Lunch Hour Lecture | Together and apart: remembering Jewish Ukraine in the context of empire and war

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About the Lecture:
Ukraine’s Jewish history has come into focus in multiple ways since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia has abused the history of World War II and the Holocaust in justifying its aggression, while the fact that Ukraine has a wildly popular Jewish president challenges notions of the country as antisemitic. Meanwhile, Russian bombs have fallen on important Holocaust memorial sites inside Ukraine. To better understand the significance of all this, it is important to examine the long, rich, and often difficult history of Ukrainian-Jewish cultural interaction and tension that lies behind it. The lecture will outline how Ukrainian and Jewish cultures, as they struggled to assert themselves within repressive imperial contexts, grew apart, yet also managed to find surprising moments of dialogue. This history, if it is recovered with sensitivity and openness, can be a great cultural resource in forging a new Ukraine after the ongoing war.

This lecture will be chaired by the Provost and marks Holocaust Memorial Day, which is on the 27 January 2023.