violence. Today, we have anonymous mass graves in almost every village, in every park, in every stadium, many of them from the time of the Russian Revolution. My grandmother fed people in a Nazi concentration camp in the forties, and many Ukrainians took prisoners from the camps (very often Jews), posing as their relatives. I wouldn't say that all (or even most) Ukrainians were so anti-Semitic. However, this does not negate our responsibility for the pogroms.
I am following this fantastic lecture series a bit late, and have been able to find most of the readings, but have been stumped by this one, for lecture 8: Judith Kalik, "Jews, Orthodox, and Uniates in the Ruthenian Lands," in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 131-146.
The other article for this class, by Shapira, is on Academia, so I assumed that I would find Judith Kalik's article there as well, but no luck. Have spent too long searching --- if anyone knows how to get it online and can post a link it would be great - thanks.
A postscript - the site was down yesterday, no wonder I was so confused, as I had accessed the article the day before. Here it is for anyone else who might be searching:
I've listened to all the lectures now. They are very powerful. It occurs to me that Timothy's understanding of nations is a little like romantic love which begins by chance and in retrospect can seem destined and inevitable. Nations seem to occur out of complex and unpredictable circumstances but seem in retrospect to seem inevitable? I was also thinking of the Buddha's comment about karma. If you want to know who you've been, consider who you have become. If you want to know who you'll be, consider what you will do. The past is what it is but the future is open to human agency. In that way you are always free.
My grandparents on my mother’s side -- Ukrainian Jews from around Odessa came to the United States in 1901. One step ahead of the pogroms. My grandfather and great grandfather WALKED from Odessa to Constantinople. Today’s freedom loving Ukrainians are not the same as the Ukrainians of 120 years ago.
Plenty of Ukrainians participated in pogroms, many Jews participated in the colonization of Ukraine and the Holodomor. Today's Ukraine is one of the safest countries for Jews, ruled by the Jewish President (the previous prime-minister was also a Jew, as well as half of the oligarchs). History is much more complicated than just black and white.
I did not mean to imply today’s Ukrainians were the same as those of 120 years ago when my grandparents fled for their lives. Just the opposite. And I fully support Ukrainian independence from Russia. Or anyone else for that matter.
I also meant that in parallel to the pogroms, 1 million plus Ukrainians were killed (including countless women and children), mostly by tsarists and communists, also by bandit groups. Women were raped, villages were burned. It was a time of incredible violence. Today, we have anonymous mass graves in almost every village, in every park, in every stadium, many of them from the time of the Russian Revolution. My grandmother fed people in a Nazi concentration camp in the forties, and many Ukrainians took prisoners from the camps (very often Jews), posing as their relatives. I wouldn't say that all (or even most) Ukrainians were so anti-Semitic. However, this does not negate our responsibility for the pogroms.
It was not a good time for anyone. Especially at the hands of the Russians. But what is happening in Ukraine today is horrendous.
It was particularly a tough time being between the Nazis and the Russians.
Isaac Bashevish Singer's nobel prize winning book "The Slave" describes the horrors of the Cossack uprising of 1648 for the Jews of Ukraine.
Update on Kalik. I found Volume 26 of POLIN on Amazon. There are 4 articles from it in the course ans several of the others looked interesting.
I am following this fantastic lecture series a bit late, and have been able to find most of the readings, but have been stumped by this one, for lecture 8: Judith Kalik, "Jews, Orthodox, and Uniates in the Ruthenian Lands," in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 131-146.
The other article for this class, by Shapira, is on Academia, so I assumed that I would find Judith Kalik's article there as well, but no luck. Have spent too long searching --- if anyone knows how to get it online and can post a link it would be great - thanks.
A postscript - the site was down yesterday, no wonder I was so confused, as I had accessed the article the day before. Here it is for anyone else who might be searching:
https://shron2.chtyvo.org.ua/Zbirnyk_statei/Polin_-_Volume_26_Jews_and_Ukrainians_anhl.pdf?PHPSESSID=fsfnboe9cc02n5v5jl5dia6gi2
I got the Shapira article, but Kalik’s was behind a paywall.