The Resurrection of Jewish Religion at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries: The Case of Ukraine

The article deals with the complexities of Judaism’s revival in Ukraine, where Jews have enriched the Jewish civilization with Hasidism, gifted the Jewish world with a whole plethora of outstanding Jewish figures and a remarkable cultural heritage both tangible and intangible, and where their religion underwent a monstrous destruction during the Holocaust and the Soviet anti-religious persecutions. Today\u27s Judaism in Ukraine is a complex mixture of at least six decisive components. That is, (i) more than 20 centuries of the Judaism’s history in Ukrainian lands; (ii) the great religious comeback, which unfolded in the world in the late 1970s; (iii) the religious revival in the space which was subject to a quasi-theistic experiment; (iv) the “upheaval of identities” within the new independent countries; (v) the religious-conservative rise among the World Jewry, and (vi) amazing activity of Israeli and the US-based Jewish religious centers, primarily of Chabad-Lubavitch. Despite the extremely intensive emigration of Jews from Ukraine, which peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Judaism has a considerable demographic base in Ukraine. It includes an “ethnic core,” an enlarged Jewish population, and a community of non-Jews seeking to immerse themselves into the Jewish civilization