Ukraine - Adar

 

I’m involved in a short term 4 session Adar session at my synagogue.  The theme is ‘joy’ in preparation for Pesach.  6-8 people; a good way to get to know people.   The leader asked us to do an art project, to make a Purim mask.  Purin is a little nuts holiday that’s right now.

I love little art projects, who doesn’t?  I have not a bit of talent but here’s my mask.  I used it as an opportunity to reflect on the current world.  It makes sense starting at the top working down.

The top symbol, the blue and yellow stripes?  The Ukrainian flag, of course.  Which is everywhere.  We all support the Ukrainians, right?  Who are being violently and cruelly attacked by Russia.  Big missiles and tanks and everything.  What could possibly be good about that?  Yes, show the blue and yellow flag and the sunflower.

But then, I thought, what do I really know about Ukraine?  In the spirit of Pesach (the four questions asked by the child), ‘What does this mean to YOU?’  To me personally?  I know that many Ukrainians were involved in the Holocaust and not in a good way.  That was before. 

But keeping on that before theme.  Though, I tend not to emphasize it, my maternal grandmother’s (Betty Cohen) family came from Ukraine.  Her parents as a very young married couple.  I don’t know much about them, Edward was maybe from Odessa and he went to Kiev and courted Sonia who was living with her grandparents.  Together they traveled ‘on an older couple’s Canadian passport’ to America around 1890.  The story is that he took the name ‘Cohen’ when he emigrated because it sounded like a good Jewish name to have.  Story doesn’t exactly make sense but it’s all I have.

The next part of the mask shows my general bewilderment about Ukraine.  Surely it’s more than a handsome president and a nice looking flag.  What do I really know about it?  Descending down the mask, you can see my recognition of the complexity.  Could be dark.  And maybe, life was not good there for my Jewish ancestors.  Pogroms and violence.  They probably weren’t considered really Ukrainian by the rest of the population.  I had a running conversation with my Baltic professor this last quarter. Why were the Jews counted separately from the Latvians?  He never did quite understand what I was asking.  From an assimilationist 20^th century perspective, if Jews could be Americans, why weren’t Jews Latvians in the same century?

So, back to my Ukrainian mask.  I have to acknowledge that dark things exist in my view of the Ukraine.  Which leads to so many questions that have no answers.