{"id":13416,"date":"2015-06-26T00:17:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T07:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13416"},"modified":"2015-06-25T17:38:35","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T00:38:35","slug":"a-millennia-old-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/06\/26\/a-millennia-old-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"A millennia-old relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visitors at the opening of the traveling exhibition at the Schwartz\/Reisman Centre in Toronto last month. (photo by Helena Yakovlev-Golani)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The exhibit A Journey Through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914 opened last month in Toronto.\u00a0It has since been held in Winnipeg (until June 27), will return to Toronto in July and then head to other cities.<\/p>\n

The exhibit is being put on by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE), which its website describes \u201cas a collaborative project involving Ukrainians of Jewish and Christian heritages and others, in Ukraine and Israel, as well as in the diasporas. Its work engages scholars, civic leaders, artists, governments and the broader public in an effort to promote stronger and deeper relations between the two peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the exhibit\u2019s opening in Winnipeg at the Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural Centre, one of its curators, Alti Rodal, an historian, writer, former professor of Jewish history, and former official and advisor to the Canadian government, spoke with the Jewish Independent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rodal was born in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), Ukraine, and received her early schooling in Israel. Later, she was educated at McGill, Oxford and Hebrew universities in the fields of history and literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cUJE was established in 2008 by two people from Canada and the United States, both Jewish and non-Jewish Ukrainian background,\u201d said Rodal. \u201cIt\u2019s now a multinational organization with representatives in Ukraine, Israel, the U.S. and Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

UJE\u2019s purpose is to promote greater comprehension of the Ukrainian-Jewish relationship over the centuries, including an understanding of the co-experience of the two peoples and their interactions over the centuries, with a view to the future.<\/p>\n

The organization has held many roundtables of scholars from Israel, Ukraine, Canada, the United States and much of Europe, each aimed at understanding a different period in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have a truthful account of the past, we\u2019ve had a scholarly dimension unfold over the last few years in which we\u2019ve brought together roundtable discussions among scholars of various backgrounds,\u201d explained Rodal. \u201cWe\u2019ve identified chunks of the history that need to be explored together and each of these roundtables addressed a different period.\u201d The historical periods explored to date stop at the First World War.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exercise is one that leads to a shared historical narrative,\u201d said Rodal. \u201cWith this we mean a single text on which the participants largely agree. If there are aspects they don\u2019t agree on, it is stated in the single text, indicating what kind of research would be needed to advance knowledge on these issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy looking to the past, we hope to obtain personal acknowledgement of what happened and to address stereotypes that both Jews and Ukrainians, at the popular level, have about each other. Some of these stereotypes are in the history books, so our aim is to produce more credible accounts and address stereotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n

UJE hopes that, with the help of other researchers, some of the information being taught in Ukrainian schools will be amended.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, they entered into an agreement with the Government of Canada to do four main projects on the topic, including two publications, developing the content of their website, and the traveling exhibit, the research for which began seven years ago.<\/p>\n

The exhibit\u2019s first stop was in Toronto at the Schwartz\/Reisman Centre and when it returns to that city, it will be to downtown\u2019s St. Vladimir Institute, the Ukrainian cultural centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are community exhibits rather than museum exhibits, so we have them at the community centres and try to engage people from the community to participate,\u201d said Rodal, noting that the exhibit will also go to Edmonton and Montreal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been approached by the Jewish community and the Ukrainian community in Ottawa and there\u2019s been interest also from Vancouver,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a commitment to do it, but we\u2019ll consider it\u2026. So, Vancouver and Ottawa are under consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibit consists of text, images and video. \u201cThe first venue in Toronto consisted of 36 panels placed on moveable walls, and four videos that we created ourselves,\u201d said Rodal. \u201cI\u2019m not telling you about the topics, just the physical [aspects] and the number of ethnographic maps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
One of the images displayed in the exhibit is this one of Jewish children playing in Kremenets, Ukraine, circa 1913. The photograph was taken during the ethnographic expedition led by S. Ansky in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in 1912-14. (photo from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York City) Photograph Collection)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The panels go through history, from antiquity to the First World War chronologically, but there is a segment that deals with the Chassidic movement on Ukrainian lands, one on Hebrew-Yiddish printing, and another on literature and how Jews are depicted in Ukrainian writing and how Ukrainians are depicted in Jewish writing.<\/p>\n

The videos also deal with diverse topics. One is marketplaces and taverns, where Ukrainians and Jews encounter each other, and there is a video on Jewish artisans on Ukrainian lands. Another is on ethnographic photographs, largely taken between the 1880s and 1914 on S. Ansky\u2019s expeditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnsky was an ethnographer who led expeditions around these times, visiting many communities accompanied by a musicologist\/photographer, his own nephew,\u201d explained Rodal. \u201cThey took pictures and collected folksongs and folklore and objects, which then they put in the museum in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Soviets came, it was put in the warehouse and stayed in the warehouse in the 1990s, when the St. Petersburg Historical Centre made these photographs accessible. So, a selection of these photographs of Jewish life from the 1890s to 1914, and also a collection of similar ethnographic photographs of Ukrainian life in various regions, is one of the videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The videos are comprised of photographs with effects accompanied by appropriate music, including a recording made more than 100 years ago on wax cylinders.<\/p>\n

UJE\u2019s first objective was to explain that the presence of Jews on Ukrainian land dates back to antiquity. \u201cIt didn\u2019t just appear in the 18th century or even the 16th century, but was there in the very first centuries or even earlier, as merchants in colonies co-founded with Greeks,\u201d said Rodal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was also lots of significant cross-cultural interaction between the Jews and the Slavic peoples in the language, folklore, music and cuisine \u2026 so that what one thinks is Jewish cuisine, you delve a little and you see the Ukrainians are eating the same things with different names.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of Jews lived in areas where the vast majority of Ukrainians lived. They had more interactions with Ukrainians than with other Slavic peoples…. People who\u2019ve come to North America from what they say [is] Russia, they mean czarist Russia, these places that are coming from Galicia \u2026 and the Ukrainian lands that were part of the czarist empire \u2026 are now Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother important message, which is an offshoot of the other, is that the stories of these peoples are intertwined, that we have the motto that the history of one is incomplete without the history of the other. That is the goal \u2013 to treat this historical experience in all its complexity \u2013 including the periods of crisis and violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe state very clearly that not addressed in this exhibition are the horrible events of the 20th century. And we may do more about this in a different format rather than a visual exhibition. We are certainly doing it in the form of the shared narrative exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about UJE, visit ukrainianjewishencounter.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Visitors at the opening of the traveling exhibition at the Schwartz\/Reisman Centre in Toronto last month. (photo by Helena Yakovlev-Golani) The exhibit A Journey Through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914 opened last month in Toronto.\u00a0It has since been held in Winnipeg (until June 27), will return to Toronto in July and then head […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4016,4014,4015],"class_list":["post-13416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-alti-rodal","tag-uje","tag-ukrainian-jewish-experience"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}