Ukrainian Jewry Before, During, and After the War

For centuries, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest centers of Jewish life. Even today, it has a sizable Jewish community, and is the only country outside of Israel with a Jewish president. This lecture will explore both the past and present of Ukrainian Jewry—how they have been affected by the war, and the role of Jewish issues in the ongoing conflict.

David Fishman is Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). He directs Project Judaica, JTS’s program in Ukraine, and has visited the country numerous times, most recently in January.

This lecture is generously sponsored by Marshall and Karen Lux in memory of Roger Moss.

David E. Fishman is a professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching courses in modern Jewish history. Dr. Fishman also serves as director of Project Judaica, JTS’s program in Ukraine, which is based at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy University. He directs its Jewish Archival Survey, which publishes guides to Jewish archival materials in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Dr. Fishman is the author of numerous books and articles on the history and culture of East European Jewry. His most recent book, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (ForeEdge, 2017), was winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. Previous monographs include Russia’s First Modern Jews (New York University Press, 1996) and The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). Dr. Fishman is the coeditor (with Burton Visotzky) of From Mesopotamia to Modernity: Ten Introductions to Jewish History and Literature (Westview Press, 1999), and edited a volume of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Yiddish writings, Droshes un ksovim (Ktav, 2009).

For 15 years (1988–2003), Dr. Fishman was editor in chief of YIVO-Bleter, the Yiddish-language scholarly journal of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He is a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and serves on the editorial board of the journal Polin. 

A native New Yorker, Dr. Fishman has taught at Brandeis University, Bar-Ilan University, Russian State University in Moscow, and Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. He has been a fellow at the Hebrew University’s Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.