“Good morning. We’ve been hearing loud explosions since 5 a.m. here in Kiev. People on social media are saying that Russia is attacking Ukraine. My boss has phoned me up and told me to stay home. But I’ve left my tefillin at work. What should I do? The office is at the other end of the city, over 20 km away.”
This message appeared last Thursday in a Russian-language “Ask the rabbi” WhatsApp group I’m part of, where Russian speakers from Israel, Germany, and Eastern Europe can have their halachic questions answered by a competent rabbi. In this group, this was the first of a series of messages reflecting Ukrainian Jews’ attempts to come to terms with the new reality of the war while facing halachic situations they had not yet previously encountered.
“May we leave our phone on over Shabbos, in case our relatives call, because of the shelling? We’ve also submitted an application to be evacuated, so we may be receiving a call from that organization as well.”
People from Russia chimed in to express their solidarity: “There are definitely people in Russia supporting their brothers in Ukraine. We’re in shock. All public squares in Moscow have been closed off to protestors. The special police are just grabbing the protestors and dragging them away. They beat them hard, both women and men.”
As some Ukrainian Jews manage to flee, their questions on the WhatsApp group continue to reflect their evolving situations: “We’re at an accommodation for refugees. There are no kosher keilim. May we use the treif frying pan for cooking? There’s also a pancake-maker here that’s presumably only ever been used for pancakes. Is it any better to use that?”
The questions they ask are uniquely Jewish, yet they face the same reality as their fellow Ukrainian non-Jews whose normal lives have been disrupted by the dictator in Moscow and his war of choice against Russia’s peaceful neighbor. Russian speakers the world over have gotten an intimate glimpse into Ukrainians’ desperate efforts to flee the war zone through social media: Russian-language international Facebook groups devoted to discussing vacation spots and retirement destinations in normal times have turned into virtual notice boards for people trying to get out of Ukraine.
“The buses at the border are hardly moving due to the sheer volume of traffic. You’ll be standing for up to 20 hours. We’ve been standing for 13 hours already. Another couple of hours and we’ll reach the checkpoint. Border police are entering the buses and telling everyone who’s in a hurry or has little kids to get out and go on foot. There’s a long queue, but they say it’s possible to get there after walking 6-8 hours. There are bonfires along the way, to get warm, and all the necessary food too. Good luck everybody.”
“Who else had relatives on the Odessa-Lvov-Pshemysl train that left Odessa on February 26th? I haven’t heard from my family in the past 24 hours and am worried sick!”
“We’re planning to cross the Moldovan-Romanian border. We’re coming from Odessa. Will we need to present a negative PCR test at the border?”
Reading these posts is heartbreaking. The human impact of the war is tremendous and bound to evoke our compassion. Yet as one follows social media discussions in English by American Jews, one may occasionally observe the opposite sentiment: the notion that Ukrainians, with their soil steeped in Jewish blood after a long history of horrid antisemitism, are not worthy of our compassion and deserve what has befallen them.
Let me explain why I, as an Orthodox Jew, see things differently.
Generally speaking, with the exception of a few nations clearly defined in the Torah, we Jews do not hold the descendants of evil people accountable for their ancestors’ crimes (though G-d may indeed choose to hold them accountable, particularly when the descendants actually continue to uphold the evil acts of their ancestors; see Sanhedrin 27b, echoed by, for instance Chizkuni on Deuteronomy 24:16).
Thank G-d, the Ukrainians of today are a far cry from those of a couple of generations ago who were all too eager to massacre Jews. So different, in fact, that they elected a Jewish president. The fact that around 200,000 Jews, among them an impressive and growing number of shomrei mitzvos, have continued to live in Ukraine up until the present war and had not chosen to emigrate, probably also testifies to the fact that Ukraine is, by and large, not the viciously antisemitic society it once was and is actually quite conducive to Jewish life.
The nations that had treated Jews badly and for whose subsequent generations of offspring the Torah reserves special negative treatment are Amon and Moav, Edom and Mitzrayim, and of course Amalek. Since King Sancheirev is believed to have dislodged and mixed up all the nations, we can no longer identify any of them. Yet Amalek still remains of interest to us, as in many Jewish circles it is commonly accepted to casually refer to modern tyrants and the vilest of antisemites as “Amalek.”
Rav J.B. Soloveitchik writes in Kol Dodi Dofek, citing his father:
The notion of “the L-rd will have war against Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16) is not confined to a certain race, but includes a necessary attack against any nation or group infused with mad hatred that directs its enmity against the community of Israel. When a nation emblazons on its standard, “Come, let us cut them off from being a nation so that the name of Israel shall no longer be remembered” (Psalms 83:5), it becomes Amalek. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis, with Hitler at their helm, filled this role.
Here we have a sound precedent for identifying as Amalek any viciously antisemitic nation or group of people regardless of their genetic makeup, for those to whom such a way of thinking appeals. It is in theory possible to apply this notion to the worst generations of Ukrainian antisemites. However, the Rav continues:
Today, the throngs of Nasser and the Mufti have taken their place.
This implies that insofar as we subscribe to the notion of Amalek being the embodiment of evil in each generation regardless of any blood connection to the biblical Amalek, we have no reason whatsoever to hate or hold a grudge against the non-evil descendants of those who were Amalek a couple of generations ago. Since this is no longer about genetics but rather about hateful ideology and action, the “descendants” of the Nazi Amalekites are now a separate group of people altogether, not their physical offspring. With this in mind, any hatred of peaceful and tolerant modern-day Germans or Ukrainians is misplaced.
In sum, while our feelings of pain concerning our people’s past are fully justified and understandable, we should not let them stand in the way of our empathy and compassion toward the Ukrainians affected by Putin’s war. We should have the moral clarity to condemn the imperialist tyrant waging a war of aggression against a peaceful sovereign country, to mourn all the lives lost in this senseless war, and to consider the plight of the injured and the displaced.
