Daily Podcasts Video Research

Under Fire They Came Home: How War Is Drawing Ukraine’s Jews Back to Jewish Life

JL;DR SUMMARY The devastating war in Ukraine has surprisingly led many Ukrainian Jews to reconnect with their Jewish roots. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

UkraineChabadSynagogueCommunityJewsRefugeesAidReconnectionJrnu

Places mentioned

Kharkiv, Kharkivshchyna, Ukraine
"It was Friday night at Kharkivs Beis Menachem, the only operating shul in Ukraines second-largest city."
Lviv, Lvivshchyna, Ukraine
"A former Brooklynite, she and her husband, Rabbi Mordechai Shlomo Bald, the chief rabbi of Lviv, have spent thirty-three years serving as emissaries of the Karlin-Stolin Rebbe in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, formerly known as Lemberg."
Kherson, Khersonshchyna, Ukraine
"Some come from here, from Kherson, others from Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, or Dnipro."
Kyiv, Ukraine
"Some come from here, from Kherson, others from Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, or Dnipro."
Odesa, Odeshchyna, Ukraine
"Some come from here, from Kherson, others from Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, or Dnipro."
Zaporizhzhia, Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine
"Some come from here, from Kherson, others from Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, or Dnipro."
Dnipro, Dnipropetrovshchyna, Ukraine
"Some come from here, from Kherson, others from Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, or Dnipro."
Donetsk, Donechchyna, Ukraine
"Some people have lost their homes. In East Ukraine, Donetsk and Mariupol, the Jewish communities no longer exist, says Rabbi Gordon."
Mariupol, Donechchyna, Ukraine
"Some people have lost their homes. In East Ukraine, Donetsk and Mariupol, the Jewish communities no longer exist, says Rabbi Gordon."
Zhytomyr, Zhytomyrshchyna, Ukraine
"Rabbi Gordon describes his visit to Jewish orphans in Zhytomyr in Western Ukraine."
Kryvyi Rih, Chernihivshchyna, Ukraine
"Though he himself is intermarried and unaffiliated, Zelenskys parents are part of the Jewish community in their hometown of Kryvyi Rih in Central Ukraine."
This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 77275
Cairo Source ID 6
Retrieved 2026-03-10 05:31:13 UTC
Curated 2026-03-10 08:31:21 UTC