Mordechai Ze'ira

Lekha Dodi ("Come My Beloved" - in Hebrew)

Original recording from Israel Kibbutz Choir conducted by Avner Itai: Jewish and Israeli Music. Produced by Beit Hatfutsot in 1999.

This piyyut welcoming the Sabbath was written by Solomon Alkabez in the 17th century. Many different melodies have been written to accompany it, this one was written by Mordechai Ze'ira and arranged for choir by Yehezkel Braun.

Kiev

In Ukrainian: Київ / Kyiv

Capital of Ukraine.

Jewish merchants settled in Kiev, the important commercial crossroads of west Europe and the orient, from the 8th century. Chronicles relate that Jews from Khazaria tried to convert Vladimir, the prince of Kiev (10th century). A letter in Hebrew of the year 930 (found in the Cairo Genizah) approached the Jews of other communities to assist in the release of a Jew from Kiev who had been arrested for a debt.

Both Benjamin of Tudela and Petathiah of Regensburg mention Kiev in the 12th century. Rabbi Moses of Kiev corresponded with Jacob Ben Meir Tam in the west and with the Gaon Samuel Ben Ali in Baghdad. Under Tartar rule (1240-1320) the Jews were protected, earning them the hatred of the Christian population, and with the annexation of Kiev to Lithuania, the Jews were granted privileges ensuring the safety of their lives and property. Some of them leased the collection of taxes. The community grew in size and scholarship. In the 15th century rabbi Moses of Kiev wrote commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah and on the commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra, and held disputations with the Karaites. In the Tartar raid (1482), many Jews were captured and in 1495 the community was expelled to Lithuania.

The community was reestablished when the decree was revoked (1503), but 100 years later the citizens obtained a prohibition from the king of Poland (who had united Kiev and Lithuania in 1569) forbidding Jewish settlement and acquisition of real estate (1619) Kiev. The few who remained were killed in the Chmielnicki massacres (1648-49) and with the annexation of the city to Russia in 1667 the prohibition on Jewish settlement was renewed.

The community was reestablished in 1793 with the second partition of Poland and the conflict with the Christian citizenry resurged. By 1815 there were 1,500 Jews and two synagogues and communal institutions. In 1827 Czar Nicholas I acceded to the citizens' demands and Jewish residence in Kiev was once again forbidden. In 1861 two suburbs were assigned to those Jews permitted to reside in Kiev - merchants, wealthy industrialists, their employees, members of the liberal professions, and craftsmen. Despite the prohibition, hundreds of Jews attended the annual fairs and lodged at two municipal inns - leased by Christians. Within ten years the Jewish population grew to 13,000 (12% of the population).

In May 1881 anti-Semitic pogroms broke out. Many Jews were wounded, Jewish property was damaged, and about 800 families ruined. Until the 1917 Russian revolution, the city became notorious for police "hunt attacks" on illegal Jews. Despite this, the Jewish population grew from 50,000 in 1910 to over 81,000 in 1913, and probably even more evaded the census. Many Jews were employed in factories in and around Kiev. Some were wealthy, such as the sugar industry magnates Brodsky and Zaitsev. Most were engaged in the liberal professions and there were 888 Jewish students in Kiev University in 1911 - the largest concentration of Jewish students in a Russian university. Hebrew writers lived in the city, notably J. Kaminer, J.L. Levin (Yehalel), M. Kamionski. L.J. Weissberg, E. Schulman, and A.A. Friedman. Shalom Aleichem lived in Kiev for a while and described it in his account of "Yehupets". A harsh pogrom hit Kiev on October 18, 1905, but despite the increased impoverishment of the lower classes, the Jewish community continued to be one of the wealthiest in Russia. In 1910 there were 5,000 Jewish merchants (42% of the town's merchants), but one quarter of the community still had to apply for Passover alms that year. A general hospital was established in 1862, a surgical hospital, a clinic for eye diseases (under the direction of M. Mandelstamm), and other welfare institutions. In 1898 a magnificent synagogue was built by means of a donation from L. Brodsky. From 1906 to 1921 S. Aronson was rabbi, and among the "government appointed" rabbis were Joshua Zuckerman and S.Z. Luria. During World War I residence restrictions were lifted for Jewish refugees from battle areas. In 1917 all residence restrictions were abolished and by the end of that year there were 87,240 Jews in Kiev (19% of the population). A democratic community was set up by the Zionist Moses Nahoum Syrkin and meetings and conferences of Russian Jews were held in Kiev. Books and newspapers were published by the different parties, and cultural and educational activities began in Hebrew and Yiddish. In spring 1919 the Jewish population reached 114,524. With the first Russian conquest of the town (February-August 1919) the running of the community was handed to the yevsektsyia and the systematic destruction of public life began. With the retreat of the red army, a self-defense army was founded, and when Petlyvra's forces entered the city they arrested them and 36 were executed. Denikin's gangs killed and pillaged the Jews until driven out by the red army (December 1919). Jews suffered from famine and typhus. With the addition of refugees from the Ukrainian pogroms the Jewish population swelled. In 1923 Kiev had 128,000 Jews - and by 1939 there were 175,000 (20% of the population). In the 20 years of Russian rule Kiev became the center of Yiddish culture, officially fostered by Moscow with a network of schools and higher education institutions for thousands of students. At its head was the department of Jewish culture of the Ukrainian academy of sciences which in 1930 became the institute of proletarian Jewish culture directed by Joseph Lieberberg. Valuable research work was published there and a group of intellectuals went to Birobidjhan to organize cultural and educational activities there. With the liquidation of Jewish institutions at the end of the 1930s, one of the most important centers of Soviet-Yiddish culture ceased to exist.

The Holocaust Period
The Germans occupied Kiev on September 21, 1941, and on the 29th and 30th of that month, aided by Ukrainian militia, killed tens of thousands of Jews at the ravine Babi Yar near the Jewish cemetery. After the liberation, a Soviet investigation committee reported that 195,000 citizens and prisoners of war were executed in Kiev in mobile gas vans or by shooting - more than 100,000 of them at Babi Yar. In May 1943 the bodies were burned in ovens dug into the mountainside. Attempts to found a memorial to those who perished in Babi Yar were thwarted by the authorities, and the place became a symbol in the argument against anti- Semitism in Russia, aided by intellectuals like Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Victor Nekrasov. Thousands of Jews who returned to liberated Kiev were confronted by the hatred of the residents, for many of them were survivors of the great massacre, but within 15 years the number of Jews grew to 200,000. About 15% said that Yiddish was their mother-tongue, as did 33% of the
Jews in the towns around Kiev. A synagogue was founded for 1,000 worshipers, and beside it a mikveh, a place for the ritual slaughter of poultry, and a Matzot bakery. Private "minyanim" were abolished. Rabbi Panets, the last rabbi of Kiev, officiated in 1960. During the leadership of Bardakh as chairman of the synagogue board, the atmosphere was relaxed and visitors from abroad were cordially received. In 1961 the situation worsened when Gendelman became chairman, and he was forced to resign six years later.

In 1957 four Jews were imprisoned for "Zionist activity". One of them, Baruch Mordekhai Weissman, kept a Hebrew diary which was smuggled out and published in Israel. In the same year the municipality closed the old cemetery near Babi Yar, permitting the Jews to transfer the remains to the new cemetery. Kiev continued to be a center for Yiddish writers, many of whom had been imprisoned by Stalin, among them Itzik Kipnis, Hirsch Polyanker, Nathan Zbara, Eli Schechtman, and Yehiel Falikman. The anniversary of Babi Yar became a rallying day. The engineer Boris Kochubiyevski was arrested in 1968 for "spreading slander about the Soviet regime" after he had applied for an exit permit to Israel for himself and his non-Jewish wife. In summer 1970 ten Jews from Kiev wrote an open letter and because of it renounced their Soviet citizenship and asked to become citizens of Israel. Traditional anti- Semitism flourished in the city with the appearance of T. Kitcho's book published by the academy of sciences of the Ukrainian republic.

In 1970 there were 152,000 Jews in Kiev (about 10% of the total population).

A religious awakening started among the Jews of Kiev' in spite of the decline in their number, following the collapse of the communist regime in the 1990's. Synagogue, Jewish schools and communal institutions were opened and expanded.

In 1997, following immigration to Israel, the Jewish population of Kiev numbered 110,000 people, being more than a third of the total number of Jews in the Ukraine.

Early 21st century

In the early 2000s, the Jewish population of Kiev was estimated at 100,000. Kiev was the center of Jewish life in Ukraine; the city hosts the main offices of all major Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency. The Federation of Ukrainian Jewish Communities (FUJC), the main umbrella organization of local Jewish organizations was established in Kiev in 1999. The Great Choral Synagogue of Kiev, also known as the Podil synagogue, is the oldest synagogue in Kiev, located in the historic district of Podil. Under the leadership of Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, the Podil synagogue serves as a community center and includes also a yeshiva, the Ohr Avner heder, the Or-Avner Perlyna kindergarten and school, a senior citizen home, an orphans home, a kosher restaurant, a funeral house, a social assistance center and a rabbinical court.

Additional synagogues in Kiev include the Brodsky Choral Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Kiev, and the Galitska Synagogue. The Center for Jewish Culture and History is located next to the Galitska synagogue and is responsible for various cultural activities for youth as well as for the general public. It also administrates the Jewish Museum. Additional Jewish organizations in Kiev include Conservative and Reform communities, the last one under the leadership of Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny.