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TWO weeks ago, I spent Shabbat in Lviv, Ukraine, with my grandfather and two cousins. It was more than 80 years ago that, in a thriving Jewish community – the capital of Polish Galicia – my grandfather and his two sisters, were born.
Back then the community numbered 120,000. Ten years after my grandfather was born, because of an influx of Poles fleeing the Nazi-occupied half of their country, Lviv’s Jews numbered more than twice that. It had 42 shuls, both Orthodox and Progressive, as well as community centres, Jewish kindergartens and day schools, and even a Jewish hospital. It was vibrant, full of life, and a centre of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe.
But, just as with thousands of Jewish communities across Europe, the Nazis ultimately and tragically murdered almost all of them. Many were transferred to Belzec, while others were shot in the killing fields of the Janowska camp in Lviv’s suburbs. They also burned down one of the most palatial and glorious shuls in the region, right around the corner from my grandfather’s flat, the nearly 400-year-old Golden Rose Synagogue, with its rabbi and congregants inside.
Nearly 70 years after the Red Army pushed the Nazis out of Lviv, and 22 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Lviv community is a fraction of what it was when my grandfather was born. Today barely 1500 Jews live there, and really only the ruins of shuls – our Kabbalat Shabbat service was in the original vestibule of the Golden Rose, basically all that still exists – and cemeteries and gravesites remain. What’s left of them, that is. It takes the work of dedicated community leaders working tirelessly to protect them, not just from the elements, but also from the outright neglectful and hostile Ukrainian authorities. While they are incredibly successful given the resources at their disposal, the odds are firmly stacked against them.
In the community today there are a number of home-grown organisations, and the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency, Hillel and others all have a presence. Their perseverance is astonishing and their successes few but important, but you have to wonder if – to be depressingly blunt – it’s all a lost cause. With many of my generation from Lviv having left, and a badly ageing community, what’s the point?
Indeed, with such a struggle to eke out a Jewish life, for many, mostly young Jews, there exists a tension between a number of options: to stay and help prop up their community, which may well be a lost cause. Or, alternatively, to leave and seek greener pastures. Of course, many also assimilate.
I asked Sasha, one of the community’s young organisers, very simply: “Why stay?” While their youth movements and community events are able to draw very commendable participation rates, the outlook is, arguably, still too bleak to warrant staying. In Kiev, the average income is double that in Lviv, and in Israel, where Sasha’s brother now lives, it is exponentially more. The reasons to move are compelling. “Why stay?”
“Because there’s work to do,” was his determined response. Sasha understands the challenges of his community and wants to see it out. Leaving is a cop-out, a betrayal.
He’s been to Israel a number of times, not just to visit his brother, but also to lead Birthright-Taglit groups, to instil Jewish values in his fellow Ukrainians. He shows them what life could be like – Western, comparatively affluent and much more Jewish – and many take his bait.
But he stays back, helping more to realise the importance of being Jewish, be it in Lviv, or eventually in Kiev or Israel.
Sasha is a modern-day Jewish hero. His commitment to the Jewish people and to Jewish continuity is extraordinary, and his selflessness even more so. He and his peers sit at a crossroads where options of Jewish, economic and social lifestyles are all thrown up and critical life decisions are made. Stay, assimilate or go?
I don’t blame anyone, young or old, for leaving Lviv – a life there, particularly a Jewish one, is very tough. But the work of Sasha and others is too important to go without. Can you imagine the graves of Jewish Holocaust victims being neglected for the rest of time, and the next generation not knowing of their Jewish identity and having the opportunity to cultivate it? That is a price too high to pay.
So, I want to thank Sasha and those across Europe like him. In the small corner of the globe where most of my ancestors were lost, they are the ones dedicating their lives not just to “Never Again”, but also to ensuring the next generation is given the chance to live maximally Jewish lives. Given the unique importance of their work, they deserve more attention and credit than we’re currently giving them.
This op-ed was originally published in the Australian Jewish News. To read other posts from my trip, click here.
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