The war radically changed Ukrainians as a people. Ukrainians reimagined themselves as Cossacks, not as unruly mercenaries at the boundaries of the southern steppe, but as urban, modern fighters, loyal to national sovereignty. The new Ukrainians discovered their multi-cultural character and embraced the multiple ethnicities that joined the defense of the country, first and foremost, the Jews. The xenophobic prejudices of the past, idiosyncratic to the early modern Cossacks, were left behind. Many Ukrainian Jews, predominantly urbanized and Russophonic, changed their attitude to and embraced the Ukrainian language, which became a symbol of resistance and survival. Ukrainians and Jews in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world joined efforts to poke fun at their enemies and at themselves, proving that the multi-ethnic Ukrainian nation was a strong-willed and free people. The war mobilized the all sorts of Putinverstehers and Ukrainophobes, especially among the Russophobic emigres in Israel and Germany, who joined the media-war seeking to present Ukrainians through the old-fashioned stereotypes based on biased historical narratives that conveniently ignore the societal changes in Ukraine over last thirty years.

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A new conceptualization of the Ukrainian Jewish relations in historical perspective became a scholarly desideratum for pundits, researchers, and students. Without such a new vision one fails to explain the changes in Ukrainian Jewish relations over the last thirty years after 1991 in general, and during the Russian-Ukrainian War in particular.

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Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in the History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish material culture; history and culture of Ukraine; and Slavic-Jewish literary interaction.  

He has published more than a hundred articles and ten books and edited volumes, including The Jews in the Russian Army: Drafted into Modernity (2008, 2nd ed. 2014); The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009); Lenin’s Jewish Question (2010); Jews and Ukrainians: Polin, vol. 26 (2011, co-edited with Antony Polonsky); Cultural Interference of Jews and Ukrainians: a Field in the Making (2014); The Golden-Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe, 2014, 2nd ed. 2015); Jews and Ukrainians: a millennium of coexistence (2016, co-authored with Paul Robert Magocsi; 2nd ed. 2018). His essays, books and book chapters have appeared in Greek, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and German.

The war radically changed Ukrainians as a people. Ukrainians reimagined themselves as Cossacks, not as unruly mercenaries at the boundaries of the southern steppe, but as urban, modern fighters, loyal to national sovereignty. The new Ukrainians discovered their multi-cultural character and embraced the multiple ethnicities that joined the defense of the country, first and foremost, the Jews. The xenophobic prejudices of the past, idiosyncratic to the early modern Cossacks, were left behind. Many Ukrainian Jews, predominantly urbanized and Russophonic, changed their attitude to and embraced the Ukrainian language, which became a symbol of resistance and survival. Ukrainians and Jews in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world joined efforts to poke fun at their enemies and at themselves, proving that the multi-ethnic Ukrainian nation was a strong-willed and free people. The war mobilized the all sorts of Putinverstehers and Ukrainophobes, especially among the Russophobic emigres in Israel and Germany, who joined the media-war seeking to present Ukrainians through the old-fashioned stereotypes based on biased historical narratives that conveniently ignore the societal changes in Ukraine over last thirty years.

‍

A new conceptualization of the Ukrainian Jewish relations in historical perspective became a scholarly desideratum for pundits, researchers, and students. Without such a new vision one fails to explain the changes in Ukrainian Jewish relations over the last thirty years after 1991 in general, and during the Russian-Ukrainian War in particular.

‍

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in the History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish material culture; history and culture of Ukraine; and Slavic-Jewish literary interaction.  

He has published more than a hundred articles and ten books and edited volumes, including The Jews in the Russian Army: Drafted into Modernity (2008, 2nd ed. 2014); The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009); Lenin’s Jewish Question (2010); Jews and Ukrainians: Polin, vol. 26 (2011, co-edited with Antony Polonsky); Cultural Interference of Jews and Ukrainians: a Field in the Making (2014); The Golden-Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe, 2014, 2nd ed. 2015); Jews and Ukrainians: a millennium of coexistence (2016, co-authored with Paul Robert Magocsi; 2nd ed. 2018). His essays, books and book chapters have appeared in Greek, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and German.

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