Demographic data, as well as the data of polls, indicate that about 950 thousand people live in the territory of the former USSR, excluding the Baltic countries, which meet the criteria of the Israeli Law of Return. Two thirds of this group live in Russia, about a quarter in Ukraine, the rest – in the republics of the former USSR. This was stated at the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020 by the Academic Chairman of the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies, Professor Ze’ev Hanin.
Ze’ev Hanin noted that in the territory of the former USSR there is a full cycle of all models of Jewish education – from kindergartens to universities, and there is a significant number of Jewish schools.
“This is a kind of Renaissance. Although in many ways this Renaissance had to be built from scratch, in fact, some institutes and educational systems had to be created anew,” the professor noted.
According to Hanin, the State of Israel plays a central role in the identification of the post-Soviet Jewish community.
“Speaking about two models of Jewish identity, religious and ethnic, we must not forget the third point. This is what is called Diaspora Zionism. It is identifying oneself with the State of Israel as the most important center of Jewish life. I think that in this sense, the Jews of the post-Soviet space and Eurasia as a whole (Eurasia and the Baltic Region), as well as the transnational Russian Jewish diaspora, see Jerusalem as their center. The time when Israel opposed itself to diaspora, when these two approaches were mutually exclusive, is over,” he stated.
Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020 was held online on September 8-9. You can follow the progress of the forum on the website: https://kyivjewishforum.com.
Earlier, in his opening speech at KJF 2020, President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Boris Lozhkin spoke about the revival of the Jewish life in Ukraine.