What has happened to Odessa, once dubbed the “Star of Exile” by Isaac Babel, since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Joseph Roche gives us his account of how the Jewish community is trying to survive there, despite the war and the departures.
I first arrived in Odessa at the start of the war, in April 2022. The sea breeze still burned the soldiers’ faces with cold, and squads of volunteers hastily barricaded the city’s long avenues. Opposite the station, which had been stormed by hundreds of refugees, the light reflected off the onion domes of the Church of the Assumption, making it seem as if three suns had risen in the sky. Ukrainian flags had been tagged on every street corner, and the poorly equipped soldiers were armed only with old Kalashnikovs and the hope of resisting the Russian assault. In the cellars of the city, volunteers, mostly women and children, were preparing hundreds of Molotov cocktails in a chain to distribute to the various units that had been formed in the first weeks of the war.
At that time, following their capture of the regional capital Kherson, the Russians were trying to take Mykolaiv, located 130 kilometers from Odessa. “If the Russians cross the eastern Bug,” a soldier explained to me at the time, “they will be able to take the city in about ten days.” The fate of Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 seemed almost lost. Russian forces were still fighting in the suburbs of Kyiv. Half of the southern provinces had been swallowed up in two nights. Russian forces, from the Kharkiv region, were beginning their slow encirclement of the Donbass. The country was on the verge of implosion.
Yet, in this end-of-the-world atmosphere, the small Jewish community of Odessa seemed to exist on its own. In front of the synagogue on Uspenska Street, Sprinter vans chartered by the community were shuttling back and forth from Odessa to Berlin via Moldova, loaded with refugees. There, on the synagogue square, I met Zvi Hersh Blinder, one of the leaders of the Chabad synagogue. Zvi was in his fifties. He had a long, forked, silver beard. He was small in stature and walked with a hurried step, a smile on his face, as if he were waiting for an opportunity to make a witty remark or tell a joke. “It’s strange,” he explained to me, ”during the Shoah, people fled from the Germans to go to Russia. Now it’s the other way around: people are fleeing from the Russians to go to Germany.”
What struck me at the beginning of the war was a certain distance on the part of the Jewish community with regard to the political question. They were little interested in Russia or Ukraine. Only their community seemed to concern them. For them, Odessa was neither truly Russian nor truly Ukrainian, but profoundly Jewish, and should remain so. In many respects, they considered themselves to be simply caught in a pincer between two entities with which they ultimately shared very little.
While the Russian language continues to structure Odessan culture, the Jews have always spoken a polymorphous language tinged with Russian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Greek and all the languages that once washed up on the shores of the Black Sea. On the other hand, Ukrainian identity for them revolved around certain irreconcilable personalities. We can, for example, cite the figure of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a Cossack chief who, in the 17th century, in his war of independence against the Polish kingdom, had established the basis of the first Ukrainian proto-state and, in the process, massacred more than a third of the Jewish population. Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his regard, wrote in his first novel Satan in Goray: “In the year 1648, the terrifying Ukrainian hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, (…) and his men massacred wherever they went, skinned men alive, murdered young children, raped women and, afterwards, disemboweled their bodies and sewed cats inside them. Many fled to Lublin, many were forcibly baptized or sold into slavery.
Another stumbling block between Jewish and Ukrainian identity, to be understood in the context of the geopolitical upheavals born of the fall of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, lies in the collaboration of certain Ukrainian nationalist factions with the Nazi occupiers. They notably acted as helpers to the German troops and the Einsatzgruppen during the Shoah by shooting Jews. This collaboration of certain Ukrainian nationalist groups was exploited from 1945 by the Soviet authorities to justify the deportation and execution of thousands of Ukrainian political opponents, singers, poets and artists, and to impose a form of collective responsibility on the entire Ukrainian people. Even today, this narrative is one of the highlights of Kremlin propaganda to justify its war in Ukraine. And yet, as Zvi Blinder explains, Russia, from the tsars to the Soviet Union, has also had its share of antisemitic and collaborationist figures among its heroes, who are every bit as bad as some of the characters in the Ukrainian pantheon.
“It’s strange. During the Shoah, people fled from the Germans to go to Russia. Now it’s the other way around: people are fleeing from the Russians to go to Germany.”
In front of the synagogue on Uspenska Street, Ukrainian soldiers of the Jewish faith have come for a final prayer before rejoining their unit. Some are assigned to defend the city. Others are leaving for Mykolaiv. They have all kinds of patches on the straps of their uniforms: a Star of David on a nationalist flag (red and black), a Ukrainian flag with Hebrew letters on it, or camouflage kippas on their heads. Before leaving, one of the rabbis of the synagogue exhorts them in Russian and prays for them, pronouncing a final blessing, this time in Hebrew. On the steps, a young woman kisses her husband. A soldier takes his son in his arms. The family leaves for Germany. He leaves for the front.
“The truth is that we have been living much better since Ukraine gained independence (1991). We have our freedom, and we, as Jews, are active in society. During the Soviet era, there was a lot of state-sponsored antisemitism and quotas preventing Jews from accessing university. It was even difficult for Jews to practice circumcision. You had to go to Uzbekistan, where it was tolerated because of Islam.” Born into a secular family, Zvi Blinder only became aware of his origins as a Jew as an adult, due to Soviet oppression. “I was drafted into the Red Army to fight in Afghanistan. All my comrades called me ‘the Jew’. When I returned to Ukraine, I researched my family and joined a synagogue. I have never stopped practicing since then.”
Zvi explains that, since Ukraine’s independence, ordinary and state-sponsored antisemitism has almost disappeared: “We even have a Jewish president, and the former prime minister (Volodymyr Groysman) was also Jewish. Even the United States has never had a Jewish president. Antisemitism, as elsewhere, exists in Ukraine, but it is not a significant trend.” Zvi’s analysis is confirmed by a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, which shows that Ukraine is the least antisemitic country in Eastern Europe, far behind Hungary, Poland and Russia. “I’ve been walking down the street every day for 30 years now with my kippa and beard. I have never been insulted once.”
The colors of Odessa
There is the Odessa of the East and that of the West. A layer of peoples mixed into one, in which Greeks, Tatars, Jews, Ottomans, Cossacks, Russians and Ukrainians emerge here and there. There is the Odessa of mysticism. Churches of gold and silver. Mosques with Mughal reflections and gray stone synagogues in which no one prays anymore. There is the Odessa of the godfathers of the underworld who, sitting on the terrace of the cafés, observe the sea in the distance. Cigarettes and swearwords on their lips, some devote themselves to a game of backgammon, others play chess. And then there is the Odessa of rabbis with patriarchal faces who, at the corner of the Pushkin café, come across priests with gray beards, performing, from evening to morning, and in impeccable metania, all the prayers of their heart.
Under the arbor of the Dacha restaurant, the Odessa bourgeoisie enjoys the summer. Servers in tails bring in schools of fish. The champagne flows freely and huge watermelons await in ice-cold fountains.
Above all, Odessa has the smell of the sea. This summer, for the first time after two years of war, the city’s beaches have been reopened. Vendors sell pink crayfish cotton candy. Children on the shores of Langeron beach throw themselves headfirst into the waves that carry them out to sea. In the distance, several military buildings can be seen. Russian? Ukrainian? No one is really sure. “In any case, the whole sea has been mined, what do we risk?” jokes a passerby.
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At the bend of an alley, there are monuments to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, surmounted by the star of Moscow. A few meters further on, there are photos of young Ukrainian soldiers who died this year in the east of the country.
Along Italy Street, the strains of Faust and Tchaikovsky can be heard escaping from the windows of the opera house. Further on, in Shevchenko Park, old Cossacks with drooping moustaches recount on a bandura the legends of hetmans who died long ago in a green steppe and were buried in white tombs. In the torpor of the summer nights, their song mingles, in a dissonant polyphony, with the sirens warning of the risk of attack. Two ballistic missiles arrive over the city. No one is hiding anymore. Passers-by prefer to listen.
Jewish life is concentrated a few minutes’ walk from the opera house. Here you will find the pink synagogue, still in use, the Brodsky synagogue, which has been transformed into an archive center, and the synagogue on Uspenska Street. Each street has commemorative plaques dedicated to the Jewish personalities who have made a difference in Odessa and the world. “Volodymyr Jabotinsky lived here. The Soviet writer Isaac Babel lived here.”
Almost two and a half years have passed since the start of the war. Most of the community has fled abroad. Those who remain are trying to save the Jewish soul of Odessa. But in two years, the Jews of Odessa and Ukraine have had to fight. Some have died. Others are prisoners. Many continue to fight.
Sitting at the back of the synagogue, Rav Avraham Wolf, the city’s Lubavitcher rabbi, his eyes lost in contemplation of his prayer, sways to the rhythm of a psalm. With a round face and small glasses, he strokes his long silvery beard with a sharp movement, which cascades down onto his prayer book. Next to him, on the same table, on either side, two students in their twenties are discussing an old Talmud. Rav Wolf, his phylacteries coiled around his right arm, finally raises a hand to his face and, in the humid heat of late summer, murmurs: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”
The first light of morning, through the windows of the synagogue, is reflected on the silver Torah scroll that one of the congregation carries to the Bima. Igor Chatrin, Rav Wolf’s assistant, with his face turned towards Jerusalem and his arms raised towards the Holy Ark, begins the first verses of Shacharit. The twenty or so worshippers, in dissonant harmony, sing the slow chant of the Amidah with him. On a balcony overlooking the central space, women with mahogany hair in bell-shaped buns, separated from the men, join their voices to their singing, with a strong Russian accent. It is Monday morning, and the small synagogue on Uspenska Street is bustling with people, as it is on holidays.
The resilience of a community
“It’s a miracle,” explains Avraham Wolf. ”More than 40% of our members went abroad at the beginning of the war, and yet the synagogue is more full than ever.” Born in Israel, Wolf arrived in Odessa as a Shaliach (a missionary of the Chabad movement) in 1992 to help the Jewish community rebuild itself after the fall of the Soviet Union. “There is a Ukrainian proverb that says that when there is an alarm siren, people do not run to the shelters, but run to God,” he says with a smile. This need to get closer to God, in the face of the horrors of war, explains the spiritual renewal of Odessa, in his opinion. Igor Chatrin tempers his rabbi’s enthusiasm. “There are only 20,000 Jews left. The impact of the war has been unprecedented.”
With a young face and a small blond beard, Igor, 34, a native of the city, lived in the United States and Israel before returning to Ukraine. “Many have left and will not return. They are in Israel or Germany. Their children are learning the language, going to school, they have settled in. They will not come back.”
Between the neoclassical buildings lined with plane trees, the traveler can, as he wanders, catch sight of the glorious memory of the city once dubbed “the star of exile” by the Jewish Odessite writer Isaac Babel, overgrown with greenery. “From the time of its founding in the 18th century, Jews from all over the Russian Empire, particularly from the Brody region of Galicia, settled in Odessa and participated in the city’s development,“ explains Isabelle Nemirovski, a specialist in Jewish and Hebrew studies at INALCO in Paris and author of the book History, Memory and Representation of the Jews of Odessa: An Old Intimate Dream” (Histoire, mémoire et représentation des Juifs d’Odessa : un vieux rêve intime). “Before the Shoah, a third of Odessa’s population was Jewish – around 200,000 people.”
For the city’s Jews, Odessa was neither truly Russian nor truly Ukrainian, but profoundly Jewish, and should remain so.
Two hundred years later, after the Second World War, the Shoah, Stalinist terror and the fall of the Soviet Union, what remains of the Jewish community of Odessa is trying to survive as best it can. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which had announced the capture of Odessa as one of its war objectives, seemed to have put an end to Jewish life in the port city, this time for good. From the first weeks of the invasion, the Jewish community had organized the flight to Israel and Germany of thousands of its members. “We have gone from 35% Jews in Odessa before the Shoah to less than 3% today,” explains Chatrin with a sigh. Rabbi Wolf, whose life was devoted to consolidating Jewish life in the city, reluctantly agrees to his right-hand man’s analysis. ″It’s true,″ he admits, ″nobody is coming back.″ Yet, paradoxically, the community is trying harder than ever to maintain its traditions and identity. “The spectre of war has created a kind of shock treatment and a feeling of survival for what remains of the small Jewish community of Odessa,” explains Nemirovski.
A few hundred meters from Uspenska Street, in an inner courtyard with leprous facades, children from the orphanage have improvised a soccer field. Inside the building, a woman, in front of a plastic table covered with food, looks full of anguish, and discusses with the rabbanit. Next to her, she holds her son, an 8-year-old boy, who is playing with a small plastic car given earlier by one of the congregation. “It’s his circumcision day,” explains Rav Wolf’s wife. “Because of the Soviet Union, many families have become completely secularized, even going so far as to omit circumcising their children.” But in recent years, across all the countries of the former USSR, including Ukraine, hundreds of Jewish families are trying to reconnect with their traditions and their faith. “The phenomenon has only intensified since the beginning of the war.” Aaron Kramer, the community’s circumciser, says he is overwhelmed: “We can do up to five circumcisions a week.”
Kramer, who is in his forties, has long curly side locks and is preparing his instruments. He is wearing a long white doctor’s coat and is starting to disinfect his hands. “We can circumcise children as young as eight days old, as is the tradition, but also young men and even older people.” Kramer says that less than a year ago, an 83-year-old man came to him for a circumcision. “After the death of his wife, he came to pray at the synagogue for Rosh Hashana. It was the first time he had ever entered a synagogue. He then learned that we were going to circumcise six men of all ages and asked if he could be one of them too.”
This return to Judaism gives Rav Wolf hope again. “Paradoxically, our community has never been as lively as it has been since the start of the war. This is of course due to the desire of Jews to turn to God during a period of crisis, but also because we have absorbed part of the Jewish community from cities such as Mariupol or Dnipro,” explains Wolf. ‘Today they represent almost a third of our congregation.’’ But Wolf knows that the golden years of Jewish Odessa belong to another time.
Chatrin, for his part, tries to reassure his rabbi and is full of hope: “I hope that after the war Odessa will be reborn, stronger than ever, and that some of our congregants will return. In any case, Odessa without its Jews is no longer really Odessa”.
