Project “немалаנְמָלָה” is a unique initiative aimed at bringing two cultures closer together through fiction. The main objective of the project is to translate works from Ukrainian into Hebrew and from Hebrew into Ukrainian.

The initiators of the project are Asaf Bartov And Natalia Timkiv is an Israeli-Ukrainian family for whom it is important to preserve and share the wealth of two cultures. They want their daughter and her peers to live in a world where the best works of Ukrainian and Israeli literature will be available in their native languages.

Fact: the translation of “Moscoviad” by Yuri Andrukhovich became the first book in history translated from Ukrainian into Hebrew.

The name of the project sounds the same in Ukrainian and Hebrew, but has different meanings:

• In Hebrew: “נְמָלָה” means “muraha” and symbolizes hard work and perseverance.
• In Ukrainian: “немала” translates as “quite large”, which reflects the ambitions of the project.

Assaf and Natalia believe that culture and literature should be accessible to everyone. Their dream is a world where children can read books about Ukraine in Hebrew, and books about Israel in Ukrainian.

The project started in 2020 and has since released several translations.

Editions in Ukrainian, translation from Hebrew:

• Yanets Levi, “The Adventures of Uncle Lev in the Romanian Steppes”, translation by Anya Khromova, Kinneret Zmora Dvir Publishing House, 2007.

Editions in Hebrew, translation from Ukrainian:

• Yuri Andrukhovich, “Moscoviada”, translation by Anton Paperny, publishing house 9 Lives Press2020.
• Yuri Vinnichuk, “Tango of Death”, translation by Anton Paperny, publishing house 9 Lives Press2022.
• Oksana Zabuzhko, “Field research of Ukrainian sex”, translation by Anton Paperny, publishing house 9 Lives Press2024.

Why are translations important?

Translation is not just transferring text from one language to another. This is a complex process that requires a deep understanding of both cultures.

Before the project was launched, there were several key problems:

• Translations through intermediate languages.Previously, Ukrainian works were translated into Hebrew through English or Russian, which led to the loss of details of the original text.
• Lack of consistency.Translations were carried out haphazardly, and most of them never reached the general reader.

Thanks to “немалаנְמָלָה” these problems were solved. All translations are made from the original, which guarantees accuracy and preservation of the author’s style.

Why is this important for Israel and Ukraine?

The connection between the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples is rooted in deep history. However, like many relationships, they require constant dialogue. Literature in this case plays the role of a cultural diplomat.

Key tasks:

• Expanding mutual understanding:Translations help to destroy stereotypes and find common ground.
• Preservation of languages ​​and cultures:Translation of literature contributes to the popularization of national cultures outside their countries.
• Formation of new generations:Children who grow up in a bilingual environment will be able to build closer ties between Ukraine and Israel.

NEWS and the project “немалаנְמָלָה”

Website NAnews — Israel News supports initiatives that strengthen cultural ties. The “nemalaנְмָלָה” project is an example of how enthusiasts change the world through literature.

On our website you will find current news about similar projects, as well as analytics about cultural and geopolitical events that unite Ukraine and Israel.

The future of the project: how to become part of “немалаנְמָלָה”?

The founders of the project invite everyone to join. Here’s how you can help:

1. Support the initiative financially or through promotion.
2. Join the translation team.
3. Share information about the project on social networks.

Contacts “немалаנְמָלָה”:

Project website – https://nemala.org/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/nemala.org/

By the way, before the screening of the film “The Word House”. An Unfinished Novel,” which took place on December 4 in Tel Aviv, viewers were able to hear Ukrainian poetry in Hebrew.

The talk was about the poem “Yar” by Nikola Bazhan, translated by Anton Paperny (literary edition by Asaf Bartov, founder of the Ukrainian-Hebrew publishing project “Nemala”).

The poem was read by Asaf Bartov.

we wrote about this – “Budynok “The Word”: A Never-ending Romance” – a unique screening of a Ukrainian film in Tel Aviv on December 4, 2024

The project “a lot” demonstrates how enthusiasm and love for literature can bring two peoples together. Ukrainian and Israeli cultures are rich in their traditions, and thanks to this project, their unique works are becoming available to an increasing number of readers.

Leave a comment on WhatsApp – channel NAnews ↓ — Israel News

Leave a comment on Telegram – channel NAnews ↓ — Israel News

Now a judicial seal has been added to television propaganda.

On August 4, 2026, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow satisfied the application of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Russia. Stepan Bandera, his brother Vasyl, Roman Shukhevych, Andriy Melnyk, six other figures of the Ukrainian national movement, as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were declared

“accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Great Patriotic War against the Soviet people.”

“The court’s decision is necessary to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, to debunk the illegal actions of the regime in Kyiv, to annul decisions on the rehabilitation of war criminals, and to prevent acts of extremism against our country.”

“Given the above, the court fully satisfied the claims of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and recognized them as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

This was not an ordinary criminal case. All the named individuals have long been deceased, and no punishment was assigned to anyone. The Prosecutor General’s Office requested to establish a ‘fact of legal significance,’ and the court agreed with the ‘historical-legal construction’ prepared by Russian state bodies.

The practical result of the process is clear: previously, Russian propaganda claimed that Bandera, the OUN, and the UPA were Nazis. Now it can add: ‘This was established by the court.’

But it was not only long-deceased people who were ‘judged’ here.

Russian historian Mikhail Myagkov, involved in the case as an expert, directly stated that the current Ukrainian authorities, the SBU, the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, and Ukrainian military units are ‘factual and legal heirs’ of the OUN and UPA. He claimed that Russia is today fighting with the direct heirs of the Banderites.

Thus, the modern political goal of the court was not even hidden. Formally, its decision is dedicated to the events of the 1940s. In reality, it is intended to justify today’s Russian aggression against Ukraine.

What exactly happened in the Tverskoy court

The General Prosecutor’s Office of Russia asked the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow to officially recognize ten figures of the Ukrainian national movement as ‘accomplices of Nazi Germany’: Stepan and Vasyl Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Andriy Melnyk, Mykola Arsenych, Taras Borovets, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, Mykola Kozak, Myron Matviyko, and Yaroslav Stetsko.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) were also included in the same accusatory construction.

The Russian side stated that the listed individuals and organizations were involved in ‘terror against the population of occupied territories,’ ‘punitive operations, mass executions, fighting against the Red Army, and the destruction of Soviet partisans.’ All these actions were combined by the Prosecutor General’s Office under the general formulation of crimes against the ‘Soviet people’.

As the main episodes, the Russian authorities named the ‘Lviv pogrom, the destruction of Belarusian Khatyn, and the mass killings of the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.’ In some Russian publications, Babi Yar was also added to this list, although responsibility for this crime has a different organizational and historical structure.

Regarding Lviv, the Russian version claims that mass killings took place under the command of Roman Shukhevych, and the total number of dead Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles exceeded eight thousand.

The destruction of Khatyn is linked by the Russian side to the 118th auxiliary police battalion, which in public materials is presented as a formation consisting of members of the OUN and UPA.

In Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, the OUN and UPA are attributed with the killing of at least 120 thousand Poles. At the same time, Russian publications do not explain in detail by what methodology this exact figure was obtained, which territories and periods were included in the calculation.

But the most important political element of the accusation was not the description of the events of the 1940s. Mikhail Myagkov and the Russian Military-Historical Society transferred the responsibility of historical organizations to modern Ukraine, calling Ukrainian state, intelligence, and military structures direct heirs of the ‘Banderites.’

Thus, the Russian construction includes several levels at once. First, real crimes and confirmed cases of cooperation of individual Ukrainian nationalists with Nazi structures are listed. Then different organizations, units, and periods are combined into one system. After that, the responsibility of people from the 1940s is transferred to the Ukrainian state of the 21st century.

This version cannot simply be declared completely fabricated. The Lviv pogrom, the participation of local auxiliary police in the persecution of Jews, the crimes of Ukrainian collaborators in Belarus, and the mass killings of Polish civilians in Volhynia did indeed take place.

But in the Moscow presentation, reliable facts are combined with unproven personal accusations, controversial figures, incorrect identification of the OUN, UPA, auxiliary police, and German security units, as well as with direct political propaganda against modern Ukraine.

It is this mixed construction — part of which is based on real crimes, and part on generalizations and political conclusions — that the Tverskoy court formalized as a legally significant fact.

What documents were presented to the court

The Russian side reported that it used documents from archives:

• FSB of Russia;
• Ministry of Defense of Russia;
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation;
• archives and courts of Belarus.

Written explanations were prepared by Mikhail Myagkov.

However, in the published RVIO retelling, there are no archival codes, a complete list of investigated cases, copies of documents, or an explanation of which specific source confirms each individual conclusion. There is also no full motivated court act with an analysis of the reliability of the evidence.

This is fundamentally important because the expression ‘document from the FSB archive’ in itself proves nothing.

In the former archives of the NKVD and KGB, the following may be stored:

• authentic documents of the OUN and UPA captured by Soviet authorities;
• German orders and reports;
• leaflets and internal reports of the underground;
• agent reports;
• interrogation protocols obtained under pressure;
• materials of Soviet show trials;
• propaganda notes compiled for a predetermined conclusion.

A document stored in the KGB archive is not necessarily created by the KGB. But a paper with an archival number does not automatically become reliable.

It is necessary to know who, when, and under what circumstances compiled the document, whether the original has been preserved, and whether it is confirmed by independent German, Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, or Western sources.

The Moscow process did not provide the public with the opportunity to conduct such a check.

Mikhail Myagkov: a historian who has already chosen a side

Mikhail Myagkov has a professional historical education, a doctoral degree, and academic positions. Therefore, it would be incorrect to claim that he is a historian only by name.

But he cannot be presented as an independent expert in a case directly related to justifying Putin’s policies.

Myagkov was an official trustee of Putin in the 2024 presidential elections. His name is present in the list published by the Central Election Commission.

He holds the position of scientific director of the Russian Military-Historical Society — a state ideological structure involved in the preparation of textbooks, methodological materials, and programs of so-called patriotic education.

In February 2025, Myagkov participated in the presentation of a manual on the history of the ‘Ukrainian question.’ The authors openly stated that they relied primarily on Putin’s statements. Myagkov called Ukrainians and Russians ‘two parts of a single people,’ claimed that Ukraine was artificially separated from Russia, and expressed hope for the dissemination of materials in territories he called occupied by the ‘Kyiv neo-Nazi regime.’

As early as 2023, he claimed that Ukrainian society was supposedly brought up in such a way that it was ready to ‘exterminate’ Russians, and compared modern Western technology to German ‘Tigers’ and ‘Panthers’ of World War II.

In the Tverskoy court, Myagkov continued the same line. He did not limit himself to analyzing documents from 1941–1944, but immediately transferred the accusation to modern Ukraine.

Therefore, the problem is not that Myagkov does not have a diploma. The problem is that his politically biased conclusion is presented as a neutral historical expertise.

It turns out to be a closed system:

1. Russian security agencies select archival materials;
2. The Prosecutor General’s Office formulates the required conclusion;
3. Putin’s trustee gives the conclusion an academic appearance;
4. the Russian court declares it a legally significant fact;
5. state propaganda transfers the decision to modern Ukraine.

The main substitution: crimes against which ‘Soviet people’

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and RVIO constantly use the formula ‘crimes against the Soviet people.’

Formally, by 1941, the residents of Lviv and Volhynia indeed found themselves under Soviet rule. But the Russian formulation deliberately hides how exactly these territories became Soviet.

Until September 1939, Lviv was part of Poland. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east — sixteen days after Nazi Germany attacked it. The division of Polish territory between the two totalitarian states was provided for by the secret agreements of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Soviet troops occupied Lviv on September 22, 1939.

During the next twenty-one months, Soviet authorities conducted arrests, deportations, and executions in Lviv. Before retreating in the summer of 1941, the NKVD killed two to three thousand prisoners in local prisons — mostly Ukrainians suspected of ties to the nationalist underground.

Thus, the residents of Lviv became ‘Soviet citizens’ after military occupation and annexation, not as a result of free political choice.

A similar situation developed in Volhynia. Before the Soviet invasion, it was the territory of the Second Polish Republic. The main victims of the mass killings of 1943–1945 were Polish civilians, many of whom were citizens of pre-war Poland. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance directly calls these lands the eastern territories of pre-war Poland.

The Russian formula turns the murdered Poles of Volhynia into an impersonal part of the ‘Soviet people,’ although it was the USSR in 1939 that participated in the destruction of Polish statehood in these territories.

Khatyn was located in the Minsk region of the Belarusian SSR — on the territory of present-day Belarus. Its victims were residents of a Belarusian village destroyed during a joint punitive operation by the Dirlewanger German unit and the 118th auxiliary police battalion.

Today, Russia builds such a scheme:

• Lviv was Soviet — so its victims belong to Russian memory;
• Volhynia was Soviet — so Polish victims can be called ‘Soviet people’;
• Khatyn was in the USSR — so Russia can use Belarusian victims in its own accusatory process;
• modern Russia declares itself the sole heir of the USSR and gains the right to speak on behalf of all the dead.

But the Soviet Union is not equal to modern Russia.

Belarusians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles do not become Russians just because during the war Moscow called them ‘Soviet citizens.’ The memory of the Jews of Lviv, the Poles of Volhynia, and the Belarusians of Khatyn is not Putin’s property.

Especially cynical is the dissolution of Jewish victims in the general Soviet category. Even at Babi Yar, the Soviet monument installed in 1976 spoke of about one hundred thousand dead citizens but did not indicate that the main execution on September 29–30, 1941, was the targeted extermination of Jews.

Russia inherits not only the Soviet victory mythology but also the Soviet habit of erasing the nationality of victims when it interferes with a convenient state narrative.

What is really known about the Lviv pogrom

The Lviv pogrom was a real crime. Denying it or the participation of Ukrainian nationalists in it is impossible.

After the entry of German troops on June 30, 1941, the German occupiers and OUN-B activists began inciting anti-Semitic violence. The pogrom involved German soldiers, the newly created Ukrainian militia, Ukrainian nationalist activists, as well as some local Ukrainian and Polish residents.

Jews were beaten, robbed, humiliated, raped, and killed. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the number of victims of the pogrom itself at a minimum of several hundred and possibly several thousand people. The most frequently cited figure of four thousand is now considered exaggerated, as it may include Jews shot by German units later in July.

The Russian side claimed more than eight thousand dead ‘Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles’ from June to August and attributed the mass killings to the command of Shukhevych.

But the public Russian retelling does not show a document that would prove that Shukhevych gave the order for the pogrom or directly commanded its execution.

This does not exonerate Shukhevych and does not remove questions about his service in formations associated with Nazi Germany. But a personal accusation of leading a mass murder requires a specific chain of evidence: an order, a report, a testimony of a direct participant, or documented subordination.

The formulas ‘nationalists participated in the pogrom’ and ‘Shukhevych personally commanded the pogrom’ are not the same.

Babi Yar: UPA could not have been there

In some Russian publications about the Moscow decision, Babi Yar was named among the proven episodes.

On September 29–30, 1941, 33,771 Jews were killed there. The organizers and main executors of the mass shooting were Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, SS units, and German police with the participation of auxiliary forces.

The role of specific local policemen and collaborators should be investigated separately.

But declaring Babi Yar a crime of the UPA is impossible at least chronologically: the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in its main organizational form emerged later.

The Russian substitution is constructed as follows:

• among the auxiliary forces were residents of Ukraine;
• some Ukrainian policemen may have been connected to the nationalist movement;
• therefore, the crime is declared a crime of the OUN and UPA;
• then responsibility is transferred to the entire Ukrainian independence movement.

Thus, specific perpetrators disappear, and instead, a convenient propaganda collective image of the ‘Banderite’ emerges.

Khatyn: the Ukrainian battalion was not a UPA unit

On March 22, 1943, Belarusian Khatyn was destroyed during a joint operation of the 118th auxiliary police battalion and the SS special unit Dirlewanger.

Historian Per Anders Rudling established that the 118th battalion was a collaborationist formation within the German police system. A significant part of its composition consisted of Ukrainians, including people with a nationalist past. The participation of the battalion in the destruction of Khatyn is confirmed by research.

Therefore, it is impossible to deny the participation of Ukrainian collaborators in the crime.

But the Russian message takes the next step: it calls the battalion a unit consisting of members of the OUN and UPA.

This misleads the reader.

The 118th battalion was part of the German auxiliary police, not a military unit of the UPA. Even if some of its members were previously part of the OUN or later joined the nationalist underground, this does not turn the entire battalion into a UPA structure.

It is necessary to distinguish:

• German command;
• auxiliary police;
• nationality of the personnel;
• previous political affiliation of individuals;
• their subsequent fate;
• specific participation in the crime.

The Moscow trial replaced this complex work with a single general label.

Volhynia: a crime that cannot be denied

The most serious grounds for the Russian accusation relate to the mass killings of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance qualifies the actions of the OUN-B and UPA as genocide and estimates the total number of Polish victims at about one hundred thousand people. On July 11, 1943, UPA units carried out coordinated attacks on almost one hundred Polish settlements.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office named a figure of at least 120 thousand dead, but did not explain the counting methodology and territorial boundaries in the public message.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance acknowledges that the main victims of the tragedy on both sides were unarmed civilians. It also emphasizes: people who participated in the killings of civilians cannot be unconditionally heroized. At the same time, the Ukrainian side reminds of the retaliatory killings of Ukrainians by Polish armed formations.

The historical context — pre-war Polish policy, German occupation, Soviet terror, and retaliatory crimes — is necessary to understand the reasons.

But no context justifies the mass killings of women, children, and other civilians.

That is why exposing Russian propaganda should not turn into Ukrainian glossing over history.

Did the KGB fabricate all the evidence

No.

The Soviet special services did indeed fabricate cases, extract confessions, conduct propaganda campaigns against Ukrainian emigration, and tried to present any independence movement as a Nazi conspiracy.

Therefore, Soviet interrogation protocols require critical verification.

But modern studies of the crimes of the OUN, auxiliary police, and individual UPA units are based not only on NKVD and KGB materials.

Historians use:

• German reports of Einsatzgruppen, SS, and police;
• documents of the occupation administration;
• materials captured by Western allies;
• German photographs and newsreels;
• documents of the Polish underground;
• testimonies of Jews recorded outside the USSR;
• Yad Vashem archives;
• documents of the OUN and UPA themselves;
• diaries, letters, and memoirs;
• materials of American, German, Polish, and other court processes;
• databases of victims and results of exhumations.

The newsreel of the Lviv pogrom was filmed by the Germans and then presented by the allies at the Nuremberg trial. The original materials are stored in American archives and Yad Vashem. The KGB could not fabricate them.

Yad Vashem, in its own reference on the OUN, points to cooperation with Germany, participation of organization members in German battalions, the formation of Ukrainian administration and police, as well as subsequent German repressions against the leadership of the proclaimed Ukrainian state.

American studies also conclude the participation of OUN members and UPA units in the destruction of Jews in Western Ukraine.

At the same time, modern researchers expose Soviet exaggerations. For example, they do not confirm the Russian thesis that almost the entire Ukrainian auxiliary police consisted of OUN members. The composition of the police was much more complex and included people of different nationalities, biographies, and political beliefs.

Therefore, both extremes are incorrect:

“The KGB proved everything” — false.

“All the crimes of the OUN and UPA were invented by the KGB” — also false.

What the Nuremberg trial decided

The Nuremberg Tribunal did not recognize the OUN or UPA as criminal organizations.

The indictment included the leadership corps of the Nazi party, Gestapo, SD, SS, SA, Reich government, General Staff, and High Command of the German armed forces. The OUN and UPA were not included in this list.

Bandera, Melnyk, and Shukhevych were also not defendants of the International Military Tribunal.

Therefore, Nuremberg did not condemn them.

But it also did not acquit them: the question of their personal criminal responsibility was simply not considered.

On February 11, 1946, the Soviet prosecution presented the testimony of former Abwehr officer Erwin Stolze. He claimed to have contacted Bandera and Melnyk and gave them instructions to organize anti-Soviet subversive activities after Germany’s attack on the USSR.

This is important evidence of cooperation with German military intelligence.

However, accepting the document as evidence of Abwehr activity is not a verdict on Bandera, Melnyk, or the OUN.

The correct formulation looks like this:

• Nuremberg received evidence of Bandera and Melnyk’s contacts with the Abwehr;
• Bandera and Melnyk were not defendants;
• The OUN and UPA were not considered as organizations that the tribunal should recognize as criminal;
• there was no separate decision on their guilt or innocence.

The Moscow court of 2026 did not repeat Nuremberg’s decision. It created a new internal Russian act for a modern political purpose.

Why Putin needed this now

The Russian propaganda construct works because it starts with real facts.

Some Ukrainian nationalists collaborated with Germany.

Some OUN activists participated in anti-Semitic violence.

Ukrainian collaborators served in the auxiliary police.

UPA units committed mass killings of Polish civilians.

But then substitutions begin.

Different factions of the OUN, UPA, Taras Borovets’ formations, German auxiliary police, and individual guard battalions are declared a single organization.

Different crimes — Lviv, Babi Yar, Khatyn, and Volhynia — are combined into one accusatory package.

The responsibility of specific individuals is transferred to the entire Ukrainian independence movement.

Then it is transferred to modern Ukraine.

A simple scheme emerges for the Russian domestic audience:

1. The OUN collaborated with Germany.
2. Ukraine honors some figures of the national movement.
3. Therefore, modern Ukraine is a Nazi state.
4. Consequently, the Russian invasion is supposedly a new fight against Hitler.

The last conclusion is a lie.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated back in February 2022 that Putin distorts and appropriates Holocaust history, falsely claiming that democratic Ukraine needs ‘denazification’.

The Moscow court added legal decoration to this propaganda.

This is especially needed by the Kremlin now, when the promised quick victory did not happen, Ukraine continues to resist, and the Russian audience needs to be explained again why the war is dragging on and why the aggressor cannot subdue the Ukrainian people.

Instead of acknowledging the failure, the Kremlin again offers the usual answer: the ‘Nazis’, ‘Banderites’, and the West are to blame.

What Ukraine must acknowledge

Russia has no right to use the crimes of the 1940s to justify modern aggression.

But Ukraine should also not respond to Russian propaganda with unconditional heroization of all OUN and UPA figures.

The struggle for independence is not an automatic indulgence.

A person could oppose Soviet totalitarianism and at the same time:

• hold anti-Semitic views;
• collaborate with Germany;
• participate in criminal structures;
• bear political or command responsibility for the killings of civilians.

An honest Ukrainian memory policy should include opening archives, continuing exhumations, publishing the names of victims, cooperating with Polish and Israeli researchers, and rejecting sterile biographies of historical heroes.

Such an approach does not weaken Ukraine.

It demonstrates the difference between a democratic society capable of discussing its own crimes and Putin’s Russia, where the court, prosecutor’s office, and state historian jointly produce the only permitted version of the past.

Israel should not choose between two myths

For the Israeli audience, this story has special significance.

Israel has the right to demand from Ukraine an honest conversation about the anti-Semitism of the OUN, the participation of nationalists in the auxiliary police, and the killings of Jews.

People and organizations with such a past cannot be turned into impeccable heroes without explaining the price paid by Jewish and Polish civilians for their activities.

But Israel should also not allow Russia to privatize the memory of the Holocaust.

Putin uses Jewish victims not to protect Jews, but to justify the war against Ukraine. The Russian state first dissolves the Jews of Lviv and Babi Yar into the category of the ‘Soviet people’, then declares itself the owner of their memory, and then uses this memory as an accusation against Ukrainians of the 21st century.

A consistent Israeli position should include four points:

• crimes against Jews must be named regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators;
• criminals cannot be unconditionally heroized;
• modern Ukraine is not a Nazi state;
• the memory of the Holocaust cannot serve as justification for Russian aggression.

NANews — News of Israel considers the Moscow process precisely from this point of view: acknowledging the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists does not mean recognizing the Kremlin’s version of history.

The memory of the Jews of Lviv, the Poles of Volhynia, and the Belarusians of Khatyn does not belong to Russia.

Putin condemned Bandera again, but the verdict is intended for Ukraine.

Stepan Bandera was killed by an agent of the Soviet special services in Munich in 1959. 67 years later, a Russian court issued him another symbolic verdict.

But Bandera can no longer respond to the accusations. The OUN and UPA in their historical form of the 1940s have long ceased to exist.

There exists a modern Ukraine, which Russia is trying to destroy and subjugate.

That is why Mikhail Myagkov in court spoke not only about the past. He directly called the current Ukrainian authorities and military structures the ‘legal successors’ of the Banderites and stated that Russia is fighting precisely against them today.

With this phrase, he revealed the meaning of the entire process.

The Russian authorities needed not only archives, not only Bandera, and not only the memory of the victims. They required judicial confirmation of the main propaganda thesis of the war: Ukraine is allegedly a continuation of the Nazi movement, and Russia is the liberator.

But the crimes of people from the 1940s are not inherited by an entire nation.

They do not turn a democratic state of the 21st century into the Third Reich.

They do not give Russia the right to attack, occupy territories, destroy cities, and kill Ukrainians.

Putin ‘condemned’ Bandera again because it is increasingly difficult for the Russian aggressor state to explain to its own audience why the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people could not be broken.

The Moscow court did not restore historical justice.

It took real crimes, mixed them with unproven accusations, appropriated the memory of other peoples for Russia, and turned the deceased Jews, Poles, and Belarusians into tools of today’s Russian war.

How the material was prepared

The NANews editorial team compared the public statement of the Russian Military Historical Society about the process with materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, documents of the Nuremberg Trials, publications of the Ukrainian and Polish Institutes of National Memory, and academic studies of the destruction of Khatyn.

The editorial team did not receive its own copies of the materials presented by the Prosecutor General’s Office to the Tver Court and does not claim that every document in the case was falsified. The main complaint of the article relates to the absence of verifiable connections between individual documents and the broad political conclusions of the court in the public Russian retelling.

The original editorial value of the material lies in comparing specific Russian accusations with independent sources, analyzing the appropriation of the concept of the ‘Soviet people,’ and explaining why this process is important for the Israeli-Ukrainian audience.

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Mark Yakovlevich Azbel

Mark Yakovlevich Azbel (1932 – 2020) was an outstanding physicist, a graduate of Kharkiv University, a dissident, and an organizer of scientists’ resistance to the Soviet totalitarian regime, and a professor at Tel Aviv University.

Irina Kolodnaya, the scientist’s widow, writes that the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter discussed with Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgeny Korniychuk, the details of her private initiative to establish a prize to commemorate her husband. In the first stage, Irina Kolodnaya is allocating $25,000 — $5,000 annually over five years — for the Mark Azbel Prize, whose laureates will be selected from among young physics researchers at Kharkiv National University.

“I am sure that Mark would have done exactly that — directed assistance to Kharkiv University, where he studied and began his scientific career, and which is now experiencing difficult times along with Kharkiv and all of Ukraine due to Russian aggression,” said Irina Kolodnaya.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgeny Korniychuk, emphasized at a meeting with Irina Kolodnaya:

“I sincerely thank you for this wonderful initiative. Any help to Ukraine is very much needed now. I am confident that Kharkiv will overcome all the difficulties of the war and remain a flagship of Ukrainian science. I hope that other patrons will follow your example, strengthening humanitarian, scientific, and human ties between Israel and Ukraine.”

The rector of KNU, Tatyana Kaganovskaya, and the University Academic Council fully supported the establishment of the Mark Azbel Prize.

Professor Ruslan Vovk, Dean of the Faculty of Physics at Kharkiv National University named after V.N. Karazin, noted in a conversation with UJE:

“Mark Azbel’s scientific discoveries were worthy of a Nobel Prize. The faculty remembers Azbel and values his contribution to the development of science, so we decided to name one of the auditoriums after him alongside the Department of Theoretical Physics. The establishment of the Azbel Prize will help young scientists engage in promising research within our University.”

The dates considered for the award ceremony are May 12-14 — Mark Azbel’s birthday and Israel’s Independence Day.

One of the best periods in Mark Azbel’s life is associated with the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

One of the best periods in Mark Azbel’s life is associated with the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv — his passion for physics, his first scientific successes, and academic recognition.

Mark was born into a family of doctors; his father and mother graduated from Kharkiv Medical Institute before the war. The Azbel family returned from evacuation to Kharkiv, where Mark attended school No. 36. In 1948, Mark entered Kharkiv State University and took up physics. He graduated from the University in 1953, taught mathematics at an evening school in Kharkiv, while simultaneously engaging in scientific research.

In Kharkiv, 23-year-old Azbel predicted cyclotron resonance in metals (Azbel-Kaner resonance). In 1955, under the guidance of Professor and future academician Ilya Lifshitz, he defended his candidate dissertation at the age of 25 and began working at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology.

The great physicist and future Nobel laureate, academician Lev Landau, said during the defense of 27-year-old Azbel’s doctoral dissertation: “The only drawback of the dissertation is youth.”

The scientist refused offers to engage in the creation of new types of Soviet nuclear weapons. He became the head of the Department of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Moscow), but in 1972 he applied for an exit from the USSR and was immediately dismissed from all positions. He was denied exit.

Azbel did not reconcile with the arbitrariness of the Soviet authorities and began to fight against the regime. For the first time in the USSR, he created a permanent international scientific seminar for scientists who were denied exit.

In April 1974, KGB head Yuri Andropov reported to the Central Committee of the CPSU about plans to disrupt Mark Azbel’s initiative — a “provocative action by Zionists,” as the KGB called the international scientific seminar. The “subversive event” of Azbel involved not only Soviet scientists who were denied exit but also outstanding scientists from around the world, including five Nobel Prize laureates in physics.

Since 1973, he lectured by phone on physics for students of Tel Aviv University.

In 1977, the KGB could no longer withstand the scientist’s resilience and allowed his exit. Mark Azbel received a chair in theoretical physics at Tel Aviv University. He was a laureate of the Israeli Landau Prize (1989) and the German Meitner-Humboldt Prize (2001) for outstanding achievements in solid-state physics.

The establishment of the Azbel Prize can be seen alongside the assistance provided by Nobel laureate in chemistry Professor Roald Hoffmann to his native city of Zolochiv in Ukraine. Saved by a Ukrainian family during the Holocaust, Hoffmann responds to Ukraine with kindness. Azbel, who overcame all the difficulties of Soviet anti-Semitism, returns to the city and University of his youth — as a reward and support for young scientists.

In one of his interviews in Israel, Professor Mark Azbel said:

“Even at sixteen, when I was finishing school [in Kharkiv], I firmly knew that I hated this system, the party, the government, the leader. And, having received an invitation to work with Kurchatov [in Moscow], I decided: I do not want to give such power what they shoot with. It was one of the reasonable actions I took in my life.”

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky is a servant of the Greek Catholic Church, who during the Second World War saved hundreds of Jewish children — risking everything, including his own life. He fought hatred and the cult of destroying Jews, even wrote letters to the Pope, deeply hated Nazism, and perfectly understood where this ideology could lead humanity.

When past and present collide at the doorstep of the synagogue

In Kyiv’s Central Synagogue on Shevchenko Boulevard, even in peaceful times, everything is saturated with history — the old walls remember more than one wave of trials. But in July 2025, the atmosphere here is quite special: in a city that is almost daily subjected to Russian missile and drone attacks, each meeting acquires new significance.

It was at this moment that the Jewish and Ukrainian communities gathered to unveil a memorial plaque in honor of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky — a symbol of human courage and compassion.

Gathered were those for whom memory is not an abstraction

At the ceremony were all those who truly shape public opinion and the cultural agenda: the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Asman, delegations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Catholic priests and rabbis from different cities, representatives of Protestant communities, as well as diplomats and employees of international organizations, scientists, and well-known public figures.

To this were added scholars, historians, prominent public figures, journalists, descendants of saved children, representatives of national minorities, students, and youth.

Many of those present shared that they came despite the risk: in Kyiv, in recent weeks, air raid sirens have sounded almost every day, and the streets sometimes empty in a matter of minutes. For them, this evening was a reminder that true solidarity is shown not only in words, but also in actions — even when one has to go under the threat of another attack.

The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine: “Memory of Sheptytsky is our shared conscience”

Special significance was given to the words of the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Asman at the Central Synagogue of Ukraine, where a memorial event dedicated to the 160th anniversary of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky took place. His address was both strict and very personal:

“This name is well known to many Jews and to those who value humanity and courage. Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, a servant of the Greek Catholic Church, during World War II, saved hundreds of Jewish children — risking everything, including his own life. He fought against hatred and the cult of destroying Jews, even wrote letters to the Pope.

He hated Nazism with all his heart and perfectly understood where such ideology could lead humanity.

At this event, we not only honored his memory with words and recollections, we also solemnly unveiled a memorial plaque on a chestnut tree planted in his honor near the synagogue.

At the event were representatives of various confessions, in particular, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, diplomats, scientists, and famous public figures. All those who are aware of the importance of Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s figure, especially in our dark times.”

Rabbi Asman thanked everyone who was not afraid to come:

“I am very grateful to all those present for this act of unity.”

The atmosphere of the ceremony: dialogue despite fear

It would seem that the ceremony should have been restrained, but on this day there was a real concentration of historical responsibility. Father Fredina spoke about the fact that Sheptytsky’s example is not just part of church or national history, but a reminder to everyone: the choice to save is always a personal choice.

Diplomats in their speeches emphasized that such acts of remembrance serve as the foundation for further strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and Israel, Europe, and the Jewish diaspora worldwide.

Facts and details: what Sheptytsky did for the Jewish people

The story of Andrey Sheptytsky is not only the biography of a church leader, but above all thousands of human destinies. He, his brother Klymentiy, and more than 240 Ukrainian priests created shelters for Jewish children and families, took them out of ghettos, provided forged documents, and hid them in monasteries.

Only in August 1942 were more than 200 children saved — a fact confirmed by former Chief Rabbi of Lviv David Kahane.

After the liberation of Lviv from the Nazis, Sheptytsky handed these children over to the Jewish community, continuing to help them with food, clothing, and all necessities. This contribution is recognized not only in Ukraine, but also in Israel, where the descendants of those saved live.

The contemporary significance of the event: when memory becomes support

In the participants’ speeches, the thought was voiced: the unveiling of a memorial plaque in a city suffering daily from Russian attacks is not just a ritual or tribute to the past. It is a signal to the world: Ukrainian and Jewish communities choose the path of solidarity, open dialogue, and joint resistance to hatred and violence. It is also important that in Kyiv, despite the threat of new strikes, people did not refuse to come and honor the memory of a person for whom saving others was always paramount.

The issue of international recognition

The question was raised that the name of Andrey Sheptytsky has not yet been included in the list of “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Yad Vashem, although his brother and many associates have received this status. For those present, this is not so much a matter of official awards as a matter of historical justice and the need for ongoing dialogue between societies.

We wrote — For more than 60 years, Jews have asked for the recognition of Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky as Righteous Among the Nations — story

Why this memory is important for the future

Commemorative dates and ceremonies are not only an occasion for official speeches, but also a living lesson for those who are now building bridges between Ukraine and Israel. The story of Sheptytsky shows: even in the darkest times, the choice of morality and humanity determines the future of nations.

On the website NAnews — News of Israel we regularly cover events that reveal deep ties between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples, real stories of solidarity and heroism. And today, more than ever, these topics are relevant for everyone who cares about the fate of the world.

Tickets and details here – https://www.eventer.co.il/wyqj7

Original songs and Ukrainian hits.

“Odin v kanoe”, “Vopli Vidoplyasova”, “Okean Elzy” ….

The folk-rock band “Chornitsa” founded by immigrants from Ukraine presents original songs in Ukrainian as well as cover versions of popular Ukrainian performers.

A storm of emotions and a burst of energy guaranteed.

….
Are you aware that there is a rock band in Israel that writes and sings in Ukrainian?
If you haven’t heard yet, it’s the band “Chornitsa”.

You can listen here:

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@chornitsa4512

Instagram –

Facebook –

“All of us are from Ukraine, but now we live in Israel. And it is here that we create Ukrainian music,” the musicians write about themselves.

We wish the band creative success and sincerely rejoice that they have managed to realize themselves in Israel!

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The history of ties between the Jewish people and Ukraine is amazing and multifaceted.

The contribution of the natives of Ukrainian lands to the development of the Jewish state is reflected even in the symbols of Israel, such as the national currency – the shekel.

Portraits of 8 great personalities born on Ukrainian soil adorn Israeli banknotes, recalling their services in culture, politics and public life.. We invite you to get to know each of these heroes better.

So, Of the 20 outstanding representatives of the Jewish people who have been depicted on Israeli money over time, 8 were born on the territory of modern Ukraine.

1. Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934)

Biography:

Born in the village of Ivnitsa, Volyn province (now Zhitomir region). Chaim Nachman Bialik was a prominent poet, translator and writer, called the “national poet of Israel.” His works contributed to the development of Jewish literature and culture. He was also active in the revival of Hebrew as a modern language. His poems have become a mandatory part of the school curriculum in Israel.

Banknote:

Bialik is depicted on the 10 shekel banknote issued in 1985. The banknote features lines from his poem and illustrations reflecting his literary heritage.

2. Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940)

Biography:

Born in Odessa, Vladimir Jabotinsky was one of the founders of revisionist Zionism. He created the Jewish Legion within the British Army and inspired Jewish youth to fight for independence. In addition, Jabotinsky was a writer, journalist and translator.

Banknote:

Jabotinsky is depicted on the 1998 NIS 100 banknote. His portrait is complemented by symbols of the Zionist movement and lines from his literary works.

3. Lev (Leon) Pinsker (1821–1891)

Biography:

Born in Tomashpol (now Vinnytsia region). Lev Pinsker became one of the ideologists of the Hovevei Zion movement, which laid the foundations of modern Zionism. His work Auto-Emancipation was a manifesto calling on the Jewish people to fight for the creation of their own state.

Banknote:

Pinsker's image adorns the 20 shekel bill from the 1980s. In the background are pages from his works and symbols of the Hovevei Zion movement.

4. Menachem Usishkin (1863–1941)

Biography:

Born in Dubrovno (now the territory of Belarus, formerly part of the Russian Empire). Usyshkin was the head of the Jewish National Fund and made a huge contribution to the purchase of land for the future of Israel.

Banknote:

Menachem Usishkin is depicted on the 500 shekel banknote from the 1980s. Next to his portrait is a plan of the lands acquired through his efforts and a quote from his speeches.

5. Moshe Sharett (1894–1965)

Biography:

Born in Kherson. Sharett was the second Prime Minister of Israel and one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. His diplomatic efforts played a key role in strengthening the young Jewish state.

Banknote:

Sharett is depicted on the 20 shekel bill from the 1970s. The banknote also depicts the attributes of diplomatic work: documents and a pen, symbolizing his contribution to Israel's foreign relations.

6. Golda Meir (1898–1978)

Biography:

Born in Kyiv. Golda Meir became Israel's first female prime minister. Her strong leadership during difficult periods, including the Yom Kippur War, brought her worldwide fame.

Banknote:

Golda Meir's portrait can be seen on the 10 shekel banknote of 1973. In the background are images symbolizing her political activities, such as government meetings.

7. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (1884–1963)

Biography:

Born in Poltava. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi became the second President of Israel. He is known as a historian and researcher of the Jewish Diaspora.

Banknote:

His portrait appears on the 100 shekel banknote of the 1980s. The banknote also features illustrations reflecting Ben-Zvi's cultural explorations.

8. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922)

Biography:

Born in Luzhki (now Belarus, formerly part of the Russian Empire). Ben Yehuda was the founder of modern Hebrew and the author of the first Hebrew dictionary.

Banknote:

His image adorns the 50 shekel note from the 1970s. In the background are pages of a dictionary and fragments of Ben Yehuda's manuscripts.

Conclusion

Eight great people born on the territory of Ukraine left an indelible mark on the history of Israel. Their images on banknotes are not only a sign of recognition, but also a reminder of how closely the destinies of the two peoples are connected. This unique fact indicates that the contribution of Ukrainian Jews to the development of Israel was and remains significant.

Read more on the website NAnews – Israel Newsto be aware of historical facts that unite our countries.

Based on site materials Ukrainian-Jewish Zustrich.

More read in our section “Jews from Ukraine“.

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The International Police Association (IPA), uniting law enforcement officers from more than 70 countries, awarded its medal to an officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the call sign “Hasid”.

This was reported by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine (FJCU) and the publication JewishNews on November 22, 2025.
The IPA decision emphasizes that the award was given for high professionalism, courage, and a special contribution to the defense of Ukraine.

For the Jewish community, this decision was significant: for the first time in a long time, a representative of Ukraine with Jewish heritage receives an international professional award specifically as a combat officer of the active army.

Who is “Hasid”: collected facts from open sources

There is little information about “Hasid” in the public domain — he consciously maintains anonymity. However, over the past years, his name (or rather, call sign) has repeatedly appeared in Ukrainian media and social networks.

Instructor and intelligence officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces

In a report by Informator it is stated:

• he does not show his face, his name is not disclosed — this is stated directly;

• serves as an instructor on the front line;

• trains infantry, mechanized units, and intelligence personnel;

• has been working since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, often in areas of active combat.

Commanders commenting on his work noted that thousands of servicemen have gone through his training — social networks mention the figure “more than 8,000 students”.

Jewish by origin and a person of faith

All Ukrainian and Jewish sources emphasize that “Hasid” is —

• Jewish by nationality,

• a person of religious views,

• motivating fighters with spiritual values and philosophy that he himself shares.

One of the meanings he quotes: “defending Ukraine is also about the light that must overcome darkness”.

The phrase “about the light that must overcome darkness” is a direct part of the Hasidic tradition, where light is always seen as a force that naturally dispels darkness. Such an image is found in the teachings of Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, and the Alter Rebbe and is one of the central Hasidic principles.

The image that society sees

In Ukrainian social networks, “Hasid” is described as:

• a principled instructor,

• a strict but fair commander,

• an officer who combines professional training with a personal moral stance.

What remains unknown

Full name, rank, unit, locations — are not published.
Some hostile resources spread an unverified version of “service in the Israeli special forces”, but there is no confirmation of this. Ukrainian official sources have not made such statements.

What video materials about “Hasid” show: documentary sources

1. Video from January 3, 2023 (project “Finding Answers with Inna Zolotukhina”)

This is one of the earliest confirmed appearances of “Hasid” in the media — a report from a combat company training.

The video directly states:

• “Hasid” trains Ukrainian fighters from various units from the first days of the war, and does so exclusively on a volunteer basis.

• He introduces himself as:
  “I am Jewish by nationality and have extensive experience serving in special units of Ukraine and Israel”.

• He emphasizes that he considers it his duty to pass on combat experience:
  “This is how I save their lives. And as Jews say: ‘Save a life — save the whole world'”.

In the same video, fighters of the “Black Raven” company talk about heavy battles in the Chernobyl zone, the importance of constant training, and how the instructor helps cope with combat stress:

• “When you sit in a trench under fire for three days and don’t see the enemy — the instructor helps you learn to keep a cool head”.

• “If you don’t train — you can lose vigilance. In war, mistakes cost lives”.

This video shows “Hasid” as a combat instructor who combines professional training with psychological support for fighters.

2. Video from August 31, 2025: “Who is Hasid?”

This is a later and more systematic video material that gathers information about him into a coherent portrait.

The video states:

• “Hasid” personally trained over 8,000 elite Ukrainian fighters.

• Has experience serving in special units of the National Guard of Ukraine.

• Holds international certification in Israeli training centers.

• Uses his own methods based on real combat experience.

• Follows the principle:
  “Weapons are just a tool, it’s the person who fights”.

• Considers his main reward the moment,
  when a soldier returns home safe and sound.

• His faith in the Almighty is separately emphasized, which helps maintain inner resilience in wartime conditions.

This video shows “Hasid” as a systematic, recognizable, and one of the most effective Ukrainian instructors of the modern war.

What Russian propaganda press wrote about “Hasid”

Russian occupation media and related resources mentioned “Hasid” several times, but exclusively in a manipulative and speculative manner. The main thesis they promoted was the version that the Ukrainian Armed Forces instructor is allegedly a “former Israeli special forces operative”. Such statements appeared on several Russian sites after the release of Ukrainian video materials about the training of servicemen, where “Hasid” was featured.

Russian resources used the same video from the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, interpreting it in a propagandistic manner, adding accusations, non-existent details, and attempts to present “Hasid” as a “foreign mercenary”. This is a typical tactic of Russian disinformation: distorting facts, imagining non-existent biographies, and forming the image of an “external enemy” to discredit Ukrainian volunteers, instructors, and officers.

What is the IPA and why does it award military personnel

The International Police Association is the oldest and largest professional organization of law enforcement officers in the world.

Founded in 1950, today it has representations in more than 70 countries.
The goal of the IPA is to promote international cooperation, law and order, professional exchange, and support for colleagues working in risky conditions.

Why the IPA awards

The IPA periodically awards

• medals for bravery,

• badges for service to society,

• distinctions for contribution to safety and protection of citizens.

In peacetime, awards are more often received by the police — but during war, the association separately recognizes people who demonstrate a high level of professionalism in combat conditions, especially when it comes to protecting the population, training personnel, or saving lives.

Awarding the Ukrainian Armed Forces officer is precisely such a case.

Ukrainian Jews continue to defend their country

The story of “Hasid” is not only a personal recognition. It is a marker of a phenomenon that we at NAnovosti regularly write about:
the Jewish community of Ukraine is not a bystander in the war, but a participant.

• Jewish military personnel serve in infantry, intelligence, and border troops.

• Rabbis of the volunteer movement coordinate humanitarian and spiritual support on the front.

• Thousands of Ukrainian Jews participate in the defense of the country as servicemen, medics, volunteers, engineers.

“Hasid” has become one of the symbols of this participation: a person who combines Jewish identity, professional military training, and real combat service.

His award is a reminder to the world:
Jews of Ukraine defend their homeland just like all other citizens of the country.

…
NAnovosti News of Israel Nikk.Agency November 24, 2025.
…

In the interview, she talked about her unique mission in Ukraine, the challenges of war, the promotion of Israeli culture, and personal experiences.

Regina Shafir is the wife of the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky. Their children serve in the Israel Defense Forces, highlighting their connection to both countries.

Despite difficult circumstances, she continues to actively strengthen cultural ties between Israel and Ukraine by organizing lectures, exhibitions, and other events.

Painting Bomb Shelters and Working During the War

One of the most emotional moments of the interview was related to a project implemented by Regina Shafir and her colleague Zoya Sever. In November 2024, the artists transformed the bomb shelter of the children’s hospital “Okhmatdet” in Kyiv, turning it into a bright and cozy space.

We wrote about this – “Israeli Artists Transformed a Bomb Shelter in Kyiv’s Children’s Hospital ‘Okhmatdet’: Art for Children During the War”

“We wanted to give children the opportunity to escape, even in such difficult conditions. Art helps to cope with anxiety and fear,” shared Regina.

Israeli Culture in Ukraine

Despite challenging times, Regina actively works on promoting Israeli culture. In the interview, she detailed the “Month of Israeli Series” held in Ukraine at the end of 2024.

“Israeli culture is unique in its sentimentality. Even military and dramatic plots always touch the depths of the soul,” she noted.

Also discussed were:

• The role of new immigrants in cultural diplomacy.
• The complexities of interaction between Israeli and Ukrainian cultural environments.

Criticism of Israel and Personal Experiences

Regina openly expressed her views on the criticism directed at Israel by Ukrainians, emphasizing the importance of dialogue and mutual understanding.

A particularly touching moment was when Regina talked about her sons serving in the IDF, participating in military actions. “Death has become too close. It makes you appreciate every moment of life,” she shared.

Art and Public Opinion

An important part of the interview was Regina’s reflections on art in wartime conditions and the changing perception of the artist by society. She raised topics such as:

• Confronting public opinion.
• The impact of artificial intelligence on creativity.
• Time management and work on the cartoon “Hatul Tov.”

“An artist remains relevant always because art is a reflection of life and history,” emphasized Shafir.

Regina Shafir’s Cartoons

Regina detailed her cartoons, including works that address important social and cultural themes. Among the mentioned projects are her blog and animations that have already gained popularity in Israel and beyond.

Personal Notes: Life on the Move and the Inner Child

The interview concluded with light and heartfelt topics. Regina talked about the life of diplomats, her children, and how she manages to maintain her inner child despite all the challenges.

“I feel like a citizen of the world. And this helps me understand others and convey my experiences through art,” she shared.

Conclusion

Regina Shafir is a vivid example of a person who builds bridges between cultures through art, even in difficult times. Her creativity, personal example, and cultural mission strengthen ties between Israel and Ukraine.

You can learn more about Regina’s cartoons and her projects on her channel: https://www.youtube.com/@regishafir

Our website NANews — News of Israel continues to cover stories of people uniting our countries and shares unique examples of cultural interaction.

…

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In Hasidism, they usually talk about courts or dynasties — lines of rebbes, which were most often named after their cities of origin. Over two and a half centuries, there have been many such lines: modern lists include dozens and hundreds of names, not a single canonical register. Therefore, when it comes to “37 main,” it is more correct to understand this as a conditional list of the most notable historical houses, rather than a definitive list that everyone equally recognizes.

Jews from Ukraine: Ukraine as the homeland of Hasidism – 37 main dynasties and their Ukrainian roots

The Ukrainian cradle of Hasidism and why there is a debate around the number “37”

The founder of Hasidism, Israel ben Eliezer, better known as Baal Shem Tov (circa 1700–1760), was associated with Podolia and Medzhybizh. After his death, the movement was systematized by Dov-Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch (died in 1772), and his disciples spread the new religious impulse across Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. It was from here that large family dynasties later grew — the Chernobyl, Ruzhin, Kosov-Vizhnitz, Breslov, and others.

Therefore, the thesis that Ukraine is one of the main historical homelands of Hasidism is quite justified.

The fact is that the list of exactly 37 “main” dynasties is not a universally accepted scientific standard: old Jewish encyclopedias highlighted several key lines like Lubavitch, Chernobyl, Ruzhin-Sadigura, Lublin, and Kotzk, while modern reference books show a much more complex picture with many branches and offshoots.

Nevertheless, if we take a working list of the 37 most notable lines, the Ukrainian presence is indeed enormous. This circle usually includes dynasties that originated in Belz, Boyan, Breslov, Vizhnitz, Zvyagel, Makhnovka, Mukachevo, Nadvorna, Rakhmastrivka, Savran, Sadigura, Skvira, Skole, Chernobyl, as well as historical centers of Berdichev and Medzhybizh. Many of them, after the Holocaust and subsequent migrations, moved their living centers to Israel and the USA — primarily to Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Brooklyn, Monsey, Kiryas Joel, and New Square.

CHABAD: a separate line with a very strong Ukrainian connection

CHABAD-Lubavitch is usually not considered a Ukrainian dynasty in the narrow geographical sense, because its historical centers are primarily associated with Lyady and Lubavitch. The founder of the movement was Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), who created a special intellectual branch of Hasidism at the end of the 18th century; the name CHABAD itself comes from the words Chochma, Bina, Da’at.

But without CHABAD, the history of Ukrainian Hasidism would be incomplete. Shneur Zalman was a disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch, which means the spiritual roots of the movement are directly connected with the Ukrainian environment, where early Hasidism received powerful development. Moreover, the founder of CHABAD himself is buried in Hadiach, in the Poltava region of Ukraine, and this place remains a point of pilgrimage.

here’s something interesting about this – “A “Cohen Bridge” was built in Ukraine for $1,000,000: in Hadiach, the CHABAD shrine was made accessible to the descendants of ancient priests — what it is and for what purpose”

In the 20th century, CHABAD turned into a global movement with its main living center in New York and a wide network of communities in Israel, the USA, Europe, and the countries of the former USSR. Therefore, in an article about the Hasidic dynasties of Ukraine, it is logical to highlight CHABAD separately: not as a Ukrainian dynasty by place of origin, but as a world movement closely connected with Ukraine spiritually and historically.

Ukrainian dynasties: from Podolia and Volhynia to Bnei Brak and New York

The earliest center of memory remains Medzhybizh — the city of Baal Shem Tov. Medzhybizh did not become a separate largest modern mass dynasty, but symbolically it is one of the main points of the entire Hasidic history. Berdichev is associated with the name of Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (1740–1810), one of the most famous early righteous men of Hasidism. This is also more of a historical center and spiritual name than the largest modern court.

The Breslov dynasty, or Breslov, is associated with Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810), the great-grandson of Baal Shem Tov. Its peculiarity is that after the death of Rabbi Nachman, no new continuous line of rebbes arose in the classical sense, but the movement did not disappear: on the contrary, it lives through his books, the teaching of personal prayer, and the famous pilgrimage to Uman. In the 21st century, Breslov is a global network of communities, especially noticeable in Israel and among pilgrims who annually come to Ukraine.

The Chernobyl dynasty is one of the most important overall. It was founded by Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (circa 1730–1797), a disciple of both Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezeritch. It was from the Chernobyl house that a whole cluster of separate lines emerged: Skver, Rakhmastrivka, Tolna, Trisk, as well as genealogically related branches of Makhnovka. This is one of the main examples of how one Ukrainian dynasty turned into a whole family of world courts.

From the Chernobyl circle grew the Skver dynasty — today it is especially known for its closed community in New Square, New York. Rakhmastrivka originates from Rakhmastrivka and now has centers in Jerusalem and Brooklyn. Tolna comes from Talne, and Trisk — from Turisk in Volhynia. Makhnovka, originating from Makhnovka, today has its headquarters in Bnei Brak and remains a lively, notable line with thousands of families.

No less influential was the house of Ruzhin. It was founded by Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhin (1796–1850), and it was this line that gave part of the Hasidic world the very “royal” style of the court. From the Ruzhin house came Boyan, Sadigura, Chortkov, Husiatyn, and other branches. The Boyan dynasty, formed in the 19th century, is today firmly associated with Jerusalem. The Sadigura line, originating from Bukovina, was the most important force in the region before the Holocaust, and today its continuation is also primarily associated with Israel.

The Vizhnitz dynasty originated in Bukovina. It is associated with Menachem Mendel Hager (1830–1884), and the line itself grew out of an earlier Kosov tradition. Today, Vizhnitz is one of the largest and most influential courts in Israel, with a strong presence in Bnei Brak, Jerusalem, and American communities. Next to it stands Nadvorna, founded by Mordechai Leifer (1835–1894) in Nadvorna; now it is not just one center, but a whole network of branches, especially noticeable in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem. Zvil, originating from Zvyagel, is not large in numbers, but remains a very respected name in Jerusalem.

The Ukrainian space is also associated with Belz, Mukachevo, Savran, and Skole. The Belz dynasty was founded by Shalom Rokeach (1779–1855) at the beginning of the 19th century, and today it is one of the largest Hasidic courts in the world, restored after the Holocaust in Israel. Munkacs / Mukachevo is associated with strict Carpathian traditionalism. Savran is an old Podolian line, and Skole today more often appears in international lists under the form Skole/Skolye, which is important for historical accuracy.

In the middle of this whole story, it is especially noticeable that NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency approaches the topic not as a museum exotic, but as a living bridge between Ukraine and Israel. Because for the Israeli audience, this is not an abstract history of Eastern Europe: a significant part of today’s centers of Ukrainian-origin dynasties is located precisely in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, and the pilgrimage to Uman, the memory of Chernobyl, Belz, Sadigura, and Vizhnitz have long become part of the modern Jewish religious world.

All 37 notable dynasties: names, dates, origins, and where their centers are now

If you compile a working list of the 37 most famous lines, it is more convenient to divide it into several large groups.

The first is the earliest system-forming centers: the circle of Baal Shem Tov in Medzhybizh, the school of the Maggid of Mezeritch, early Karlin-Stolin with Aaron of Karlin (1736–1772), Lubavitch/Chabad, founded by Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), as well as Polish intellectual lines Lublin, Pshiskha, and Kotzk. They are not always the most numerous today, but without them, it is impossible to understand how Hasidism turned from a spiritual movement into a system of hereditary courts. Chabad today is a global network with a center in New York; Karlin-Stolin maintains strong positions in Israel and the USA; Kotzk and Lublin live more as lines of influence in other dynasties.

The second large group is the Ukrainian-Bukovinian-Volhynian belt, which makes Ukraine so important in Hasidic history. This includes Berdichev, Medzhybizh, Breslov, Chernobyl, Skver, Rakhmastrivka, Tolna, Trisk, Ruzhin, Boyan, Sadigura, Vizhnitz, Kosov, Nadvorna, Makhnovka, Zvil, Belz, Mukachevo, Savran, Skole, and related lines. It is here that you can see how from the towns and villages of present-day Ukraine grew courts that today live in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Brooklyn, Monsey, London, and Antwerp.

The third group is Polish, Galician, Hungarian, and post-war world dynasties. Here, at the forefront are Ger, founded by Yitzchak Meir Alter (1798–1866), Alexander, Bobov, Sanz, Klausenburg, Sighet, Satmar, Pupa, Tosh, Modzitz, Radzyn-Izbica, Biala, Amshinov, as well as Jerusalem anti-Zionist circles like Shomer Emunim, Toldos Aharon, and Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok. There is already less Ukrainian origin here, but these lines determine the modern numbers and political-religious weight of the Hasidic world. Satmar, for example, formed as a separate force under Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), was restored in New York after the war and is today considered one of the largest Hasidic groups in the world. Ger is now one of the largest courts in Israel. Bobov and Klausenburg are especially noticeable in the USA and Israel.

A brief guide to the dynasties and their current status

• Chabad-Lubavitch — late 18th century, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, today a world center in New York.
• Breslov — turn of the 18th–19th centuries, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the strongest center of memory — Uman, and living communities are especially noticeable in Israel.
• Belz — early 19th century, Shalom Rokeach, today the largest center in Jerusalem.
• Chernobyl — 18th century, Menachem Nachum Twersky, continues through many branches.
• Skver — Ukrainian origin, modern center in New Square, New York.
• Rakhmastrivka — Ukrainian branch, centers in Jerusalem and Brooklyn.
• Tolna and Trisk — old Volhynian lines, preserved as smaller but living branches.
• Ruzhin — mid-19th century, Israel Friedman, gave rise to the entire “house of Ruzhin”.
• Boyan — one of the Ruzhin branches, historically Bukovina, today center in Jerusalem.
• Sadigura — also a Ruzhin line, today primarily associated with Israel.
• Vizhnitz — 19th century, Hagers, one of the largest Israeli courts in Bnei Brak.
• Nadvorna — 19th century, Leifers, today a network of branches in Israel.
• Makhnovka — Ukrainian line, modern center in Bnei Brak.
• Zvil — historical Ukrainian court, especially respected in Jerusalem.
• Mukachevo — Carpathian line, played a significant role in Hungarian-Carpathian Hasidism.
• Savran — old Podolian line, today small but historically significant.
• Kosov — ancestor for Vizhnitz, Ukrainian by origin line.
• Ger — Polish dynasty, today one of the most influential courts in Israel.
• Alexander — very large Polish dynasty before the Holocaust, then restored.
• Bobov — Galician line, strong in Brooklyn.
• Sanz — 19th century, Chaim Halberstam, gave many offshoots.
• Klausenburg — post-war restoration, noticeable in Netanya and the USA.
• Sighet — important Hungarian-Romanian line, ancestor for Satmar.
• Satmar — largest anti-Zionist dynasty with centers in New York and Israel.
• Pupa, Tosh, Modzitz, Radzyn-Izbica, Biala, Amshinov — smaller but stable lines with centers mainly in Israel and North America.
• Shomer Emunim, Toldos Aharon, Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok — already largely Jerusalem dynastic circles, defining the appearance of the radically conservative part of the Haredim.

Why this history is important for Israel right now

For the Israeli reader, the history of the Hasidic dynasties of Ukraine is not just a story about the past.

It is an explanation of why Ukrainian cities and towns occupy such a place in the religious memory of Israel, why Uman gathers pilgrims annually, why the names Belz, Vizhnitz, Boyan, or Satmar are heard in the Knesset, in the religious press, in debates about the state, and in the everyday life of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Historical Ukraine did not give Hasidism a periphery, but one of its central foundations.

And if you remove the controversial number “37” as too rigid a formula, the picture becomes even stronger. Ukraine was not just one of the sites, but a space where Hasidism took shape as a mass movement, and then gave rise to entire families of dynasties, whose living centers are now located in Israel and the USA. From Medzhybizh and Breslov to Bnei Brak and Brooklyn — this is one long historical line that remains part of the Jewish world today.

The history of Ukraine and the Jews: why the conversation about Hasidism cannot be separated from the history of the country itself

The history of the Jews on the lands of present-day Ukraine began long before the appearance of Hasidism.

Encyclopedic sources indicate that Jewish settlements existed here even in ancient times — in Crimea and in the Greek colonies of the northern Black Sea coast. Later, Jewish life developed in the cities and towns of different historical eras — from Kievan Rus and the Lithuanian-Polish period to the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary.

Jewish life became especially noticeable in the early modern period, when on Ukrainian lands the very world of shtetls, markets, fairs, crafts, and religious scholarship was forming, which would later be called shtetl. It was in this environment that the human and cultural landscape was formed, from which both the Hasidic courts and the powerful tradition of Eastern European Jewry in general emerged.

The shtetl was one of the key forms of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and the Ukrainian waves of pogroms in the 20th century and then the Holocaust became a catastrophe for this world.

At the same time, the history of the relationship between the Jews and the Ukrainian lands was never simple or linear.

There were periods of growth, trade, religious flourishing, and cultural coexistence, but there were also severe catastrophes. One of the early tragedies was the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1649, during which many Jewish communities in Ukraine were destroyed or devastated; this is recorded in reference articles on Podolia and in historical descriptions of individual cities.

And yet, after these upheavals, Jewish life on Ukrainian lands did not disappear, but began to grow again.

By the 18th century, there was already a dense network of communities here, and it was against this background that Hasidism arose. Hasidism became exceptionally popular precisely in Ukraine and in the first decades covered most of the traditional Jewish population of this region. In other words, Ukraine was not the periphery of this process, but one of its central stages.

In the 19th century, the significance of Ukrainian lands for the Jewish world was colossal. By the end of the 19th century, more than a quarter of the entire Jewish population of the world lived on ethnic Ukrainian territory. This means that the conversation about the history of Jews in Ukraine is not a narrow regional topic, but part of world Jewish history.

That is why names like Berdichev, Uman, Belz, Chernobyl, Breslov, Vizhnitz, or Sadigura still resonate far beyond Ukraine itself.

But the 20th century brought a new blow.

Waves of violence, civil war, pogroms of 1905 and especially 1918–1921 hit the Jewish communities of Ukraine hard. Then the Nazi occupation turned a significant part of this history into a history of destruction.

After the Holocaust and the Soviet period, Jewish life on Ukrainian lands could no longer return to its former scale. Many centers were destroyed, many families emigrated, religious life was under pressure for decades. But the memory did not disappear.

After the collapse of the USSR, in independent Ukraine, the revival of community, cultural, and religious life began; by the end of the 1990s, hundreds of Jewish organizations and community structures were operating in the country.

That is why the history of Jews in Ukraine is not only a history of tragedies. It is a history of deep rootedness, religious creativity, trade, the Yiddish language, shtetl civilization, pilgrimage, Hasidic dynasties, and then the severe ruptures caused by the violence of the 20th century.

For the Israeli audience, this is especially important: many lines that today live in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Safed, Brooklyn, or Monsey trace their origins to the cities and towns of present-day Ukraine. In this sense, the connection between Ukraine and the Jewish world is not a museum topic, but a living part of modern Jewish memory.

Which cities in Ukraine today remain the main points of Hasidic life

If we talk not about old names on the map, but about real modern presence, then in Ukraine today we can highlight several main points of Hasidic life, memory, and pilgrimage.

In the first place, undoubtedly, is Uman. It is here that the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov is located, and the city remains the main center of Breslov pilgrimage. In 2025, Ukraine officially recognized the grave of Rabbi Nachman in Uman as a national heritage site, and the city continues to receive tens of thousands of pilgrims, primarily on Rosh Hashanah.

A separate place is occupied by Hadiach in the Poltava region. For CHABAD, this is one of the most important points on the map of Ukraine, because it is there that Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of CHABAD-Lubavitch, is buried. Hadiach remains a place of pilgrimage and a symbolic connection of CHABAD with Ukrainian land.

If we talk about active community life, then important cities remain Kyiv, Dnipro, Odessa, Chernivtsi, and Kharkiv, where Jewish religious centers and structures continue to operate, including those associated with Hasidic and Chabad traditions. The European Jewish Congress directly notes the continued existence of Jewish communities in Ukraine, despite the war and migration.

At the same time, it is necessary to understand the difference between a historical center of a dynasty and a modern Hasidic court. Cities like Belz, Breslov, Chernobyl, Vizhnitz, Nadvorna, Skvira, Rakhmastrivka, Zvyagel, Mukachevo, and Skole remain extremely important as places of origin of dynasties and historical memory, but the main active dynastic headquarters of these lines today are mostly located in Israel and the USA. Therefore, the modern map of Hasidic Ukraine is primarily Uman, Hadiach, and major cities with living communities, rather than the return of old courts in their full classical form.

Read more in our regular section “Jews from Ukraine“.

Date of editorial review: August 4, 2026.

When search engines and AI assistants can summarize an article, list services, or compile standard recommendations in seconds, it becomes increasingly difficult for businesses to stand out solely through informational text. A machine can quickly provide an address, price, list of procedures, or main product features. But it cannot replace real project photos, the voice of a specific specialist, a live presentation, a curated selection of sources by the author, and verified practical experience.

Therefore, in the fifteenth part of the series, we are not just looking at another set of sites for registration. We are interested in another question: can Imgur, Surf.social, Raindrop, 500px, Pixiv, Pexels, Padlet, Audiomack, Spreaker, and Podster help small businesses in Israel showcase the human origin of their content — and where an external page remains just an empty card.

The material is based on open pages of the project NANews — Israel News, official reference materials of the platforms themselves, and an editorial review of their current state. This is not a paid recommendation of services and not a promise of growth in Google rankings.

What the editorial team checked on their own example

NANews created or designed pages on several visual, collection, and audio platforms. Such an experiment allows evaluating services not only by advertising descriptions but also by practical questions: what will a person see when they open the project’s external profile.

The review on August 4, 2026, showed varied results.

• The public collection Raindrop already contains 46 bookmarks and indeed works as a manually curated showcase of materials.
• The Pexels profile is set up, but at the time of review, it did not yet have published photos or videos.
• The Spreaker page exists, but the platform showed a lack of active episodes.
• On Audiomack, the project’s profile is placed in the podcast category, and audio materials are available.
• Some pages, including Imgur and Surf.social, heavily depend on JavaScript, so their content may be inconvenient for search robots and users with limited script loading.
• Profiles on 500px, Pixiv, Padlet, and Podster create additional points of presence, but their real value depends on regular updates and connection to the main site.

This is an important conclusion for businesses: the mere fact of registration proves nothing. An empty page does not show experience, and ten abandoned accounts may look weaker than two regularly updated profiles.

Imgur: the image must prove something

Imgur allows uploading images and videos, adding titles and descriptions, and public posts can receive community reactions and comments. For businesses, the service can work as an auxiliary visual archive, but it should not be turned into a random dump of pictures.

The page Imgur — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News is considered by the editorial team as an additional point for visual materials, screenshots, illustrations, and image series.

Practical value appears only when the image confirms a real story. For a repair company, this could be a sequence of work stages. For a restaurant — its own kitchen, team, and dish presentation. For a lawyer — not a client photo, but an author’s process diagram, a public document, or an explanatory infographic.

A regular stock photo almost does not create protected value. It can be used by hundreds of other sites, and an AI assistant does not care on which page it is placed.

Surf.social: own feed instead of dependence on one algorithm

Surf.social allows creating thematic feeds from different parts of the social web. One collection can combine sources from social platforms, YouTube, RSS, and podcasts.

The editorial feed Surf.social — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News is needed not as a replacement for the site, but as an additional way to gather materials from multiple channels.

For small businesses in Israel, this can be useful if the company regularly publishes articles, videos, podcasts, and updates in several languages. Instead of sending the client ten separate links, you can prepare one thematic feed.

However, Surf.social depends on external sources. If the original RSS stops updating, the video is deleted, or the profile is closed, the corresponding element may disappear or stop opening. Therefore, the main site should remain the center of the system.

Raindrop: not a catalog of everything, but an editorial selection

Raindrop is designed for saving, organizing, and re-searching materials from the internet. A public page allows turning a separate collection into an accessible selection of links without registration.

In the collection Raindrop — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News at the time of editorial review, there were 46 bookmarks. It includes articles, social media posts, audio, video, and project pages.

It is the editorial selection that creates value here. The reader does not need to search for materials across different platforms: they are offered an already compiled map.

Small businesses can use such a collection for a specific task:

• portfolio of completed projects;
• a selection of publications about the company;
• useful materials for clients;
• a catalog of video instructions;
• a separate collection in Russian, Hebrew, or English;
• a page with documents and answers before a consultation.

But mixing random news, advertising pages, personal bookmarks, and work documents in one collection is not advisable. A public selection should answer one clear question.

500px: photography as proof of work level

500px positions itself as an international community of photographers where you can publish works, receive audience reactions, and offer images for licensing under certain conditions.

The profile 500px — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News can be used as an additional visual gallery of the project.

For most local companies in Israel, this platform should not be the first choice. It makes sense where photography is part of the professional result: real estate, interior design, architecture, tourism, events, food, fashion, culture, or professional shooting.

Weak photography on a professional photographic platform can damage trust. Therefore, there is no need to post everything already published on Facebook there. It is better to choose a small series of your own works, explain the circumstances of the shooting, and link it to a specific service or story.

Pixiv: a platform for author illustrations, not a universal business catalog

Pixiv is a community focused on illustrations, drawings, manga, and other forms of visual creativity. The platform hosts user and official contests, and the main interaction revolves around the authors’ works.

The page Pixiv — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News is suitable for the project only in the part where original illustrations and visual stories are used.

For an ordinary plumber, accountant, or local delivery service, a separate Pixiv profile is unlikely to become a priority. But it can be useful for an illustrator, designer, comic book author, cultural project, publisher, or media that creates its own artistic materials.

Here it is especially important to honestly indicate the origin of the image. An author’s work, editorial illustration, and an image created using a generative system are not the same. The user should understand who created the visual material and what the editorial team is responsible for.

Pexels: an empty profile does not become a portfolio

Pexels operates as a platform for free photos and videos, as well as a community of photographers and videographers who publish their works for a wide audience.

The profile Pexels — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News is already set up and contains a project description. However, as of August 4, 2026, no photos or videos have been published on the page.

We directly indicate this limitation. An empty page cannot be presented as an active visual channel. The next editorial step should be to post a small series of truly original materials with a clear description of their origin.

For small businesses, Pexels makes sense not when the company downloads another free image for the site, but when it has its own photos that can be useful to others: city views, work processes without disclosing personal data, subject shooting, architecture, or cultural events.

Before publishing people, private property, client interiors, or protected objects, it is necessary to check the rights, consents, and platform restrictions. The publicity of a photo does not cancel the responsibility of the business.

Padlet: show not only the result but also the structure of work

Padlet offers visual boards for collecting, organizing, and presenting materials. They can host texts, images, videos, documents, links, and other types of content.

The page Padlet — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News can be used as a thematic board with articles, images, videos, and editorial collections.

For businesses, Padlet is useful where the client needs to see a sequence, not just an advertisement. For example:

• stages of apartment renovation;
• structure of an educational course;
• materials before a seminar;
• event program;
• idea board for a joint project;
• a selection of documents and explanations after a consultation.

At NANews — Israel News, we view the visual board not as a replacement for an article, but as navigation through materials. It helps to see connections, but full explanation, authorship, and fact-checking should remain on the main site.

Audiomack: the author’s voice as a separate source of trust

Audiomack allows authors to upload music and podcasts, work with audio materials, and distribute them through the site and apps.

On the page Audiomack — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News the profile is marked as a podcast project from Haifa. Audio materials are already available on it, so this page differs from a formally created but empty account.

For an expert, the voice can provide what is lost in a short written summary: intonation, doubt, argumentation, personal position, and explanation of complex context.

The audio format may be suitable for:

• a lawyer — to explain the general legal procedure without analyzing a specific case;
• a doctor — for educational material without remote diagnosis;
• an agency — to analyze a marketing tool;
• a teacher — for a short lecture;
• media — for an interview, comment, or audio version of an author’s article.

Simply voicing text from the site with a synthetic voice is not enough. Such a file is easily reproduced by dozens of services and almost does not create human value. The voice of a specific author, who explains where the facts come from and where the boundaries of his conclusion lie, works stronger.

Spreaker: profile exists, but the channel still needs episodes

Spreaker offers tools for creating, hosting, distributing, measuring, and monetizing podcasts. The platform also supports distribution through RSS and external podcast services.

The page Spreaker — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News is set up, but at the time of review, the service did not show active episodes.

This means that the profile cannot yet be considered a full-fledged channel. In the model of the human internet, the platform’s icon is not as important as the published material: who speaks, about what, on what grounds, and why the listener should spend time.

The practical next step for the editorial team is to determine one sustainable format and prepare at least three related episodes. One random file does not create a series, and an empty account does not confirm experience.

Podster: an additional page for audio, but not a replacement for your own archive

Podster describes itself as an international publishing house working with podcasts, audio production, and content publication.

The profile Podster — NANews – Nikk.Agency Israel News can be another point for distributing audio materials and getting acquainted with the project’s episodes.

But businesses should not store the only copy of a recording only on an external service. The original file, description, participant permissions, transcript, and publication date should be kept in their own archive.

For search accessibility, it is useful to place a separate release page on the main site: a brief summary, author name, participants, sources, transcript, and embedded player. Then the audio becomes part of the project’s evidence base, not a file without context.

Which platform suits a specific business

Editorial case NANews: what is already there and what is not yet

Case type: own editorial experiment, not a commercial client case.

The initial task was to create a network of external pages for texts, images, thematic collections, and audio around the main site. At the same time, the editorial team did not equate the number of accounts with real effectiveness.

In the first stage, profiles were created and links to the main project were added. In the second, the filling of individual platforms began. The check showed that the public collection Raindrop already performs the understandable function best. Audiomack contains audio materials. Pexels and Spreaker still need filling, and some interactive platforms are limitedly visible without executing JavaScript.

The result of this stage cannot be described as proven growth in traffic, applications, or positions in Google: such data is not yet available in the considered experiment. The real result is more modest but more useful — the editorial team saw which pages already provide content to the reader and which still only create a formal presence.

The next stage should include:

• publication of a series of original photographs;
• launch of related podcast episodes;
• adding UTM tags to transitions to the main site;
• checking page indexing;
• comparing transitions, listens, and interaction time;
• deleting or freezing profiles for which there is no clear task.

Why this is important specifically for small businesses in Israel

Israeli small businesses often work with several audiences at once. One client reads in Hebrew, another in Russian, English, or Ukrainian. One wants to see photos, another prefers a voice explanation, a third checks Google Maps, and a fourth immediately switches to WhatsApp.

Therefore, the company needs not the maximum number of profiles, but a clear sequence:

1. main site with services, authorship, and contacts;
2. up-to-date card in Google Maps;
3. real reviews and examples of work;
4. one or two external platforms suitable for the business format;
5. measurable transition to a call, application, booking, or message;
6. regular check of information relevance in all languages.

For a local craftsman, an empty Pixiv or Podster will not be more useful than a well-designed Google map. For a photographer or cultural project, the situation is the opposite: a strong author’s gallery can become a separate proof of competence.

Limitations that cannot be hidden

• The presence of an external profile itself does not guarantee growth in search positions.
• Platforms can change rules, rates, interfaces, and feature availability.
• Pages built on JavaScript are not always equally visible to search robots.
• Empty or abandoned profiles can weaken the brand impression.
• Publication of photos of people, objects, and client projects requires checking rights and consents.
• The platform’s own statistics do not always equal the real number of potential clients.
• Without UTM tags and analytics, it cannot be proven that the external profile led to an inquiry.
• Audio without transcription, author, and context is less accessible for search and people with hearing impairments.

Practical plan for 30 days

First, choose no more than two platforms that correspond to the real business format. It makes sense for a photographer to start with 500px or Pexels, for a teacher with Padlet and audio platforms, and for media with Raindrop, Surf.social, and a podcast channel.

Prepare at least three related materials. This can be a series of photos of one project, three short audio analyses, or a thematic board with documents and explanations.

In each profile, specify a unified name, city or geography of work, clear description, main site, and specific next step. The client should understand where to go for an order, booking, or contact.

After a month, check not only views but also transitions, interaction time, messages, and real inquiries. A platform that does not receive regular content and does not perform a clear task should not be kept just for the number of external links.

Conclusion

Imgur, Surf.social, Raindrop, 500px, Pixiv, Pexels, Padlet, Audiomack, Spreaker, and Podster can expand the online presence of small businesses in Israel, but only with their own material and a clear editorial task.

The main value is not in the platform’s name. It appears when a visitor sees a real photo, hears the voice of a specific author, receives a collection compiled by a person, or understands the company’s work sequence.

In an internet filled with automatic summaries and identical advertising texts, businesses need to show the origin of information. Who took the photo? Who speaks in the recording? Who checked the document? What experience is behind the recommendation? What limitations are honestly indicated?

It is the answers to these questions that distinguish a live presence from a dozen formally registered accounts.

Nikk.Agency is engaged in SEO promotion of websites, lead generation, and internet marketing in Israel. The agency works with Google Ads, Google Maps, local promotion, content, websites, and business visibility in AI assistants: Nikk.Agency — website promotion and internet marketing in Israel.

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Roots in Ukraine: Childhood among forests and traditions

Today the name Haim Hazaz (חיים הזז) is known to everyone interested in the history of Israel and Jewish culture. But the beginning of his path is the Ukrainian village of Sydorovychi.

Haim Hazaz (real name – Haim Fishel Feldman) was born in 1898 in the village of Sydorovychi, Kyiv province (now – Vyshhorod district, Kyiv region of Ukraine). This small place was located in the wooded area of Polissya and was a typical Jewish settlement with the dominant role of the traditional community.

His father was a Breslov Hasid and managed a sawmill, so the future writer’s childhood was spent in a small house among dense forests.

In early childhood, Haim studied at a cheder – a Jewish religious school at the synagogue, where he learned Hebrew, Tanakh, the main laws and traditions. Later he received a secular education, possibly at a rural or city school, where he studied languages and the basics of secular subjects in depth.

In everyday life, there was a lot of household communication between the inhabitants. As a rule, people spoke a mixture of Yiddish, Russian, and Ukrainian. For the Jewish population, the main language was Yiddish, and Russian was used in official spheres. Ukrainian was part of the cultural background and was heard around, but was not dominant in the Jewish environment. Little Haim heard Ukrainian speech from childhood, observed the traditions and life of his Ukrainian neighbors.

There is no evidence in academic sources that Haim Hazaz was fluent in Ukrainian or wrote in it. All of Hazaz’s main works were written in Hebrew, which was part of his cultural mission – to revive national literature in the holy language.

In his letters and memoirs, there are no fragments in Ukrainian, except for rare everyday expressions or individual words. Some Ukrainian words or character names may appear in his texts as background details. It can be stated that Hazaz knew well the realities and traditions of the Ukrainian village, as he grew up in this environment. Understanding Ukrainian speech was natural for him, considering his living conditions.

With the onset of revolutionary events and a wave of violence in 1917–1918, Hazaz was forced to leave his native village. He moved to Kyiv, where he tried to continue his studies and start an independent life, but the capital was engulfed in political chaos, a change of authorities and dangers for the Jewish population.

It is known that in Kyiv he worked as a teacher (most likely in a Jewish religious school or privately), and also did odd jobs related to teaching and translations. In Hazaz’s memoirs, it is mentioned that in the years of chaos he had to temporarily engage in various jobs, including helping Jewish intellectuals and the elderly who were left without means of subsistence.

What was happening in Kyiv at that time:

• February – November 1917: Power belonged to the Provisional Government of Russia and gradually to the Central Rada (Ukrainian national government).
• January 1918: Capture of Kyiv by the Bolsheviks (Red Army), then the city was taken by the UNR troops and German-Austrian units (April 1918).
• End of 1918 – early 1919: Hetmanate of Skoropadskyi (with the support of the Germans), then power passed to the Directorate of the UNR.
• February – August 1919: The Bolsheviks returned to Kyiv, then replaced by the UNR troops.
• August 1919: The Volunteer Army (White Army of Denikin) entered Kyiv. It was during this period that some of the largest pogroms were recorded, committed by White units and their accompanying detachments.
• End of 1919 – 1920: The Bolsheviks captured the city, but several times power passed to Polish and Ukrainian troops, then again to the Bolsheviks.

After a series of Jewish pogroms that swept Kyiv and its surroundings in 1919 (Bolsheviks – White Army of Denikin), Hazaz found himself among thousands of refugees wandering between cities in search of safety.

For the next several years he lived and worked in Kharkiv — then a major industrial and cultural center of eastern Ukraine, and also in Crimea. In parallel, Hazaz continued self-education, attended cultural circles and libraries, read a lot, and tried his hand at literature.

In early 1921, when the wave of repression and famine intensified, Haim Hazaz finally decided to leave Ukraine.

Through the Black Sea coast — Sevastopol — he emigrated first to Turkey, then to France, and later to “Palestine”. Thus, before emigration, his entire life and formation took place on the territory of Ukraine: in Sydorovychi, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Crimea and other places that remained forever in his memory and prose.

Modernity: in the Ukrainian village where the father of Yitzhak Rabin and writer Haim Hazaz was born, Putin’s soldiers looted the Israeli flag from the library, presented to the village by the state of Israel

In the spring of 2022, the small Ukrainian village of Sydorovychi, the homeland of Haim Hazaz and also of the father of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, found itself at the center of tragic events. The village was on the path of the invaders on their way to Kyiv – the capital of Ukraine. After passing through the Chernobyl zone, Russian soldiers entered Sydorovychi on February 25. 35 days of brutal occupation began.

In the houses of residents, windows and doors were broken, soldiers took away household appliances, food and everything of any value. Many villagers lived for weeks without electricity or water, hid from shelling and tried to protect their families and neighbors.

The memorial plaque in honor of the Rabin family was moved by local residents to the library, which became a shelter for the only commemorative sign symbolizing the international ties of this village.

A characteristic moment: Russian soldiers, before retreating from the village, stole not only washing machines from the homes of peaceful residents.

Putin’s soldiers stole the Israeli flag from the library, presented to the village during the opening of the memorial plaque.

When the story of the village of Sydorovychi became known to Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky, his reaction was immediate. At the ambassador’s request, the flag of Israel was delivered to the village – to replace the flag stolen by Russian occupiers; medicine was also delivered.

In the liberated Ukrainian village, which gave Israel such outstanding figures, there is once again an Israeli flag.

Russian Pogroms in Ukraine: The Tragedy of the Jewish People

The beginning of the 20th century was marked for the Jews of Ukraine by an unprecedented catastrophe. During the Civil War (1918–1921), there were more than 1,000 Jewish pogroms in Ukraine alone.

Modern research and archives (Encyclopaedia Judaica, Yad Vashem, Henry Abramson, Geoffrey Hosking) emphasize:

“the most massive and brutal pogroms were committed by armies and authorities coming from Russia — primarily Denikin’s White Army, units of the Red Army, and various Russian military administrations.”

The period of August–October 1919 was especially tragic for Kyiv, when the real power in the city was held by the Volunteer Army (White Army) of General Denikin and the Russian military administration. It was at this time that dozens of cases of robbery, eviction, and mass murder of the Jewish population under the control of the Russian authorities were recorded.

Haim Hazaz was a direct witness and victim of this tragedy. In Kyiv, as he later recalled in Paris, he faced a direct order from the Russian authorities to evict an elderly Jewish scholar and destroy his library—and refused to carry it out, realizing that behind this stood a policy of terror and humiliation brought by the Russian military forces. After this, Hazaz was forced to flee south.

Haim Hazaz’s Literary Activity: Ukrainian Motifs, Heritage, Influence

The name Haim Hazaz is an integral part of the history of Hebrew literature and the cultural heritage of Israel. His creative path is closely connected with the fate of Ukrainian Jewry and the era of catastrophic change on this land.

The Ukrainian Theme in Hazaz’s Prose

Most of Hazaz’s early works are inspired by his personal experience of life in Ukraine, memories of the shtetl, the tragedy of pogroms and revolutions, and the history of the Jewish people on Ukrainian soil:

• “In a Forest Settlement” (Beyishuv shel ya’ar, ביישוב של יער, Paris, 1930)
  An autobiographical novel describing the life of a Jewish family of timber traders in the Ukrainian Polissya on the eve of the 1905 revolution. At its heart are the drama of the shtetl, generational conflicts, coexistence with Ukrainian peasants, and the gradual disappearance of the old world.
• “Of This and That” (Mi-ze u-mi-ze, מזה ומזה, 1924)
  A novella in which, through the fates of the characters, the collapse of the familiar order of the town, the anxieties of revolutionary Ukraine, the fear of violence, and uncertainty about the future are depicted. The atmosphere of anxiety and anticipation of disaster is keenly felt.
• “Sketches of Revolution” (Pirkei Mahapeha, פרקי מהפכה, 1924)
  A cycle of stories about revolutionary events in the former Russian Empire, mainly in Ukrainian cities, villages, and towns. The focus is on the fates of ordinary Jews caught between the millstones of history, forced to choose between tradition, revolution, fear, and hope.
• “Shmuel Frankfurter” (Shmuel Frankfurter, שמואל פרנקפורטר, 1925)
  A story about the tragedy of the shtetl against the backdrop of the civil war and pogroms in Ukraine. The hero is a noble idealist who perishes during mass repressions and anarchy. The crisis of Jewish self-identification in a devastated Ukraine is vividly portrayed.
• A number of short stories and miniatures from the late 1920s to early 1930s
  Thematically, they cover images of the Ukrainian town, childhood, fear of pogroms, street life, encounters with Ukrainians, memories of family holidays and tragedies. Examples are the stories “Legend,” “Letter to the Village,” “Farewell.”
• Separate chapters of major works
  Even in later novels (“Yaish,” “The Sermon”), there are recollections of Ukrainian towns, images of refugees, reflections on the lost home, native language, and the past.

Style, Mission, Historical Significance

In Hazaz’s Ukrainian works, the main theme is the collapse of the old world, the pain of loss, and the search for new meaning. Through the fates of ordinary people, he shows the scale of the national catastrophe—and at the same time seeks sources of inner strength for rebirth.

His language is precise, rich in folk expressions, with detailed descriptions of the landscape, everyday life, festive and mourning rituals. Hazaz showed how Jewish-Ukrainian life was inseparable from the very history of Ukraine and why the memory of this is necessary for future generations.

Hazaz’s literary heritage is a mirror of the tragedy and heroism of the Jewish people of Ukraine, their eternal yearning for light even in times of darkness and hardship.

Thanks to Hazaz, the themes of the tragedy of Ukrainian Jews, life on the border of cultures, and the search for national and personal meaning have taken a key place in the Israeli literary canon.

Other Works and Contribution to Literature

• “The Sermon” (Ha-Drasha, 1942) – an inner monologue about Zionism, Jewish fate, and identity. From here comes the famous quote about the transformation of Jewry in the Diaspora.
• “Yaish” (Yaish, 1952–1956) – a novel about the life of Yemeni Jews in Eretz Israel, but with numerous references to the past of Eastern Europe, the experience of Ukrainian towns, and the crisis of tradition.
• “Thou That Dwellest in the Gardens” (Thou That Dwellest in the Gardens, 1960) – a novel about spiritual quests, crisis of faith, the clash of past and future.

Life, Family and the Path of Haim Hazaz in Israel

In the spring of 1931, Haim Hazaz immigrated to “British Palestine” and settled in Jerusalem. For the first sixteen years of life in the new city, he often changed neighborhoods, getting to know different Jewish communities, especially Yemeni immigrants among whom he lived and interacted. This experience had a profound influence on his worldview and creativity.

In Turkey, where Hazaz found himself en route to Palestine, he spent almost two years teaching Hebrew to young Zionist Jews and actively participated in educational and outreach programs.

In Paris, where he moved in 1923, Hazaz became famous as a Jewish writer, published his first major works, and joined the Jewish literary circle. There he had a union with the poetess Yocheved Bat-Miriam; their son Naum was born in Paris in 1928. The couple broke up in 1929, when Bat-Miriam moved to Palestine.

In 1951, Hazaz married Aviva Kushnir (née Ginzburg-Peleg, 1927–2019)—an intellectual, companion, and faithful assistant to whom he bequeathed all his unpublished manuscripts. She became his right hand in creative and public work.

In Jerusalem, Hazaz devoted himself to literature, became one of the main authors of the “Am Oved” publishing house—his collected works, published in 1942 (“Rekhaim Shvurim”), became one of the first landmark publications of the new publishing house. Later, most of his books were also published there. In 1970, a complete 12-volume collection of Hazaz’s works was published.

Hazaz mastered all styles of Hebrew—from biblical and Talmudic to medieval and modern—which made his prose complex, rich, and profound. In the 1950s–60s, he was called Israel’s leading Jewish writer, even a rival to Nobel laureate Shmuel Agnon.

Haim Hazaz died on March 24, 1973, in Jerusalem of a heart attack. He was buried in the old cemetery on the Mount of Olives—next to the greatest figures in Israeli history.

Memory and Recognition: How Hazaz is Honored Today

In his native Sydorovychi, a memorial plaque in honor of another famous native—Nehemiah Rabichev (the father of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin)—appeared in 2010, and Hazaz’s name was included in the list of prominent Jews of this region.

Haim Hazaz is not just a classic of Hebrew literature; he has become a symbol of national recognition and cultural continuity.

• In 1953, he became the first-ever laureate of the Israel Prize for Literature, established by the state to honor outstanding cultural figures. This event became a symbol of the new nation’s admiration over the past of the Jews of the Diaspora.
• Previously, he had already received the Bialik Prize—the first in 1942, the second in 1970. This award was given for his contribution to the development of progressive Jewish literature and culture.
• His achievements in literature and cultural identity made him an authority not only in Israel, but also in the Jewish diaspora.

Thanks to these awards, Hazaz received the status of a national literary symbol and continues to inspire generations of readers, writers, and scholars to dialogue with the past and search for cultural roots.

Haim Hazaz in the Cultural and Literary Memory of Israel

In Israel itself, the memory of Haim Hazaz is alive and institutionalized at the state and public levels. His name is invariably included in the list of classics of Hebrew literature.

This is how Hazaz is honored in Israel:

• Haim Hazaz Prize: In Jerusalem, there is a special fund and literary prize named after Haim Hazaz, established by the city municipality. It is awarded annually to outstanding writers and researchers who have contributed to the development of Hebrew and Israeli literature. This award is a symbol of generational continuity.
• Haim Hazaz Archive: In Jerusalem, at the Givat Ram Institute, there is a public archive named after Hazaz, where his manuscripts, letters, drafts, and personal belongings are collected. This place is one of the research centers for studying the history and literature of Israel.
• Editions and reissues: His works are regularly republished by the largest Israeli publishers and are included in school and university programs. In 2008, for the 110th anniversary of Hazaz’s birth, a complete collection of his works was published, and leading Israeli newspapers devoted special issues to this event.
• Streets and objects: In cities of Israel, including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, there are streets and squares named after Haim Hazaz (for example, רחוב חיים הזז—Haim Hazaz Street in Jerusalem).
• Commemorative evenings and exhibitions: Major museums and cultural centers of the country—the Jewish National and University Library Archive, the Diaspora Museum, municipal libraries—regularly hold memorial evenings, literary readings, and exhibitions dedicated to the life and work of Hazaz.
• School heritage: His texts are included in the list of mandatory literature for study in Israeli schools, and Hazaz’s image is presented as an example of a “man of the era,” combining the traditions of Eastern Europe with the values of modern Israel.
• Literary conferences: Scientific conferences devoted to Hebrew literature include special sections on Hazaz’s work. His texts are analyzed not only by philologists, but also by historians, cultural scholars, and researchers of Jewish identity.

Today in Israel, the name Haim Hazaz is not just part of the literary canon, but also a cultural brand, a symbol of generational connection and a living bridge between the past and present of the Jewish people.

Dialogue of Peoples: The Lesson of Haim Hazaz for Modernity

Today in Israel, according to the Ukrainian embassy, more than 500,000 immigrants from Ukraine and their descendants live there—this is the second largest group of repatriates. Their contribution to Israeli science, economy, culture, and literature is colossal. The story of Hazaz is proof that true Jewish identity is born not in rupture, but in the dialogue of cultures.

The website NAnews — News of Israel continues to tell the stories of Ukrainian Jews who built a new life in the Land of Israel.

Conclusions: Why Hazaz’s Fate is Not Only a Personal Story

• Haim Hazaz is a symbol of a generation that experienced Russian pogroms and built Israel.
• His path from a Ukrainian village to the first Israeli literary prize is an example of the strength of Jewish identity.
• Only an honest conversation about the past—about the role of Russian armies and authorities in the catastrophe—makes the dialogue between Ukraine and Israel real.
• The memory of him is part of the common cultural code for the Jews of Israel and Ukraine.

The section “Jews from Ukraine” on the NAnews website tells about outstanding Jews whose roots are connected with Ukraine, but whose life and contribution have become an important part of the history of Israel and the world.

It publishes essays, biographies, and stories of well-known and little-known personalities—from writers and scientists to modern heroes—to show how Jewish and Ukrainian destinies intertwine and form a cultural bridge between the two countries.

#jewsfromukraine

An Israeli who chose Ukraine not with words, but with service

On April 30, 2026, the 24th Separate Assault Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “Aidar” published a video interview with Grigory Pivovarov — a staff sergeant, fighter with the call sign “Jew” and a citizen of Israel who has been fighting for Ukraine since 2014.

The video is titled: “Jew. About Israel, the IDF, Maidan, citizenship, and the war since 2014“.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_hX2mA-f8

This is not just a story of a foreigner who found himself in the Ukrainian war. It is the story of a person who went through the Maidan, the volunteer movement, the front, injuries, command positions, and still speaks of Ukraine as his home.

At the beginning of the interview, Grigory Pivovarov introduces himself directly: his name is Grigory, call sign — “Jew”, he is a fighter of the “Aidar” regiment, and he is a foreigner, a citizen of Israel, who has been fighting for Ukraine’s independence since 2014.

For the Israeli audience, this story is especially important. It intersects several lines at once: the experience of the IDF, Jewish identity, the Ukrainian war for freedom, Russian aggression, and the personal choice of a person who could live in another country but decided to stay with those he calls brothers.

From Maidan to “Aidar”: how Grigory Pivovarov’s journey began

According to Pivovarov, his arrival in Ukraine during the Maidan was largely accidental.

Before that, he lived in Barcelona, engaged in club projects and tourism. He was invited to Ukraine by a medic friend who needed strong people for evacuating the wounded. Grigory recalls that his friend explained simply: he was a former Israeli soldier, not afraid of blood, and could help where people capable of acting under pressure were needed.

He arrived in Kyiv in February 2014. He didn’t make it to Mariinsky on February 18, but found himself on the barricades on Khreshchatyk when the APC was burning. After a concussion, he was evacuated along with other participants in the events.

Then came the victory of the Maidan, the student movement, alarming news from Crimea, and the gradual realization that everything was not ending with a change of power. Ukraine was entering a war, although at that time many still did not call it a war in the full sense.

In May 2014, Pivovarov joined “Aidar”. In the interview, he specifies the date: on May 19, 2014, he arrived at the unit. Later there were transitions, legal complexities due to his status as a foreigner, service in other structures, and a return to “Aidar”, where in February 2016 he officially became a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Why exactly “Aidar”

One of the strong moments of the interview is the answer to the question of why he has remained in “Aidar” for so many years.

Pivovarov says that this unit reminds him of the unit where he served in the IDF: people from different walks of life come there, and they are made into strong fighters. According to him, “Aidar” does not chase PR but simply does its job.

This phrase clearly shows the nerve of the entire conversation. For him, the army is not a decoration, not a slogan, and not a place for beautiful photos. It is an environment where it is tested who is next to you, who endures, who returns after injury, and who does not abandon their own.

What is the 24th Separate Assault Regiment “Aidar” and why is this name so important

The 24th Separate Assault Regiment “Aidar” is the 24th Separate Assault Regiment “Aidar”, a combat unit of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

The “Aidar” itself grew out of a volunteer battalion that appeared in 2014 after the Maidan and the beginning of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The name is associated with the Aidar River in the Luhansk region. In Ukrainian military memory, this name has become one of the symbols of the first months of resistance when volunteer formations often covered those sections of the front where the state system was still being rebuilt under the reality of a large war.

The official website of the regiment emphasizes that “Aidar” began its journey in 2014 and has always been a combat unit. Among the values of the regiment are indicated ideology, brotherhood, continuity, internal culture of the fighter, personal responsibility, and result.

This is important for understanding the video itself. Pivovarov’s interview is not a separate biography against the backdrop of war. It is the story of a person who found himself inside a unit with a very strong volunteer tradition.

The official site of “Aidar” also describes the procedure for joining the regiment: application, recruiter call, selection interview, medical examination, document check, contract signing, and start of service. Among the requirements are age, readiness to serve in the army vertical, physical fitness, absence of convictions, and readiness to work in a team.

NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency draws attention to this connection: the story of Grigory Pivovarov shows how the Ukrainian war became a matter not only for the citizens of Ukraine but also for people who consciously chose the side of freedom — not by passport, but by conviction.

How Russia views “Aidar”

In Russia, “Aidar” is viewed extremely hostilely — both at the level of propaganda and at the level of official legal position.

In the Russian version, “Aidar” is called a “national battalion”, “extremists”, and a “terrorist organization”. In December 2023, the FSB included the Ukrainian “Aidar” in the Russian list of terrorist organizations. Before that, the unit had already been recognized in the Russian Federation as extremist and banned.

For Russian propaganda, “Aidar” is one of the symbols of Ukrainian resistance that needs to be demonized. Like “Azov” or “Right Sector”, it is usually shown not as a unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but as “punishers”, “Nazis”, and “militants”. This is how Moscow tries to present the war against Ukraine not as RF aggression, but as a struggle against supposedly “extremists”.

This status is also used by Russian courts. Ukrainian military personnel can be prosecuted simply for serving in “Aidar”. For example, there is a known case of military medic Victoria Tkachenko, whom a Russian court sentenced precisely for serving in a unit recognized by the Russian Federation as “terrorist”.

On the front, “Aidar” is perceived by Russian military and pro-Russian militants as a dangerous and hated enemy. This coincides with what Grigory Pivovarov says in the interview: according to him, for the enemy, “Aidar” is a very scary name, and freed “Aidar” fighters can be “counted on the fingers”.

In short: in Russia, “Aidar” is officially banned, demonized in propaganda, and among Russian military personnel, it is perceived as one of the most hated Ukrainian combat symbols since 2014.

IDF, Israel, and the Ukrainian front

In the interview, there is a separate layer important for readers in Israel. Pivovarov is a citizen of Israel, a former Israeli soldier, a person who knows from the inside what military culture is, responsibility to the unit, and the experience of war with an enemy that uses Soviet and Russian weapons.

He says that his father lives in Israel, is a family doctor, and a captain of medicine in the reserve. He also talks about his younger brother, who served in the IDF, was a paramedic-shooter, and then became the head of the medical service.

In one of the most indicative fragments, Pivovarov connects the Israeli and Ukrainian experience through a common source of threat.

He reminds that the Soviet Union sponsored Israel’s enemies, and modern Russia supports Hamas, Hezbollah, and other forces fighting against Israel. According to him, ATGMs, mortars, rockets, “Grads”, and “Katyushas” have a clear origin in this military chain.

For the Israeli reader, this is not abstract geopolitics. It is an attempt to explain: Ukraine and Israel face different fronts of one big problem — aggressive regimes and their allies who use terror, missile strikes, propaganda, and war against the civilian population.

“My home is Ukraine”

One of the strongest answers in the video is to the question: where is his home.

Pivovarov answers: “My home is Ukraine.”

He further explains why Russian manipulation of the anti-Semitism theme became one of the reasons for his internal resistance. He says he was outraged by stories that Ukrainians are anti-Semites and points to historical facts that Russian propaganda either distorts or completely ignores.

He mentions Ukrainians among the Righteous Among the Nations, talks about the Jewish pages of Ukrainian history, about the connections between the Ukrainian national movement and Zionists, and also recalls Vladimir Jabotinsky and Symon Petliura. In his logic, this is not an academic lecture, but a personal response to Russia’s attempt to steal Ukraine’s historical subjectivity and present Ukrainians as enemies of Jews.

Yes, the Ukrainian-Jewish history is complex. It had tragedies, pain, pogroms, the Holocaust, collaborationism, Soviet lies, and real conflicts of memory.

But that is why such testimonies are important. Pivovarov does not offer a primitive picture. He talks about how Russian propaganda uses anti-Semitism as a tool to poison attitudes towards Ukraine and hide its own aggression.

Injuries, command, and citizenship that is still not there

In the interview, Grigory Pivovarov talks about returning after injuries because he could not leave his brothers. The first injury — because his own pulled him out. The second — because he needed to return. The third — because, in his words, he was ashamed to leave the unit after being appointed platoon commander. He doesn’t even consider another injury serious, although it was recorded.

His path within the army is also indicative: a simple infantryman, grenade launcher, squad leader, chief sergeant of the platoon, platoon commander, acting company commander, and then work in the regiment’s recruitment.

This is the biography of a person who did not come for symbolic participation. He really lived this war.

And against this background, the topic of citizenship sounds especially acute. Pivovarov says that there are awards, ranks, injuries, service since 2014, but there is still no Ukrainian citizenship. He lists his distinctions and does not hide his disappointment: the state he defends has not yet become his state legally.

This is one of the main meanings of the video. Ukraine knows how to accept blood, service, and loyalty. But the bureaucratic system does not always know how to quickly and honestly recognize those who have already proven their belonging to the country by deed.

Appeal to Ukrainians

The final part of the interview is an appeal to Ukrainians who are unsure whether to serve and where exactly to go.

Pivovarov speaks harshly but without theatrics: the enemy does not sleep. He recalls the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Mariupol, Bakhmut, Kurakhovo, Vuhledar — places he saw alive and then saw destroyed. His argument is simple: if people do not want to see this near their homes, the state needs to be defended now.

He urges not to wait until the TCC takes a person, but to choose a unit in advance, contact familiar military personnel, look for those with whom you want to serve, and make a conscious decision.

Separately, he invites to “Aidar”, emphasizing that the unit has retained the spirit of the first volunteer battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and its commanders have gone through real battles, injuries, and the front path.

Why this video is important for Ukraine, Israel, and the Jewish audience

The story of Grigory Pivovarov breaks several propaganda schemes at once.

For years, Russia has been trying to present Ukraine as a country alien to Jews. But before the viewer is a citizen of Israel with the call sign “Jew”, who came to Ukraine, saw the Maidan, went to war, has been serving in a Ukrainian unit since 2014, and says that his home is Ukraine.

Russia tries to portray the Ukrainian army as an artificial construct. But before the viewer is a person who compares the spirit of “Aidar” with what he knows from the IDF: responsibility, camaraderie, different people in one line, commanders with combat experience, and readiness to return to their own.

Russia tries to use the theme of anti-Semitism as a weapon against Ukraine. But before the viewer is a Jew and Israeli who speaks directly about the manipulation of this theme and about how Ukrainian history is much deeper and more complex than Russian clichés.

For Israel, this video is also not secondary. It reminds that Russia’s war against Ukraine and the war of Iran’s terrorist allies against Israel are in the same moral field: it is about the right of a people to live freely, protect their home, and not be destroyed by someone else’s imperial or terrorist will.

Open ending

The video of the 24th Separate Assault Regiment “Aidar” is a presentation not only of one fighter. It is a presentation of choice.

Grigory Pivovarov could have stayed in Israel, Europe, or any other point in his biography. But he found himself in Ukraine, stayed after the Maidan, went through the war since 2014, and continues to speak of this country as home, even without a Ukrainian passport.

Perhaps this is the main question for the state and society: who really becomes Ukrainian — the one who received the document, or the one who has been defending the country for years at the cost of their own health, blood, and life?

The video leaves this question open. But Grigory Pivovarov’s answer has already sounded on the front.

Today, Natan Sharansky remains a good friend of Ukrainians at the level of diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Israel. His clear stance on international support for Ukraine after the start of the large-scale Russian invasion became a call for the Israeli government to decisively condemn the attack on Ukraine. Natan Sharansky firmly emphasized that Israel must unwaveringly stand on the side of the Ukrainians.

Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky (b. 1948) is one of the most prominent human rights activists, a well-known Israeli political figure of Ukrainian-Jewish origin.

In addition, he actively participated in the Jewish movement in the USSR, demonstrations, and protests. In 1977, Natan Sharansky was arrested for anti-Soviet agitation, and the following year he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of espionage for the USA.

Only thanks to numerous petitions from influential world politicians and demonstrations in 1986, through an agreement between the USSR and the USA, Natan Sharansky was freed from the repressive grip: he was exchanged for one of the Soviet spies arrested in the West. Immediately after the exchange, Natan was honorably received by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his deputy Yitzhak Shamir.

In the same year, Sharansky founded the public organization “Zionist Forum,” which aimed to unite repatriates from the Soviet Union, and already in 1995, he started the political party “Israel for Aliyah.” In Israel, Natan Sharansky continued his active human rights activities, gaining experience as a recognized, influential Israeli politician. He was a member of the Knesset for a long period and also had experience working as a minister and deputy prime minister in the Israeli governments, chaired the executive council of the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the supervisory board of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

In January 2023, Natan Sharansky turned 75 years old. He dedicated almost his entire conscious life to active human rights struggle, the protection of human rights, political activity, as well as the development of close diplomatic and interethnic ties between Israel and Ukraine.

An Israeli company’s website can be hosted on a server outside of Israel and still function properly in Hebrew, English, or multiple languages simultaneously. For visitors, the speed of page loading, stability, security, and accessibility of the site are important, not the country of registration of the hosting company.

One such international solution is the company “Hosting ‘Ukraine'”, operating on the domain Ukraine.com.ua.

It offers:

1. regular virtual hosting,
2. enhanced business plans,
3. VPS,
4. dedicated servers,
5. domain registration,
6. corporate email, and
7. cloud services.

The main reason we consider this service not as a random advertising recommendation is personal experience: the NANews site is hosted on the ‘Business 4G’ plan of the company “Hosting ‘Ukraine'”.

NANews is a multilingual news project on WordPress with a large number of publications, images, constant database updates, and regular visits by search robots. We use this plan ourselves and therefore recommend it to Israeli site owners based on real work, not just descriptions on the provider’s page.

What is known about the company “Hosting ‘Ukraine'”

The service’s history began in 2004 when the hosting infrastructure was launched for its own projects and client sites. Public hosting appeared in 2006, and in 2008 the company moved to the address Ukraine.com.ua and began actively promoting site hosting services.

In 2010, the number of servers serving the hosting exceeded 100. In 2013, the company opened a data center with 28 server racks with a calculated capacity of 240 kW, and in 2015 it received ICANN accreditation. By 2020, the number of servers exceeded 1000. In 2021, a second server with a capacity of 350 kW was launched.

The exact current number of clients is not published on the open page, so it would be incorrect to provide an unconfirmed figure. But the published history shows that this is not a newly created small project, but an infrastructure that has been developing for more than twenty years.

The company declares its own server infrastructure, server connections at 10 Gbps, and a total network bandwidth of 280 Gbps. NVMe disks, AMD EPYC and AMD Ryzen processors, ECC error-correcting memory, and IPv6 support are used.

The company calls its service the first fully automated hosting and domain registrar in Ukraine. Ordering services, activating hosting, registering domains, payments, and a significant part of technical operations are performed automatically. According to the company, the API covers 99% of the control panel functions.

This is hosting for any sites

The company’s name does not limit the geography of clients or the language of hosted sites.

On the servers, you can host:

• an Israeli company’s site;
• a project in Hebrew;
• a site in English;
• a multilingual portal;
• an online store;
• a news resource;
• a lawyer’s, realtor’s, or private clinic’s site;
• a blog;
• an educational platform;
• a corporate portal;
• an application in PHP, Python, or Node.js;
• several sites of a web studio.

The service interface and control panel are available in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. The site’s content can be in any language.

For Hebrew, the right-to-left text direction — RTL — is important. It depends not on the hosting, but on the WordPress theme, template, and CSS. Modern management systems use UTF-8 encoding, so Hebrew works correctly on the server just like English or any other language.

Why an Israeli site does not necessarily need to be hosted in Israel

The physical location of the server affects network latency but is not the only or even always the main factor in site speed.

WordPress loading is significantly affected by:

• the quality of the theme;
• the number and quality of plugins;
• the size of images;
• caching;
• the state of the database;
• third-party advertising scripts;
• connected fonts;
• video;
• the overall weight of the page.

A well-optimized site on an international server can load faster than a poorly configured site physically located in Israel.

For the Israeli audience, Cloudflare can also be connected. CDN stores the site’s static files in a distributed network and delivers them to the visitor from the nearest available node. This reduces the impact of the distance to the main server and simultaneously helps filter out some malicious traffic.

The company declares a direct connection of the data center to major international communication operators and the ability to move sites between servers without stopping their operation. The online migration technology has been used since 2009.

Regular hosting for small sites

For a business card site, blog, landing page, or small company, it is not necessary to immediately purchase a powerful business plan.

The minimum ‘Fast’ package provides:

• 10 GB on an NVMe disk;
• hosting for one site;
• 512 MB memory limit;
• free SSL;
• automatic backups;
• email on your domain;
• protection against malicious bots;
• antivirus check;
• five-day test.

The price starts from €4 per month with long-term payment. The monthly price is €7.

According to the official exchange rate of the Bank of Israel on July 31, 2026, one euro equals 3.5 shekels.

Therefore, €4 is approximately ₪14, and €7 is about ₪25 excluding the bank’s currency transaction fee.

The ‘Best’ plan provides 20 GB, allows hosting up to five sites, and increases the memory limit to 1 GB. The cost starts from €8 per month, and monthly payment is €13 — approximately from ₪28 to ₪46.

The ‘Quality’ plan provides 30 GB and a memory limit of up to 1.5 GB. It costs from €12 per month or €18 with monthly payment — approximately from ₪42 to ₪63.

The ‘from’ prices apply when a long payment period is selected. Before ordering, you need to check the final cost and the period for which the payment is deducted.

What is included in regular hosting

Even the minimum package provides not only space for files.

Among the declared features:

• NVMe disks;
• free SSL certificate;
• Apache and OpenLiteSpeed;
• MySQL 8.4 or 5.7;
• different PHP versions;
• SSH;
• Python;
• Git and SVN;
• Memcache and OPcache;
• IPv6;
• backup;
• antivirus;
• two-factor authentication;
• protection against CMS password guessing;
• email with POP3, IMAP, and SMTP;
• email virus and spam check;
• automatic installation of popular CMS.

Some additional features and cloud services may be paid separately. Therefore, before ordering a specific plan, you need to check the marks and notes in the current description.

WordPress, WooCommerce, and other systems

Through the control panel, you can automatically install WordPress, Joomla, OpenCart, Drupal, MODX, PrestaShop, Moodle, and other CMS.

For a regular company site or blog, the minimum plan is sufficient. For several projects, the ‘Best’ package is suitable. A small WooCommerce store can also start with regular hosting if the catalog is still small and there are not many heavy extensions on the site.

A more powerful solution will be needed when:

• traffic increases;
• the database grows;
• the WooCommerce cart slows down;
• many plugins are installed;
• the site regularly experiences sharp traffic spikes;
• several active projects are running simultaneously;
• the regular plan starts hitting CPU or memory limits.

Why did NANovosti choose the ‘Business 4G’ plan

NANovosti operates on the ‘Business 4G’ plan. This is the main practical argument for our recommendation.

A news project differs from a regular business card website. It constantly adds materials and images, updates plugins, supports multilingualism, search indexing, caching, backups, and additional WordPress features.

‘Business 4G’ provides:

• 32 GB on an NVMe disk;
• 4 GB of RAM;
• two CPU cores;
• PHP memory limit up to 4 GB;
• the ability to host multiple sites and subdomains within the resources;
• MySQL 8.4 or 5.7;
• OpenLiteSpeed;
• PHP-FPM;
• Node.js;
• Python;
• Redis, Memcached, and OPcache;
• SSH;
• Git and SVN;
• free SSL;
• backups;
• email on a separate mail infrastructure;
• antivirus;
• two-factor authentication;
• protection against password guessing;
• a five-day trial period.

The current price of the plan is €38.44 per month. At the representative rate of the Bank of Israel, this is about ₪135 per month, before any possible Israeli bank commission.

Balance is important to us. The plan provides dedicated resources but does not require self-administering a full VPS.

How business hosting differs from a regular plan

On shared hosting, sites of different clients use common server resources and operate within set limits.

On business hosting, CPU cores and memory are allocated to a specific account. They do not have to be shared with neighboring sites. Additionally, there are no restrictions on the number of CPU minutes, the number of files, and the size of the database, although the total disk volume and allocated resources of the plan are maintained.

In terms of resource allocation, this is similar to a VPS. But VPS has an important complexity: the operating system, web server, security, and updates need to be maintained independently or by hiring an administrator.

On business hosting, management remains as simple as on a regular plan. Backups are stored separately, email does not consume hosting account resources, and DDoS protection and standard server settings are provided by the provider.

This is why ‘Business 4G’ turned out to be convenient for NANovosti: we received 4 GB of memory and two cores without the need to turn site maintenance into independent Linux server administration.

Comparison with similar Israeli hosting

Comparing ‘Business 4G’ with the cheapest Israeli shared hosting is incorrect. The closest class of services is a managed VPS or specialized powerful WordPress hosting with comparable CPU and memory.

One of the Israeli providers offers a fully managed WordPress VPS with two cores, 4 GB RAM, and 100 GB SSD for $145 per month. At the Bank of Israel rate on July 31, 2026, this is approximately ₪443 per month. The cost includes management, cPanel, LiteSpeed, protection, and backup infrastructure.

The same provider’s regular managed VPS with two cores, 4 GB RAM, and 100 GB SSD costs $53 per month — about ₪162. However, this is already a server service, the set of included features and the nature of management need to be checked separately.

Another Israeli provider offers a managed Linux server with 4 GB RAM, four cores, and 50 GB SSD for ₪357 per month before VAT. The price includes server management, support, and site transfer. After adding Israeli VAT, the cost becomes even higher.

Against this background, ‘Business 4G’ for approximately ₪135 per month looks significantly more affordable. This does not mean that all offers are completely identical: Israeli servers may have more disk space, more cores, local infrastructure, and support in Hebrew.

But for a site owner, the end result is important. If you need 4 GB RAM, two CPU cores, WordPress, SSL, backups, email, protection, and a simple panel without self-administration, the price of ‘Business 4G’ is noticeably lower than many comparable managed solutions in Israel.

How much can be saved

‘Business 4G’ costs about ₪135 per month, or approximately ₪1620 per year at the current representative rate.

The Israeli managed WordPress VPS from the comparison costs about ₪443 per month, that is, more than ₪5300 per year before considering possible additional payments.

The difference exceeds ₪3600 per year.

Even when compared to a cheaper Israeli VPS for about ₪162 per month, the ‘Business 4G’ plan remains cheaper, while simultaneously providing a ready hosting environment without the need to independently configure the operating system and server software.

For a small site, the savings on a regular plan can be even more noticeable. The minimum package of ‘Hosting “Ukraine”‘ starts at about ₪14 per month, while Israeli WordPress hosting often costs tens of shekels monthly.

Security and protection against attacks

For sites targeting Israel, protection against attacks is of particular importance. This concerns businesses, public organizations, media, and information projects.

The company claims HTTP flood filtering, UDP flood blocking at the router level, and the use of separate server infrastructure for handling SYN floods. Also applied are:

• antivirus scanning;
• malicious file detection;
• protection of login to admin panels;
• blocking of malicious bots;
• two-factor authentication;
• SSL;
• email protection;
• automatic backups.

No hosting can guarantee absolute invulnerability. A WordPress owner must still regularly update the core, theme, and plugins, remove unused extensions, and apply unique passwords.

Backup outside the main server

The company automatically creates backups of sites and allows users to create custom copies through the panel.

The official page states that a hosting copy is created once a week, and mailboxes are copied every two hours to servers in Germany. The company also claims to store backups in several countries.

This is especially important given that the main data center is located in Kyiv and continues to operate during Russian aggression.

At the same time, for a critically important project, it is advisable to adhere to the universal rule: keep another independent copy outside the main hosting. It can be stored in cloud storage, on a separate server, or a local device.

Domains for Israeli sites

The company registers hundreds of international and national domain zones and is ICANN accredited.

For example, a .com domain costs €19 per year — approximately ₪67 at the current rate. Prices for .com.ua, .in.ua, .shop, .store, .site, and other zones are also published on the main page.

Domain and hosting do not have to be purchased from the same company.

An Israeli .co.il domain can be registered with an accredited local registrar, and the site files can be hosted on ‘Hosting “Ukraine”‘. To do this, it is enough to point the domain’s DNS records to the server.

The visitor will see the usual .co.il address and will not know the hosting location from the site name.

Interface and management

The panel allows managing:

• sites;
• files;
• domains;
• databases;
• PHP versions;
• SSL certificates;
• mailboxes;
• backups;
• SSH access;
• resource statistics;
• security settings;
• temporary developer access.

The delegation function allows providing a programmer or SEO specialist with limited temporary access without sharing the main account password.

This is convenient for an Israeli business owner who orders site creation and promotion from an external specialist.

Which plan to choose

For one small company site, portfolio, landing page, or blog, the ‘Fast’ plan is usually sufficient.

When you need to host up to five projects, it is more reasonable to consider the ‘Best’ plan.

For a web studio or a larger site, there is the ‘Quality’ plan.

For an active online store, news resource, several loaded sites, or a project that no longer fits within regular limits, business hosting should be considered.

The ‘Business 4G’ plan is especially interesting for projects that need:

• 4 GB RAM;
• two dedicated cores;
• a large WordPress database;
• WooCommerce;
• multiple sites;
• Redis;
• OpenLiteSpeed;
• PHP-FPM;
• increased stability under load;
• simple management without a separate system administrator.

It is on this plan that NANovosti operates.

When is it better to choose an Israeli provider

Local hosting may be preferable when:

• technical support in Hebrew is mandatory;
• the server must be physically located in Israel;
• the contract requires data storage in a specific jurisdiction;
• an Israeli tax document from the supplier is needed;
• minimal network latency is critical;
• the company requires fully individual server support on-site.

But for a regular business website, WordPress project, online store, or informational resource, these conditions are not always necessary.

Why we recommend “Hosting ‘Ukraine'”

Our recommendation is based on personal use.

NANovosti operates on the ‘Business 4G’ plan. For a multilingual news site, it provides sufficient memory and processor resources, while we do not have to maintain the VPS ourselves.

We received:

• dedicated resources;
• a clear control panel;
• WordPress;
• OpenLiteSpeed;
• backups;
• SSL;
• mail;
• protection;
• developer tools;
• the ability to increase resources as the site grows.

At a cost of about ₪135 per month, this plan is noticeably cheaper than many comparable managed solutions from Israeli providers.

For a small project, you can start with a regular plan from €4 per month. If the site grows, the transition to business hosting is automatic and, according to the company, seamless for visitors.

Reliable hosting for a site in Israel without overpaying

An Israeli site does not necessarily need to be hosted by an Israeli provider. It is much more important to get sufficient resources, stable operation, backups, SSL, protection, and the ability to restore the site after a failure.

“Hosting ‘Ukraine'” offers all this at a price that for many projects is noticeably lower than local rates.

The service is suitable for sites in Hebrew, English, and other languages, supports WordPress and WooCommerce, provides regular and enhanced business plans, and allows scaling the project without an immediate transition to a self-managed server.

View current rates and register via the NANovosti affiliate link:

https://www.ukraine.com.ua/?page=916943

This is an affiliate link. If the reader registers and purchases a service, the NANovosti editorial team may receive a reward. Clicking the link does not increase the cost for the client. Prices and exchange rates should be checked directly before payment.

We will add our own analysis to this: which arguments really hold, where they are insufficient, and what might break the current model.

1) Disunity and lack of horizontal connections — this is not a metaphor, it’s infrastructure

The argument about “weak horizontal connections” often sounds like a psychological diagnosis, but in reality, it is institutional. Protest is not an emotion, but logistics: where to gather, how to spread information, who organizes legal protection, who coordinates mutual aid, where are the media channels, how to collect money, how to connect different cities.

In Russia, this infrastructure has been systematically dismantled for years: public organizations were declared “foreign agents,” independent media were closed, local activists were imprisoned, any “self-organization” was labeled as a threat to the state. The result: even if there are many dissatisfied people, they do not form an active network. This explains the paradox: high fatigue coexists with a low capacity for collective action.

Another important point: disunity is not a “national character,” but the result of policy. The regime encourages atomization: let people compete with each other for resources, status, safety. Disunited people are easier to control. This is not unique to Russia; it is a standard tool of authoritarian systems that fear not protests, but solidarity.

2) “Deals” with families and private compensation instead of public justice

The second pillar is targeted “tension relief” through money and administrative decisions. The family of a deceased person may receive compensation, benefits, “help” with documents. From a moral standpoint, this does not negate the tragedy. But from a management standpoint, it works: the pain becomes a private matter for the family, not a public conflict.

This mechanism has two bonuses for the authorities. The first is the neutralization of a potential pressure group. Relatives of the deceased could become a mass movement, as has happened in other wars. But when each case is “closed” separately, a unified subject does not form.

The second is the attachment of a person to the state. The family becomes dependent on payments and decisions of officials. This encourages silence: “just so it doesn’t get worse,” “don’t take away benefits,” “don’t start problems.” In an authoritarian system, even formal assistance often acts as a tool of control.

3) Fear is important, but not directly: fear is a network of small threats

Yes, repression suppresses protest. But the risk of prison is not as effective as the sum of small threats: job loss, problems at the university for children, pressure on business, fines, searches, “preventive conversations,” the risk of being listed as unreliable. This makes publicity toxic. A person may hate the war but chooses the strategy of “not sticking out.”

Here is an important detail: fear works as long as people believe that the regime has long arms and that resistance is pointless. As soon as there is a sense of the regime’s instability, fear begins to fail. Therefore, repressive regimes often appear “monolithic” right up to the moment when they break down sharply. Not because people suddenly became brave, but because fear ceased to be rational.

4) Propaganda is not the main engine. The main engine is the habit of powerlessness and the lack of experience of results

Explaining everything with propaganda is convenient, but it’s an oversimplification. Propaganda helps justify the war in conversation and reduces cognitive dissonance. But even many of those who do not believe the TV do not protest.

The reason is deeper: a significant part of society has no experience that protest brings change. If a person sees for decades that the authorities do not respond, elections do not change reality, rallies end in detentions — a habit of political helplessness forms. Not “I support,” but “I decide nothing.” This is the foundation of passivity.

The scheme looks cynical: the regime can tolerate growing discontent if this discontent is not organized and does not turn into action. Therefore, the authorities fear not criticism in the kitchen, but coordination on the street.

5) The war is unevenly distributed: capitals lived “as if nothing was happening” for a long time

Our key addition to NV’s logic is the unevenness of pain. The war in Russia has long been “smeared” across the periphery. Recruitment, losses, death notices, material incentives hit harder on poor regions, small towns, national outskirts. And large cities — especially Moscow and St. Petersburg — tried to live in showcase mode: cafes, shopping centers, services, holidays.

The regime does everything to prevent the war from becoming “capital.” Because the protest potential in capitals is higher: more people with resources, more connections, more media coverage. As long as the war remains “regional” in terms of human cost, the likelihood of a nationwide explosion is lower. This is not an excuse. This is an explanation of the mechanics.

6) The alternative to protest is departure, evasion, internal sabotage

Another reason for the “silence” is not because people are satisfied, but because the protest has gone into other forms. Some have left (including to Israel). Some have gone into “internal emigration”: silence, refusal to participate in politics, minimizing contact with the state. Some evade: relocations, fake certificates, gray schemes, avoiding military enlistment offices, refusal of publicity.

This slowly but steadily destroys the social fabric. The problem is that such “quiet protest” does not give an immediate political effect but undermines trust and manageability. The regime can live with this as long as it maintains forceful control and financial cushions.

7) The army as a mirror of society: money becomes a tool of coercion

NV describes an important point about the “contract model” and payments. On paper, this looks like a voluntary choice. In practice, more often — as economic coercion. When there is no decent work in the region, high payments for a contract turn into a trap. The regime buys the loyalty of poverty.

At the same time, the increase in payments is a sign of a problem, not strength. If recruitment were stable, there would be no need to constantly raise the price of human life. When the price rises, it means motivation falls, and the risk of refusal increases.

And then a toxic internal economy of the army appears: extortion, “paid” decisions, corruption, violence. This destroys morale and discipline. And this is also a factor that can lead to unexpected breakdowns — not necessarily mass riots in the squares, but to a loss of manageability within the institution that should be the regime’s support.

8) Does this mean there will be no rebellion? No. It means that rebellion depends not on morality, but on manageability

The most common mistake is to expect a rebellion as “moral retribution”: since the war is unjust, people must come out. In reality, mass protests arise when manageability breaks down: when the usual model “you endure — we maintain the appearance of normality” stops working.

Triggers that can really change the picture:

— Mobilization affecting large cities massively.
If the war ceases to be “regional” and becomes “capital,” the protest risk rises sharply.

— Economic blow that cannot be masked by payments and loans.
When incomes fall, jobs disappear, “peaceful” expectations collapse — passivity decreases.

— Management collapse in the regions.
If local elites stop “resolving” the consequences of the war, accumulated anger can become massive.

— Major military failure.
Not in the form of “news,” but in the form of a breakdown of the sense of control, when even apolitical people begin to think that the authorities are leading the country to disaster.

9) Why is this important to Israel

For Israel, the question is not academic. Russia has long ceased to be a “neutral player” and actively interacts with Hamas, with Iran, its terrorist proxies — Hezbollah, and other terrorists) and its military capabilities. Any strengthening or weakening of Russian stability reflects on regional threats: technology supplies, sanctions regimes, political deals in Syria, export of repressive practices.

As long as the Kremlin maintains internal stability through disunity and redistribution of pain, it can continue the war and simultaneously negotiate in the Middle East. But this model has a limit. When the war begins to “come home” — to capital families, to the economy, to everyday life — the regime faces what it fears most: not criticism, but a mass refusal to be governed.

This is precisely the practical meaning of the “zeroing theory.” The war turns into a mechanism that nullifies a person — their rights, safety, dignity, choice. But the system holds as long as the nullification remains individual, fragmented, “one by one.” As soon as it becomes collective and synchronous — the walls begin to crack.

NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency

Jews from Ukraine, including from Galicia, played a significant role in the formation of modern Israel.

One of the iconic stories was the founding in 1920 of the first Zionist commune, Beitaniya Illit, associated with the Shomer HaTzair youth movement. This was not just an experiment, but a whole philosophy that formed the basis of many future kibbutzim.

Young Jews from Galicia, inspired by the ideas of returning to the Land of Israel, came here to build a new life. They were united by belonging to the Shomer HaTzair movement, based on the principles of collectivism, equality and labor.

The commune collapsed after 8 months of difficult trials, but gave birth to dozens of kibbutzim and leaders of Israel.

Commune Beitaniya Illit was located in the Lower Galilee, not far from the Kinneret, at the intersection of roads to Kibbutz Alumot.

In 1964, a memorial dedicated to the Shomer HaTzair movement and the 73 kibbutzim founded by members of this movement was opened here. that's where it is on the map.

The tent-like monument was designed by architect Yechiel Arad. From the top of the memorial there is a panoramic view of the Jordan Valley, Kinneret, Golan Heights and Hermon.

It was here, in 1921, that an experiment that became a legend in the history of Zionism was completed.

He told me about him in detail Shimon Briman for the website (Ukrainian) “Ukrainian-Jewish Zustricha”.

How it all began: the idealism of young Galicians

In the spring of 1921, the experiment, which went down in history as the “Galician project,” was completed.

In the summer of 1920, the “Galician landing” of 131 people arrived in Galilee. These were young men and women, many of whom left Lvov and other cities of Western Ukraine. Their main goal was to create a new type of Jewish society.

Problems and challenges of the commune

The youth faced many difficulties. Life in Betaniya was full of challenges:

• Harsh living conditions: tents and temporary shelters did not protect from strong winds and winter cold.
• Lack of food: food was meager, and physical labor was exhausting.
• Conflicts in the group: participants discussed each other's personal qualities, which often led to quarrels and tension.

Constant lack of resources, disease and internal conflicts eventually led to the collapse of the commune in the spring of 1921. However, its members became the founders of many kibbutzim in Israel.

Leaders of the “Galician wave” and their contribution

How it all ended

Beitaniya, the first commune of the world's first Zionist youth movement, Shomer HaTza'ir, disintegrated after eight months of difficult trials, but gave birth to dozens of kibbutzim and leaders in Israel. Almost all the leaders and participants in this experiment were Jews from the cities and towns of Galicia.

It was from this region of modern Ukraine that at the end of July 1920, an organized “landing party” arrived in the Land of Israel – 131 people, familiar from the meeting in the Shomer Ha-Tzair groups, all 18-20 years old. Most are boys, the rest are girls.

They left their parents and abundance to return from the diaspora to their land. They left the comfort of the city for hard work. They were inspired by the idea of ​​​​creating a New Man – a free Jew in their ancient homeland.

After the collapse of Beitaniya Illit, its members descended into the valleys of Galilee and became the founders of many kibbutzim. Despite the difficulties, the experiment was not in vain – it laid the foundation for future Zionist settlements.

The kibbutzim created by these idealists became not only economic, but also cultural centers of young Israel. Their ideas of collectivism and work inspired new generations of Zionists.

Historical heritage

Betaniya-Illit remains a symbol of courage, self-sacrifice and faith in ideals. Today, when we talk about the relationship between Ukraine and Israel, it is important to remember how Jews from Galicia contributed to the building of the modern Jewish state.

Our website NANews – Israel News emphasizes that the story of Betaniya is an example of how courage and the desire for freedom can change the future of an entire people.

More in the section “Jews from Ukraine”.

…

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This story is a symbol of the strong connection between the Jewish people of Ukraine and Israel, and proof of a true miracle made possible thanks to love, faith, and the support of the entire community.

Under bombs — into the future: children of the “Alumim” orphanage celebrate bar mitzvah in Israel

On June 26, 2025, the Israeli portal ynet reported on an emotional event: a bar mitzvah for five teenagers, three of whom are alumni of the Jewish orphanage “Alumim” in Zhytomyr, held in Ashkelon. This was not just a religious ritual. It was an act of return, maturity, recognition, and reunion with Jewish destiny.

Three years ago, these children, like thousands of other Jews in Ukraine, woke up to the sounds of explosions. Since then, their path has been full of pain — but also care, friendship, faith, and new hope in Israel.

“Alumim” Orphanage: an island of love and light

The “Alumim” orphanage, founded in 2006 in the village of Zarechany, became the heart of Jewish life in Western Ukraine. It was established by Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm with support from the Or Avner Foundation and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.

• Education based on Jewish traditions and Hebrew
• Children from 2 to 18 years old, including orphans and children from disadvantaged families
• Schooling, sports, psychological care, and a warm family atmosphere

“It was not just a structure. It was a real home,” staff members recall.

Before the war began in 2022, “Alumim” was a symbol of Jewish care and a “family home” for dozens of children. After the invasion, the building emptied — but its spirit moved to Israel.

Zhytomyr — cradle of Jewish culture

Zhytomyr is a historic center of Jewish life in Ukraine. It had schools, printing houses, yeshivot, and underground Chabad cheders in the 20th century that survived repression. Before the war, Jews made up one-third of the city’s population — over 30,000 people.

The “Alumim” orphanage became the center of Jewish childhood in the region. Living conditions, care, and religious atmosphere made it a unique place. After the war began, educators were left with 80 children and enormous responsibility — and the idea of evacuation was born.

Putin’s aggression destroys childhood

On February 24, 2022, Putin’s army launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Zhytomyr came under attack, and the orphanage was in danger. Bombs fell near the home where 80 children lived.

“We woke up to deafening noise. Outside — smoke and sirens. 80 children panicked. Educators had to hide their fear while bombs kept falling,” — recalls Malka Buket.

Escape under fire

The decision to evacuate the children came quickly. First — to Chernivtsi, then — to Israel. The border was crossed on foot, without documents, with small children carried in arms. It was a heroic evacuation.

KKL-JNF and Keren LeYedidut carried out an emergency evacuation of about 100 children aged 2 to 18.

Nes Harim: first Jewish refuge

Upon arrival in Israel, children were placed in the Nes Harim center in the Jerusalem Forest. Volunteers provided clothing, toys, psychological support, and Hebrew classes. They celebrated holidays and slowly adapted to their new life.

Ashkelon: new life and bar mitzvah

In 2025, the children moved to Ashkelon. On June 26, five teenagers, three of them from “Alumim,” celebrated their bar mitzvah. The event was organized by Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm. Rabbis, local leaders, and Minister Yaakov Margi attended.

“Each child has their own story and pain. But to see them happy, confident, and speaking Hebrew — it’s a miracle,” said Rabbi Wilhelm.

“Just as Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai, so our children receive it here in Ashkelon — with love and light,” said Rabbi Mendel Lieberman.

Table: journey from war to bar mitzvah

NAnews — Israel News

NAnews emphasizes: the story of the “Alumim” children is not just a humanitarian case. It is proof of the strength of the Jewish community, the bond between Ukrainian and Israeli Jews, and the ability to overcome even war.

While Putin’s army drops bombs on children’s heads, Israel extends a helping hand. The bar mitzvah in Ashkelon is not the end — it’s just the beginning. These children now have a home. A community. A future.

For the band Chornitsa, this will be the first performance on the stage of the restaurant Sho?. The musicians are preparing a powerful program for the audience: songs from the album “Na Ves Golos” (Ukr.), the latest singles, as well as new, yet unreleased tracks.

The evening promises to be especially interesting for those who already follow the band and for those who are just discovering the Ukrainian rock scene in Israel.

Special guest of the concert — Igor Ageenko.

Chornitsa: Ukrainian rock created in Israel

Chornitsa is a Ukrainian-language rock band from Haifa. It is one of those musical projects that are important not only as a concert story but also as a cultural symbol: Ukrainian music in Israel continues to sound, develop, and find its audience.

In the material NANovosti about the band Chornitsa, it was noted that the group was founded by immigrants from Ukraine and presents original songs in Ukrainian, as well as cover versions of famous Ukrainian performers. The band’s repertoire mentioned Ukrainian hits “Odin v Kanoe”, “Vopli Vidoplyasova”, Okean Elzy, and other compositions close to people who grew up with Ukrainian music or discovered it already in Israel.

But Chornitsa is not just covers.

An important part of the band’s story is their own songs. Currently, the concert program includes compositions from the album “Na Ves Golos”, the latest singles, and new tracks that have not yet been officially released.

So the concert on August 7, 2026 is not just a repeat of already familiar material. It’s an opportunity to hear the band in development: with what has already become part of their musical history and with what is only preparing to reach a wide audience.

The musicians themselves described themselves very accurately: “We are all from Ukraine, but now we live in Israel. And it is here that we create Ukrainian music”. This phrase well explains why Chornitsa is important for the Israeli scene: the band does not try to be a “museum of memories” but makes live Ukrainian music here, in Israel, in the present time.

You can listen to the band here:

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@chornitsa4512

Instagram –  https://www.instagram.com/chornitsa/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068335582124

Why this concert should be noted in the Israel poster

In Israel, there are many musical events, but Ukrainian-language rock is a separate story. Here, language, memory, emigration, new life, personal experience, and the desire to communicate with the audience not only through words but also through sound meet.

Chornitsa at Sho is an event for Ukrainians in Israel, for Israelis with Ukrainian roots, for friends of Ukraine, and for everyone interested in live music without artificial distance between the stage and the hall.

Songs from the album “Na Ves Golos” themselves set the mood for the evening. This is music not “half-tone” and not “for the background”. This is a story about voice, energy, emotions, and presence.

And new, yet unreleased tracks make the concert especially valuable: evening guests will be able to hear material that is not yet available in regular public access.

Sho: Ukrainian cuisine, Tel Aviv, and the right atmosphere for live music

The concert venue is also important. Sho? / SHO Ukrainian Traditional Food https://www.facebook.com/shotelaviv — a Ukrainian restaurant in Tel Aviv located at Carlebach Street 3, Tel Aviv-Yafo. An authentic Ukrainian place in the center of Tel Aviv with Ukrainian cuisine, service, and Ukrainian character.

For the concert Chornitsa, such a venue looks very organic. It is not a faceless hall and not a random stage. It is a place where Ukrainian culture is present not only in music but also in cuisine, in the atmosphere, in conversations at the tables, in the feeling of meeting.

Guests will be able to come not just to a concert, but to an evening of Ukrainian mood in the center of Tel Aviv: with live music, food, company, and the opportunity to hear the band very closely.

What will be in the program

At the concert Chornitsa at Sho will feature:

songs from the album “Na Ves Golos”;

the band’s latest singles;

new, yet unreleased tracks;

a live performance by a Ukrainian-language rock band from Haifa;

special participation of Igor Ageenko.

Such a format is especially good for a chamber stage: the music sounds closer, the audience’s reaction is felt stronger, and new songs are perceived not as a “release” but as a personal meeting with the band.

For whom this evening

This concert should be noted by those who are looking for a poster of Ukrainian events in Israel, are interested in live music in Tel Aviv, follow Ukrainian culture outside of Ukraine, or just want to spend an evening in a place with a special atmosphere.

Chornitsa at Sho is not only about rock. It’s about the Ukrainian language, which sounds on the Israeli stage. About Haifa and Tel Aviv, between which cultural connections are born. About music that has not remained in the past but continues to live in a new country.

And most importantly, it’s an evening where you can hear Ukrainian music at full voice.

Event information

Event: Chornitsa at Sho
Date: Friday, August 7, 2026
Time: 8:00 PM
Venue: Sho restaurant, Tel Aviv
Band: Chornitsa
From where: Haifa
Program: songs from the album “Na Ves Golos”, latest singles, and new unreleased tracks
Special guest: Igor Ageenko

Details:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2251054468973169/

It is used to pay for advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, subscriptions to work services, hosting, domains, online stores, apps, trips, delivery, international platforms, and dozens of small regular payments.

As long as everything works, it’s convenient. But as soon as the advertising account charges more than expected, a subscription is automatically renewed, a foreign service rejects a payment, or the card needs to be reissued, it becomes clear: keeping all payments on one main card is not always wise.

Against this backdrop, more and more users are looking towards separate virtual cards. One of the services actively discussed in this topic is RedotPay.

It is often called a crypto card, but for the average user, cryptocurrency is not the only important thing.

RedotPay can be interesting as a separate payment tool: for online payments, advertising accounts, international services, mobile wallets, limits, as well as working with USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, and other supported digital assets.

Officially, RedotPay describes itself as a payment app and stablecoin-based card that connects digital assets with everyday payments, and the service’s help center states that to get a card, you need to download the app, register, pass identity verification, add crypto assets via on-chain deposit or buy crypto, and then apply for a virtual or physical card.

What is RedotPay in simple terms

RedotPay is not an ordinary bank card from an Israeli bank. It is a separate payment service with a virtual and, depending on conditions, physical card.

It can be considered in several scenarios.

1. First scenario — RedotPay as a virtual card for online payments: advertising, subscriptions, stores, international services, work tools.
2. Second scenario — RedotPay as a card for payment via phone, it is added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.
3. Third scenario — RedotPay as a crypto wallet and payment app, where the user can work with supported digital assets, top up the balance, transfer funds, buy crypto assets, and use them for payments.

In official descriptions, RedotPay mentions virtual and physical cards, payment with BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and other assets, mobile payments, the ability to pay online and in stores, as well as using the card with a large number of merchants worldwide.

But an important point: RedotPay should not be perceived as a “card without rules.” It is a financial payment tool with its limits, fees, identity verification, top-up rules, country restrictions, and possible questions about the origin of funds.

Why a separate virtual card is needed

The main benefit of a separate virtual card is control.

When the main bank card is linked to all sites and services, the user effectively opens access to their main payment tool to dozens of different platforms. This is not always dangerous, but often inconvenient.

For example, a small business owner launches advertising on Facebook and Google.

At the same time, he pays for domains, hosting, CRM, newsletters, design services, AI tools, Canva, Adobe, subscriptions, marketplaces, and apps. After a few months, it becomes difficult to understand where the business expenses are, where the personal payments are, where the advertising is, and where the automatic renewal of an old subscription is.

A separate virtual card RedotPay allows you to separate payments. One card can be used only for advertising. Another — for subscriptions. A third — for travel or online purchases. Even if something goes wrong, the main bank card will not be linked to every service in a row.

For users in Israel, this is especially relevant because many work with international platforms, pay for services abroad, run advertising accounts in different languages, and use services that do not always work perfectly with local cards.

Payment for advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Google

One of the main pains of business is advertising payments.

Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google Ads charge money regularly. Sometimes the charge occurs after accumulating a certain amount, sometimes on a schedule, sometimes after changing limits in the advertising account. If the main card is linked to advertising, the advertising budget mixes with personal and other business expenses.

A separate RedotPay card can help bring order. It can be used only for advertising, topped up with the necessary amount, and control spending on the project.

RedotPay in the help center separately mentions that after activating the card, information is synchronized with platforms like PayPal, Google Pay, and Facebook, but this does not mean that every payment in every advertising account will always go through without rejections. Advertising platforms, banks, payment networks, and the service itself may have their own payment verification rules.

Therefore, the correct approach is this: first test small amounts, check how the card goes through in the desired advertising account, and only then use it for regular budgets.

Limits on one payment and per day

Another strong point of a separate card is the ability to limit expenses.

If the service allows setting a limit on a one-time payment and a daily limit, it is convenient for advertising, subscriptions, online purchases, and team expenses. The user can pre-limit the amount the card can spend at one time or per day.

This is important when the card is linked to an advertising account. For example, if you want to spend no more than a certain amount on an ad test, the limit helps reduce the risk of unexpected charges.

This is also useful for subscriptions. An old service will not be able to charge more than allowed by the limit. And if the card is used only for a specific project, expenses are easier to control.

In the help center RedotPay there are separate materials on card limits and fees, as well as a section on card usage, where among the questions is the setting of transaction limits. Before active use, you need to check the current limits in your account because conditions may differ by card type, country, verification level, and service rules.

Google Wallet and Apple Wallet: card in the phone

Many users no longer need plastic. They pay by phone: in stores, cafes, transport, apps, and services.

Therefore, an important question: can a virtual card be added to a mobile wallet?

RedotPay has separate instructions for linking a virtual card to Google Pay, as well as a help center section on digital wallets, where there are materials on Google Pay and Apple Pay. On the RedotPay website, there is also a separate page about RedotPay Card on Apple Pay.

For the reader, this means a simple thing: if the function is available for their card, country, device, and account, the virtual card can become a regular payment tool in the phone. For Israel – available.

But here you cannot promise too much. Before use, you need to check whether adding the card is supported specifically for you: in Israel (it can), on your device, with your account, with your card version, and in your mobile wallet.

If the card is added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet, it is convenient for regular purchases. If not, it can still be considered as a card for online payments, advertising, subscriptions, and international services.

Crypto wallet inside RedotPay: not just a card

RedotPay is interesting not only as a virtual card. Inside the service, there is the logic of a wallet and working with digital assets.

The official app download page RedotPay lists among the possibilities Personal: Card, Send to bank & e-wallet, Send to RedotPay user, Multi-Currency Wallet, Credit, Earn, Swap, and P2P Marketplace. This shows that the service covers not one scenario, but several: card, wallet, transfers, exchange, and working with different payment functions.

For the user, this can be convenient if they already work with USDT or other assets. For example, they can top up the balance, use the supported asset to pay with the card, transfer funds within available functions, or buy crypto assets through the app.

But the more functions, the more responsibility. You need to understand fees, networks, limits, transfer rules, withdrawal conditions, and identity verification requirements.

USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, and other assets

RedotPay in app descriptions indicates support for payments with BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and other assets. But the current list is always better to check inside the app because supported assets, networks, and conditions may change.

For most users, the most understandable scenario is USDT or USDC because these are stablecoins. But even here there is a risk of error: USDT can exist in different networks, and it needs to be transferred only to the correct address in the correct network.

Crypto top-up: where mistakes are most often made

In the RedotPay help center, a standard way to top up with cryptocurrency is described: open the app, go to Home > Deposit, select the currency, for example, USDT, and then choose the appropriate network for the selected currency.

The most dangerous mistake is thinking that “USDT is USDT everywhere.”

For the user, this can end in a problem. If you choose the wrong network or send the wrong asset, the deposit may not arrive. Therefore, before transferring a large amount, it is better to make a test transfer of a small amount and make sure that the address, network, and asset are chosen correctly.

This is especially important for people who have only used a regular bank card before and are not used to crypto wallets. In a bank, you can sometimes cancel or dispute a transaction. In crypto transfers, a network or address error can be much more complicated.

Top-up with a regular bank or credit card

For users from Israel, an important question sounds like this: can RedotPay be topped up not only by transferring cryptocurrency from an external wallet but through a regular bank or credit card?

In the RedotPay help center, it is stated that the user can buy supported cryptocurrencies in the app using a credit/debit card, as well as other available payment methods.

But for the Israeli user, this needs to be checked practically.

One card may pass and another may not. The bank may decline the transaction. The payment provider may charge a fee. There may be purchase limits, country restrictions, KYC requirements, or additional checks.

Therefore, the correct wording is this: RedotPay indicates the possibility of purchasing supported crypto assets with a credit/debit card, but before use, you need to check whether your specific Israeli bank or credit card passes, what fees apply, and whether there are any restrictions from the bank or service.

Transfers between wallets and users

Another scenario is transfers.

If the service allows sending funds to other RedotPay users, working with a multi-currency wallet, transfers to bank & e-wallet, or other functions, this can be convenient for those who often make international payments or separate business and personal funds.

But here again, it is important not to promise too much. Each function may have separate conditions: country, currency, fee, speed, limit, KYC, availability for a specific user.

Therefore, in the article, it is better to write not “everything is possible,” but “the app declares different functions for the card, wallet, transfers, and fund management; before using a specific operation, you need to check its availability and conditions.”

This approach is safer and more honest.

How RedotPay differs from a regular bank card

A regular bank card is linked to a bank account. RedotPay is a separate payment service.

There are advantages in this.

You can avoid linking the main bank card to all sites.

You can use a separate card for advertising.

You can separate business expenses from personal ones.

You can set limits.

You can use a virtual card for subscriptions and international services.

You can add the card to a mobile wallet if the function is available.

You can work with supported digital assets.

But there are also limitations.

It is not a bank in the usual sense.

There are service rules.

There are fees.

There is KYC.

There are limits.

There is a risk of payment rejections.

There is a risk of errors in crypto transfers.

There are tax and banking issues if significant amounts and digital assets are involved.

That is why RedotPay is better considered not as a replacement for an Israeli bank, but as an additional payment tool for specific tasks.

Who RedotPay can be useful for

RedotPay can be of interest to entrepreneurs, marketers, website owners, freelancers, digital specialists, and anyone who regularly pays for international services.

For example, if you launch advertising on Facebook, Instagram, or Google, a separate card helps separate the advertising budget from personal expenses.

If you pay for hosting, domains, SEO services, AI tools, CRM, newsletters, design platforms, and subscriptions, a virtual card helps avoid linking the main bank card to everything.

If you travel frequently or shop in foreign online stores, a separate card can be a convenient backup payment tool.

If you already have USDT, USDC, or other supported assets, RedotPay can be interesting as a link between digital assets and everyday payments.

If it is important for you to pay by phone, you should check the support of Google Wallet and Apple Wallet for your card and country.

Who should not rush

RedotPay should not be used on emotions.

Do not rush if you do not understand the difference between a bank, a card, a crypto wallet, an exchange, and a payment service.

Do not rush if you do not know what a transfer network is.

Do not rush if you think that USDT in any network can be sent to any USDT address.

Do not rush if you are looking for an “anonymous card,” “bank bypass,” or “payments without questions.”

Do not deposit large amounts until you have checked the fees, limits, support, withdrawal rules, and card operation on small payments.

And especially do not use such services for dubious operations. Any normal payment service operates with rules, checks, and restrictions.

What to check before registration

Before registering with RedotPay, a user from Israel should go through a small checklist.

Is the service available for your country and your document.

What documents are needed for identity verification.

What fees are there for issuing and using the card.

What limits are there for one payment and per day.

Can you set the necessary limits manually.

Can the card be added to Google Wallet.

Can the card be added to Apple Wallet.

Does the card work with Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google Ads.

Is the card suitable for your subscriptions and online services.

Can you buy supported crypto assets with your bank or credit card.

What fees does the payment provider charge when purchasing with a card.

What crypto assets are supported.

What networks are available for USDT or other assets.

Can funds be transferred to other users.

Can the balance be withdrawn.

How does support work.

What to do in case of a disputed charge.

What to do if the deposit did not arrive.

What are the terms of the referral program.

This is not bureaucracy, but normal financial hygiene. The sooner the user checks these questions, the fewer surprises there will be later.

RedotPay referral program: how to speak honestly

RedotPay has a referral program. A user can invite another person via a link or code and receive a reward if the invitee fulfills the service conditions.

For media, it is important to present this transparently. There is no need to disguise the referral link as a “neutral recommendation.” The reader should understand that the author or editorial team may receive a reward.

A normal formulation looks like this:

You can register and independently study the terms of RedotPay via the link:

https://url.hk/i/en/0h7rn

The material contains a referral link. If you register through it and fulfill the conditions of RedotPay, the author or editorial team may receive a reward. This is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.

Main risks to remember

The first risk is fees. The card, purchasing crypto assets, exchange, withdrawal, payments, or service may have different fees. They need to be checked before the operation, not after.

The second risk is limits. If a payment does not go through, the reason may not be the store, but the card limit, service limit, account settings, or payment network rules.

The third risk is KYC. RedotPay requires identity verification to obtain a card, and this is a normal part of the operation of such services. In the help center, obtaining a card is directly linked to identity verification.

The fourth risk is errors in crypto transfers. The wrong network, wrong asset, or wrong address can create a serious problem.

The fifth risk is payment rejections. Not every service is obliged to accept a specific card. Advertising accounts, subscriptions, stores, and payment systems may have their own rules.

The sixth risk is questions from the bank or tax specialist. If it concerns digital assets and significant amounts, it is important to keep a history of operations, purchase confirmations, transfers, statements, and documents about the origin of funds.

How to start more safely

The most sensible way is not to start with a large amount.

First, you need to download the app, study the terms, register, and check which functions are available specifically to you.

Then you can issue a virtual card, look at fees, limits, and security settings.

After that, it is worth making a small test payment: for example, in an online service or where you actually plan to use the card.

If you want to use the card for advertising, first test it on a small advertising budget.

If you want to top up with cryptocurrency, first make a test transfer of a small amount.

If you want to buy crypto with a regular bank or credit card, first check if your Israeli card goes through and what the final fee is.

If you want to pay by phone, check adding it to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.

This approach does not guarantee the absence of problems, but it significantly reduces the risk of unpleasant surprises.

Frequently asked questions

Is RedotPay a bank card?

No, it is not a regular bank card from an Israeli bank. It is a separate payment service with a virtual and, depending on the conditions, a physical card.

Can RedotPay be used in Israel?

Before registration, you need to check the availability of the service, KYC, and functions specifically for users from Israel. Conditions may depend on the country, document, account, and internal service rules.

Can you pay for advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Google?

The card can be considered for advertising payments, but each advertising account needs to be tested separately. Payment may depend on the platform’s rules, card, limits, and verification.

Can you set a limit for one payment and per day?

RedotPay has reference materials on limits and card usage. Before use, you need to check what limits are available specifically in your account and whether they can be adjusted to your tasks.

Can the card be added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet?

RedotPay has instructions for Google Pay and Apple Pay, but availability needs to be checked for your country, device, account, and specific card.

Can you pay in regular stores?

If the card is added to a mobile wallet and supported by a specific terminal, it can be used for contactless payment. But before that, you need to check the availability of the function and test the payment.

What crypto assets does RedotPay support?

The official app descriptions list BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and other assets. It is better to check the current list in the app.

Can RedotPay be topped up via USDT?

The RedotPay help center describes topping up via Deposit with a currency choice, such as USDT, and the corresponding network. The main thing is to choose the right network and not send a large amount without testing.

Can RedotPay be topped up with a regular bank or credit card?

RedotPay states that supported cryptocurrencies can be purchased in the app using a credit/debit card and other available payment methods. But a user from Israel needs to check if their specific card goes through, what fees apply, and if there are any bank restrictions.

Is this financial advice?

No. Such material should be an informational overview. The decision to register, top up, purchase digital assets, or use the card is made by the user independently.

Conclusion

RedotPay may be of interest to users in Israel not only as a crypto service but also as a separate virtual card for online payments, advertising, subscriptions, international services, and phone payments.

Its practical value lies in separating expenses and control. The main bank card does not need to be linked to all sites. A separate payment tool can be used for advertising. Limits can be set for subscriptions. A separate card can be kept for online purchases. A wallet, top-up, and supported payment functions can be used for digital assets.

But RedotPay should not be perceived as a “simple card without questions.” It is a service with KYC, fees, limits, rules, supported countries, networks, payment conditions, and possible risks.

Before registration, it is worth calmly checking the conditions, testing a small amount, understanding the limits, understanding the top-up rules, ensuring the availability of Google Wallet or Apple Wallet, and not storing large amounts without understanding all the conditions.

You can register and independently study the terms of RedotPay via the link:

https://url.hk/i/en/0h7rn

The material contains a referral link. If you register through it and fulfill the conditions of RedotPay, the author or editorial team may receive a reward. This is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.

A Jew from Drohobych who became an artist of national revival

Ephraim Moses Lilien was born on May 23, 1874, in Drohobych — a city in Galicia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is the Lviv region of Ukraine. At birth, his name is also indicated as Maurycy Lilien. He died on July 18, 1925, in Badenweiler, Germany, but between these two dates, he managed to travel a path that connected Ukrainian Galicia, European modernism, Jewish culture, Zionism, and the future Israel.

For the section “Jews from Ukraine” Lilien is an almost ideal hero. His biography shows that Jewish history on Ukrainian lands is not only about shtetls, synagogues, pogroms, wars, and tragedies of the 20th century. It is also a powerful contribution to world art, European graphics, the culture of the Jewish national movement, and the visual language without which early Zionism would look different.

He was not born in Jerusalem, Berlin, or Vienna. His first point on the map was Drohobych.

It was from this city that the man later called “the first Zionist artist” emerged. This definition does not mean that there were no artists among Jews before him. It means something else: Lilien was one of the first to turn the idea of Jewish national revival into recognizable images — prophets, exiles, heroes, farmers, people who look not only back to the past but also forward to the future.

Drohobych was not an accidental backdrop. Galicia at the end of the 19th century was a complex space where Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, German-speaking, and Austrian cultural environments coexisted. Here, a talented person could hear different languages, see different religious traditions, and early understand that identity is not a flat scheme but a whole world.

Later, Drohobych will be associated with Bruno Schulz, the Gottlieb brothers, and other names important for European and Jewish memory. Lilien occupies a special place in this row: he became not only an artist of his city or his time but also one of those who helped the Jewish people see themselves in a new historical image.

From a sign maker to European modernism and Zionism

Ukrainian period: Drohobych, Lviv, Krakow, and Lilien’s first steps

Ephraim Moses Lilien was born on May 23, 1874, in Drohobych — then it was Galicia as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the Lviv region of Ukraine. In the Ukrainian context, this is fundamental: his first cultural environment was precisely Galician, Drohobych, multinational.

He grew up in a poor Jewish family.

According to Ukrainian sources, Lilien’s father was a craftsman, a carver, or a turner. The family did not have money for a full gymnasium, so the future artist received primary education in a Jewish real school. It was already clear then that he had artistic abilities.

His first practical skills were not acquired in an academy but in a craft.

Young Lilien worked as an apprentice to a master who dealt with signs and shields. This is an important detail: his path to art began not with salons but with applied urban graphics — letters, lines, decorative forms, signs, the visual language of the street. Later, the sense of line and poster expressiveness would become one of the strong sides of his style.

In 1889, at about 15 years old, Lilien went to study at the Krakow School / Academy of Arts. There he studied painting and graphic techniques until 1893, including under Jan Matejko, one of the greatest artists of the Polish historical school. This stage is still connected with the Galician cultural space: Krakow was then an important artistic center for youth from Galicia.

Due to a lack of money, studies were not calm and continuous. Encyclopedic materials note that financial difficulties forced Lilien to return home and earn as a sign artist.

According to the “Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine,” in 1892–1894, he worked in Drohobych, and later he repeatedly visited and worked in Lviv — in 1894, 1899–1905, 1911, 1914, and 1923.

Thus, Lilien’s Ukrainian period is not only a fact of birth in Drohobych.

It is childhood in Jewish Galicia, early craft school, first earnings, studies in the Krakow artistic environment, and constant returns to the Lviv-Drohobych region. Only later will there be Munich, Berlin, Basel, Herzl, “Bezalel,” and Jerusalem. But the basis of his view — the urban line, Jewish memory, Galician multilingualism, and the sense of cultural borderland — was formed precisely here.

This biography is similar to the path of many talented people from Galicia: first a provincial town, then a craft, then an art school, then major European centers. But Lilien did not dissolve in the European environment. On the contrary, it was there that he turned the Jewish theme into a modern artistic language.

He worked in the aesthetics of Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil — European modernism at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. It was a style of decorative line, symbols, elongated figures, ornaments, strong black-and-white contrast, and almost musical rhythm of composition. But for Lilien, modernism was not just a beautiful form. Through it, he spoke of Jewish memory, exile, biblical past, national dignity, and hope for return.

His graphics were distinguished by a special tension. There was little accidental in them. The line could be soft and decorative, but the meaning often remained heavy: slavery, longing, expectation, spiritual resilience, the movement of people through history.

Lilien became known primarily as a book graphic artist, illustrator, and master of print graphics. His works existed not only in exhibition space. They appeared in books, magazines, albums, postcards, public projects — that is, they became part of mass visual memory. That is why his influence turned out to be broader than that of an artist working only for galleries.

How Lilien came to Zionism: Berlin, 1900, and the people around him

Lilien came to Zionism not through a party career but through the artistic and Jewish intellectual environment.

After studying in Krakow, Vienna, and Munich, he moved to Berlin in 1894. By the late 1890s, Lilien was already known in Berlin’s artistic and bohemian circles as a master of ex-libris, book, and magazine illustrator. At the same time, interest in the idea of “Jewish renaissance” — cultural renewal, which went alongside political Zionism, was growing in the German-speaking Jewish environment.

A key turning point was 1900 when the book “Juda” was published. The texts for it were written by the German poet Börries von Münchhausen, and the illustrations were created by Lilien. This book made him a notable figure among cultural Zionists: in it, Jewish antiquity was shown not as a museum past but as a source of strength, dignity, and national future.

It was after “Juda” that Lilien began to be actively perceived as an artist who could give the Jewish national movement its own visual language. His works were highly appreciated by representatives of cultural Zionism, including the circle of Martin Buber. Buber and cultural Zionists close to him saw in Lilien an artist capable of combining European modernism with the Jewish national idea.

An important figure next to Lilien was also Berthold Feiwel — a publicist, editor, one of the active figures of the Zionist movement. He was connected with circles where not only Herzl’s politics were discussed but also the need for new Jewish culture, literature, and art. Through such an environment, Lilien found himself not on the periphery but at the very center of cultural Zionism.

The next important date is 1901. Lilien participated in the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel and joined the democratic-Zionist faction. It was there that he created the famous image of Theodor Herzl on the balcony of the Les Trois Rois hotel. This portrait became one of the visual icons of political Zionism.

Thus, Lilien’s connection with Zionism became obvious. He was not a politician like Herzl and was not an organizer of the movement in the usual sense. His role was different: he made Zionism visible. Herzl gave the movement a program and a political dream, and Lilien gave this dream a face, a line, a symbol, and emotional strength.

In 1903, another important publication was released — “Lieder des Ghetto” / “Songs of the Ghetto” by Morris Rosenfeld with illustrations by Lilien. These images of poverty, exile, pain, and hope were also used in Zionist visual culture. Through them, Lilien showed the old Jewish world but at the same time hinted at the need to escape humiliation and return to dignity.

A logical continuation was the work with Boris Schatz. In 1904, Lilien, together with him, engaged in the idea of creating a Jewish art school in Jerusalem. In 1905, a society related to the future “Bezalel” project was created in Berlin, and in 1906, Lilien, together with Schatz, came to Jerusalem, helped open the school, taught the first class, and participated in forming its visual direction.

Therefore, Lilien’s path to Zionism can be shown as follows:

1894 — Berlin: entry into Jewish artistic and intellectual circles.

1900 — “Juda”: the first major work after which he began to be perceived as an artist of Jewish national revival.

1901 — Basel: Fifth Zionist Congress, democratic-Zionist faction, famous image of Herzl.

1903 — “Songs of the Ghetto”: visual language of Jewish pain, exile, and hope.

1904–1906 — Boris Schatz and “Bezalel”: transition from European Zionist graphics to an attempt to create Jewish art in Jerusalem.

Thus, it becomes clear that Lilien did not “accidentally find himself next to Zionism.” He entered it through Berlin, through the circles of cultural Zionism, through Martin Buber, Berthold Feiwel, Boris Schatz, through the book “Juda,” the Basel Congress, and the image of Herzl. His contribution was not political but visual: he helped Zionism see itself.

Why Lilien is called the first Zionist artist

At the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century, Zionism was not only a political movement. It needed a language. Not only the language of speeches, programs, and congresses but also the language of images. What does Jewish return look like? How to present Zion to a person who has never seen Eretz-Israel? How to show not only the suffering of exile but also the dignity of a people who want to become the subject of their own history again?

Lilien gave this movement a strong visual form.

The National Library of Israel directly calls him “the first Zionist artist.” Materials about him emphasize that his turn to Zionist art is associated with the Fifth Zionist Congress.

It is important to understand: he did not “create Zionism.” Zionism as a political movement had its leaders, ideologists, organizers, congresses, and institutions. But Lilien helped make Zionism visible. He gave it faces, lines, symbols, poses, biblical depth, and modern artistic energy.

In his works, the Jew was no longer just an image of an exile or a victim. He could be a prophet, a warrior, a farmer, a thinker, a builder of the future. This was fundamentally important for an era when the Jewish national movement was trying to create a new image of itself.

In this sense, Lilien worked not just as an illustrator. He worked as an artist of national imagination.

Herzl in Basel: a portrait that became almost an icon

The most famous visual episode in Lilien’s biography is associated with Theodor Herzl.

In 1901, during the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Lilien made the famous image of Herzl on the balcony of the Les Trois Rois hotel. Herzl stands by the railing and looks into the distance, at the Rhine. This photograph became one of the most recognizable images of political Zionism. The Jewish Museum of Switzerland describes it as a postcard with a reproduction of Ephraim Moses Lilien’s photograph “Theodor Herzl in Basel, 1901“.

The strength of this portrait is not only that it depicts Herzl. The strength is in the composition. He looks not like an ordinary congress participant but like a person looking into the future. In this image, there is loneliness, a prophetic pose, anxiety, and confidence at the same time.

And here it is important to remember: one of the main visual symbols of the Zionist movement is associated with an artist from Drohobych.

Lilien did not just press the camera button. He knew how to see the symbol. He understood how to create an image of an era from a real person. That is why Herzl on the balcony became more than a portrait. It became a visual formula for the dream of a Jewish future.

There is another important detail. Lilien often used Herzl’s features as a model for the image of the “new Jew.” In Herzl, he saw not only a politician but also a type of face that could be turned into an artistic sign of national revival.

Main works of Lilien: from “Juda” to “Songs of the Ghetto”

Lilien is known not for one work. His legacy includes book graphics, biblical illustrations, Zionist symbols, photographs, portraits, and projects related to Jewish culture at the beginning of the 20th century.

“Juda”: ancient history as an image of the future

One of Lilien’s key works was the 1900 edition of Juda — a book of ballads on Old Testament themes by the German poet Börries von Münchhausen with illustrations by Lilien. Encyclopedic sources note that it was this project that helped turn him into one of the main artists of the Zionist theme; the Israel Museum writes that the illustrations for this book almost immediately made Lilien an outstanding Zionist artist.

Why is this important?

Because in Juda, the ancient history of Israel was presented not as a dead past. It looked like a source of strength. Biblical characters in Lilien’s work were not museum figures. They were strong, monumental, almost modern. In them, a reader at the beginning of the 20th century could see not only a religious plot but also a national idea.

This was an important step: Jewish antiquity became the language of the future.

“Lieder des Ghetto”: the pain of exile and the dignity of the people

Another important project is Lieder des Ghetto, or “Songs of the Ghetto,” illustrations for the German translation of poems by Morris Rosenfeld. This cycle became one of the most famous in Lilien’s legacy. It features themes of poverty, labor, exile, suffering, social pain, and hope.

For the Ukrainian context, there is an additional bridge here. Morris Rosenfeld was a Jewish poet writing in Yiddish, and Ivan Franko translated his texts into Ukrainian. Therefore, around “Songs of the Ghetto,” an amazing cultural connection arises: Jewish poetry, a world-class Ukrainian translator, and an artist from Drohobych who creates strong visual images for these motifs.

This does not mean that Franko and Lilien worked together on one project. But it shows how close intellectual and artistic intersections could be in the Eastern European Jewish-Ukrainian space.

Biblical illustrations: the past as the energy of return

Lilien worked a lot with biblical plots. He was interested in prophets, patriarchs, exodus, land, exile, struggle, spiritual mission. In such works, he did not just illustrate the text. He created an image of Jewish history as a continuous line leading from antiquity to modern national awakening.

Researchers note that in Lilien’s biblical graphics, the past is often presented as majestic and alive, resonating with the ideas of spiritual and artistic revival.

In his work, a biblical hero could look like a person already belonging to the modern world. This was Lilien’s special strength: he did not leave Jewish history in the past. He translated it into the language of his time.

Images worth remembering

Among the well-known works and motifs of Lilien, “The Queen of Sabbath,” “The Silent Song,” “Zion,” images of the victims of the Kishinev pogrom, biblical scenes with Abraham, Joshua, Balaam, and other characters are often mentioned. In these works, it is visible how the artist combined the decorativeness of modernism with heavy historical memory.

His art was beautiful but not easy.

Lilien and “Bezalel”: from Drohobych to Jerusalem

Another important chapter is Lilien’s connection with Jerusalem and the “Bezalel” art school.

In 1906, he, together with Boris Schatz, was involved in the creation of the “Bezalel” Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. The National Library of Israel notes Lilien’s participation in the trip to Eretz-Israel with Schatz and associates him with the school’s emblem.

Yes, his stay in Jerusalem was not long. But even short participation had symbolic significance. Lilien found himself next to one of the first institutional projects of Jewish art education in Eretz-Israel.

This was a path that beautifully fits into one line: Drohobych gave him a start, Krakow and Munich — a school, Berlin — an artistic scene, Basel — a Zionist symbol, Jerusalem — a connection with future Israeli art.

For the Israeli audience, this line is especially important. Lilien was not just a “Jewish artist from Europe.” He was one of those who helped form the visual ground on which the art of Eretz-Israel and Israel later developed.

Ukrainian trace: why Lilien is important not only to Israel

In the Ukrainian perspective, Lilien is important as part of the multinational heritage of Galicia.

He was born on the territory of modern Ukraine. His early environment — Drohobych, Galicia, the Jewish community, the Austro-Hungarian cultural world. His path shows that Ukrainian land gave the world people who influenced not only local history but also world culture.

Such biographies are especially important today when Ukraine is rethinking its own complex memory. Russian propaganda has been trying for decades to simplify Ukrainian history, presenting it as flat, secondary, or artificial. But stories like Lilien’s biography show the opposite: Ukraine was and remains a space of many cultural lines.

Here lived and created Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, Germans, Crimean Tatars, and other peoples. Their heritage does not cancel Ukrainian identity. On the contrary, it shows its depth.

Lilien is not a “foreign” figure for Ukrainian memory. He is a Jewish artist from Drohobych, a son of Galicia, a person whose biography connects a Ukrainian city with Berlin, Basel, and Jerusalem.

For NANovosti — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency, such stories are especially important because they help see Ukrainian-Israeli connections not only through diplomacy, war, and politics but also through a deeper layer — memory, culture, art, family roots, and the shared history of the Jewish people in Ukraine.

Lilien, Franko, Lesya Ukrainka: invisible cultural threads

In recent years, Lilien’s name in Ukraine is increasingly spoken of not only as a Zionist artist but also as a figure that can be placed alongside Ukrainian intellectual pursuits at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries.

Here an interesting connection arises: Lilien, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka.

At first glance, these are different worlds. Franko — a Ukrainian writer, thinker, translator, and public figure. Lesya Ukrainka — one of the key figures of Ukrainian literature, author of dramatic and poetic texts about freedom, strength of spirit, captivity, dignity, and resistance. Lilien — a Jewish graphic artist associated with modernism and Zionism.

But if you look deeper, there are indeed “invisible threads” between them.

All three lived in an era when the peoples of Eastern Europe were searching for the language of their own dignity. All three worked differently with themes of freedom, national awakening, historical memory, spiritual strength, and resistance to humiliation. For Franko, it was word and thought. For Lesya Ukrainka — dramatic energy and inner freedom. For Lilien — line, image, symbol, the face of a new person.

It is especially interesting that Lilien and Franko meet through the theme of Morris Rosenfeld. Lilien illustrated “Songs of the Ghetto,” and Franko translated Rosenfeld into Ukrainian. This is one of those cultural bridges that are rarely visible in school textbooks but are important for understanding the true depth of the Ukrainian-Jewish space.

What image of a Jew did Lilien create

Before the era of Zionism, European art often depicted Jews through an outsider’s view. These could be stereotypes, religious caricatures, images of poverty, alienation, or exoticism. Lilien offered a different image.

In his work, the Jew is not an object of someone else’s observation but a subject of his own history.

He can suffer but does not disappear. He can be an exile but does not lose dignity. He can remember destruction but look forward. He is connected with the Bible but does not get stuck in the past. He is modern, strong, beautiful, tragic, and aimed at return.

This is the essence of his Zionist graphics.

Lilien did an important thing: he visually restored the dignity of the Jewish body, the Jewish face, the Jewish memory. His heroes often look monumental. They possess a strength that was so lacking in European stereotypes of the ‘weak’ or ‘landless’ Jew.

Therefore, his works were important not only as art. They participated in the creation of a new self-perception.

Why Lilien is important for Israel today

For Israel, Ephraim Moshe Lilien is part of the early cultural history of Zionism. He lived before the creation of the State of Israel but worked with images that helped make this future imaginable, visible, and emotionally convincing.

Herzl gave Zionism a political language. Congress organizers gave it structure. Settlers and builders gave it practical form on the ground. And artists like Lilien gave it a face.

Without images, a national movement remains a program. With images, it becomes part of memory.

That is why Lilien is important not only to art historians. He is important to everyone who wants to understand how the Jewish idea of return became not only a text but also a picture, a symbol, a postcard, an emblem, an illustration, a portrait.

He is also important because his biography reminds us: part of Israel’s cultural roots pass through the cities of modern Ukraine — through Drohobych, Lviv, Odessa, Chernivtsi, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Uman, Berdychiv, and many other places.

Why Lilien is important for Ukraine today

For Ukraine, Lilien is part of a reclaimed memory.

For a long time, many Jewish names associated with Ukrainian cities were perceived separately: as the history of ‘Jews of Eastern Europe,’ but not as part of the Ukrainian cultural landscape. Today, such an approach no longer works. If a person was born in Drohobych, studied, formed in the Galician environment, absorbed its multilingualism, and then influenced world art, it is impossible to erase him from the Ukrainian cultural map.

Lilien helps Ukraine speak about itself more honestly and deeply.

Not as a monotonous territory where there was only one line of history, but as a complex European space where different peoples created a common cultural fabric. This is especially important during the war when Ukraine defends not only its territory but also its right to its own memory.

Russia tries to destroy Ukrainian cities, erase archives, kill people, destroy cultural symbols, and impose an imperial version of the past. In response, Ukraine reclaims names, places, languages, and destinies that prove: its history is much richer than any imperial schemes.

Ephraim Moshe Lilien is one of those names.

Finale: an artist from Ukraine who helped the Jewish people see themselves

Ephraim Moshe Lilien lived only 51 years. But his path turned out to be surprisingly rich. He was born in Drohobych, went through European art schools, became a master of modernism, joined the circle of Jewish intellectuals and Zionists, created iconic illustrations, photographed Herzl in Basel, and was connected with the artistic beginnings of Jerusalem.

He was called the first Zionist artist not because he was the only one. But because he was one of the first to give the Jewish national revival a coherent artistic image.

Lilien helped the Jewish people see themselves not only through the pain of exile but also through dignity, beauty, strength, memory, and hope.

And in this, there is a special Ukrainian note. One of the artists who created the face of early Zionism was born in Ukrainian Drohobych. His line went from Galicia to Basel and Jerusalem. Therefore, his name rightfully belongs to several stories at once — Jewish, Ukrainian, European, and Israeli.

For the section ‘Jews from Ukraine‘, Ephraim Moshe Lilien is not just the biography of an outstanding artist. It is proof that Ukrainian land gave the Jewish world people who changed not only the culture of their time but also how an entire people envisioned their own future.

Man-bridge: Drohobych — Berlin — Basel — Jerusalem — Braunschweig

The biography of Ephraim Moshe Lilien is most accurately described not by a straight line ‘Drohobych — Jerusalem,’ but by a route through several cultural centers: Drohobych, Berlin, Basel, Jerusalem, and Braunschweig.

Lilien was born on May 23, 1874, in Drohobych — then it was Galicia within Austria-Hungary, today the Lviv region of Ukraine. It was there that the path of the artist began, who would later become one of the main visual authors of early Zionism.

After his first steps in the craft and studies in Krakow, his road went through Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. In 1894, Lilien moved to Berlin, where he became known as a book graphic artist, illustrator, photographer, and master of modernism.

A key date is 1901. During the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Lilien created the famous image of Theodor Herzl on the balcony of the hotel Les Trois Rois. This portrait became one of the visual icons of political Zionism.

In 1906, Lilien found himself in Jerusalem and was associated with the early history of the Bezalel School of Arts, created by Boris Schatz. He did not just ‘visit’ Eretz Israel: Lilien participated in launching a new Jewish art school, taught the first class, helped set its visual direction, and, according to the National Library of Israel, created the design of the Bezalel emblem.

His task was not only pedagogical. Lilien helped connect biblical plots, the Zionist idea of return, and the language of European modernism. Through him, early Bezalel received not just a curriculum but an artistic idea: Jewish art should speak of the past but look to the future.

In Eretz Israel, he also worked as a photographer. In 1906, Lilien photographed Jerusalem, the country’s inhabitants, types, and scenes around the new school: among the known subjects are a Yemenite Jew, Samaritan high priest Amram ben Yitzhak, an Arab figure in an abaya, as well as the Bezalel drawing class. This is important: Lilien looked at the country not only as a Zionist artist but also as a visual witness of the era.

However, Jerusalem did not become his permanent home. Already in 1907, Lilien returned to Berlin but continued to visit Palestine. Sources usually indicate that between 1906 and 1918 he was there four times. One of the subsequent trips was related to World War I: Lilien served in the Austrian military press corps as a war photographer.

In the same 1906, he married Helene Magnus from a Jewish family in Braunschweig. Therefore, after his death on July 18, 1925, in Badenweiler, Lilien was buried not in Jerusalem but in the Jewish cemetery in Braunschweig.

Thus, his map looks briefly: Drohobych, 1874 — Berlin, 1894 — Basel, 1901 — Jerusalem, 1906 — Palestine, trips until 1918 — Braunschweig, 1925.

Drohobych gave him roots, Europe — an artistic language, Basel — a place next to Herzl, Jerusalem — a connection with Bezalel, and Braunschweig became the last point of his earthly journey.

Ephraim Moshe Lilien is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Braunschweig, Germany, next to his wife Helene. His tombstone is made based on his own illustration ‘Cemetery’ / ‘Friedhof’ for Morris Rosenfeld’s book ‘Lieder des Ghetto.’ In this illustration, Lilien depicted a tombstone with his name in advance — and after his death, this artistic image was brought to reality.

Read more – in the section ‘Jews from Ukraine‘.

At one time, humorous images of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wearing an embroidered shirt were popular on Ukrainian social networks.

The combination of American-Jewish Zuckerberg and a traditional Ukrainian shirt looks funny, although in fact it is possible. After all, the ancestors of FB’s “father” come from Ukraine, namely from the Lviv region.

Historians have found evidence of the Ukrainian-Jewish roots of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. As part of the study of archival records, it became known that his ancestors came from the city of Rozdol, Lviv region.

Ukrainian-Jewish origins of Mark Zuckerberg's family: archival finds

History of ancestors: discovery of archival documents

Historical research published on the website “JewishNews“, revealed that the roots of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stretch to Western Ukraine. The discovery became possible thanks to the work of Ukrainian historian Oksana Lobko within the framework of the project “Mandri Rozdilski”. Archival records from Lviv and Warsaw showed that Zuckerberg's ancestors lived in the city of Rozdol, located 40 kilometers from Lviv.

Road to America: how the Zuckerbergs left Ukraine

Research shows that Zuckerberg's great-grandfather, Isaac Zuckerberg, was born in Rozdol in 1866. As JewishNews points out, his parents, Sender and Ruhel Grunshtein, were engaged in trading activities and had 11 children. The family bore the surname Zucker, which after emigrating to the United States was changed to Zuckerberg – which translates as “sugar mountain” (Ukrainian “tsukrova gora”, “sugar” in Ukrainian “tsukor”).

The family emigrated to America at the end of the 19th century, and according to archival data, Isaac left Europe at the age of 27, arriving in New York in 1893. At that time, the family had already adapted their surname to American pronunciation, which was one of the steps towards assimilation in the new country.

“Mark Zuckerberg’s ancestry in Ukrainian lands highlights the multifaceted history of the Jews of Ukraine and their contribution to world culture,” quote NAnews“.

Zuckerberg family tree

The path of the Zuckerberg family continued through a generation: one of Isaac’s sons, Max, married a native of the Ternopil region – Mana (Minni) Wiesenthal, a native of the village of Skala-Podilskaya. Their son Jack became Mark Zuckerberg's grandfather.

Archival finds: evidence of Ukrainian roots

An important confirmation of the Ukrainian origin of the Zuckerberg family was an archival document found in the newspaper “Gazeta Lvivska”. He points out that in 1902, the district court of the city of Nikolaev tried to find Isaac Zuckerberg in connection with the death of his mother Ruhel Grunshtein. This recording became another significant evidence of the family ties of the founder of Facebook with Ukraine.

“These archival finds add a new layer to the historical picture of Jewish life in Ukraine and show how far and deep the roots of this culture go,” Jewish News emphasizes.

Possible connections with other cities

Historians have also hypothesized that the Zuckerberg family could be connected to other cities in Western Ukraine. In particular, it is assumed that the ancestors could have come from Drohobych, where the Zuckerbergs also lived. However, there is no exact confirmation of this information yet, and the research is ongoing.

The significance of the discovery for Ukrainian-Jewish history

The research, conducted with the participation of Oksana Lobko, opened an important page in the history of the Jewish people on Ukrainian soil. The story of Zuckerberg's ancestors is not only an interesting fact about the famous entrepreneur, but also part of a larger picture showing the significant influence of the Jewish community in Ukraine.

What does he think? NAnewssuch finds help strengthen cultural ties and remind us of the centuries-old history of the Jewish presence on the territory of Ukraine.

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In 1734, the founder of Hasidism settled in Tovstom Israel ben EliezerIt is believed that It was here that he received his second name, Baal Shem Tov (abbreviated as Besht) and became known as a tzaddik and healer.

In his new article “Ukraine Incognita” revealed little-known facts about the Jewish history of the village of Tovste (Ukrainian: Товсто), which is in the Ternopil region. For those interested — here it is on the map.

This village is not as well known to travelers as Zalishchyky, Gorodenka or Chortkiv, but, according to researchers, it is no less interesting and definitely deserves attention.

In Hasidism this is called the “Besht's revelation.”that is, the moment when he revealed to people his true face as a great tzaddik.

Hasidic traditions describe it this way:

“Then he (Israel ben Eliezer) settled in the holy community of Tlusta, where he was also a melamed (teacher in a cheder – religious school), and could not gather a minyan in his home, but received people and prayed with them.

He wore a “tuzlik” (Ukrainian) (a woolen bag for salt), and his toes stuck out of the holes in his shoes, because he was very poor. He used to immerse himself in the mikvah even in the month of Tevet (December-January according to the Gregorian calendar), and sweat would come out in drops the size of peas. Then people began to come to him, but he did not want to receive them.

One day, a madman or madwoman was brought to him, and he refused to let them in. At night, he was told that he had turned 36. In the morning, he began to count and discovered that this was indeed true. He accepted the madman, cured him, and left his occupation as a melamed, taking my father-in-law, of blessed memory, as a sofer. People from different places began to come to him.”

The term “baal-shem” was used by the people to refer to a person who knows the hidden name of God, has the power and means (“kelim”) with which he can address the Almighty. In another meaning, among Kabbalists, “baal-shem” is someone who uses the formulas of magic (practical Kabbalah) and natural remedies for healing. Baal Shem began as a professional healer, combining the knowledge of a doctor, psychologist and folk healer. He treated infertility, mental illness, exorcised demons and devils, and made amulets and potions.

Besht lived in Tlust (as Tovsta was called until 1944) almost until his move to Medzhybizh.

Hasidic traditions should be treated with great caution, as they contain many frankly fabulous and logical inconsistencies. But the fact remains that Hasidism, as a new religious movement, originated in Tovstom.

By 1930, the local Jewish community numbered 2,600 people, more than two-thirds of the entire population of the village. But by 1939, it had significantly decreased to 1,196 people.

The German occupation put an end to the history of the Jewish community of Tlusty. The Nazis created a ghetto in the village, where, in addition to locals, they drove Jews from neighboring Zalishchyky, Horodenka, Yagilnitsa, Chortkiv and others.

On May 27 and June 6, 1943, the entire population of the ghetto was exterminated in two mass executions. Taking into account the executions of previous years, almost 5,000 people were tortured in the village in total.

Traces of this tragedy can be seen in the old Jewish cemetery. In addition to the mass graves of the tortured, there are bullet holes on the matzevah gravestones.

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This is not just about relocating two old graves. Israeli and Zionist organizations call this the completion of a historical and family circle: the relatives of the man who formulated the political program for the creation of a Jewish state, after almost a century and a half, are to find their final resting place next to him in Jerusalem.

NANews — News of Israel compiled a detailed chronology of the operation, information about the Herzl family, and an explanation of the connection his grandfather had to early ideas of the Jewish people’s return to the Land of Israel.

The remains were exhumed on July 29, 2026.

Shimon-Leib and Rivka Herzl were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Zemun — a historic town that is now a district of Belgrade.

July 29, 2026 their remains were exhumed for subsequent transportation to Israel. The work was carried out in accordance with local legal requirements and Jewish religious tradition.

Representatives of the World Zionist Organization, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Israeli volunteer organization ZAKA, whose specialists are engaged in the search, identification, and dignified burial of remains, participated in the procedure. After the exhumation was completed, the remains were placed in specially prepared coffins.

According to the World Zionist Organization, the preparation of the operation took about four years. During this time, it was necessary to obtain permits from Serbian state and municipal authorities, coordinate religious procedures, and ensure the legally correct transportation of the remains from one country to another.

From Zemun to Pest: the family in which Theodor Herzl was born.

Shimon-Leib and Rivka Herzl were the grandparents of Theodor Herzl on his father’s side. They lived in Zemun, which today is a district of Belgrade, and belonged to the local Jewish community. Shimon-Leib was a religious Jew, a merchant, and a respected member of the community. He blew the shofar during services and was close to Rabbi Yehuda Shlomo Alkalai — one of the forerunners of political Zionism, who called on Jews to organize a return to the Land of Israel.

It is believed that through Shimon-Leib, Alkalai’s ideas could have entered the Herzl family environment and later influenced the worldview of his grandson Theodor. However, there is no direct documentary evidence that Herzl personally studied with Alkalai. Shimon-Leib died in 1879, Rivka in 1888. They were buried next to each other in the Jewish cemetery in Zemun.

Their son Jakob Herzl, the future father of Theodor, was born and raised in Zemun. Around the mid-19th century, as a young man, he left his parental home and engaged in trade. For some time, Jakob may have lived and worked in Debrecen, and around 1856 he settled in Pest — a city that later became part of the united Budapest.

In 1857 Jakob married a native of Pest, Jeanette, or Johanna Nanette, Diamant, who came from a wealthy Jewish merchant family. Details of their acquaintance and wedding have hardly been preserved. After marriage, the couple settled in Pest, where Jakob was engaged in trade and financial affairs.

First, they had a daughter Paulina, and on May 2, 1860 — a son, Theodor Herzl. He was born in a house near the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street, in the Jewish quarter of Pest. At that time, the unified city of Budapest did not yet exist: Buda, Pest, and Obuda united only in 1873.

Thus, the Herzl family history began in the Jewish community of Zemun: Shimon-Leib and Rivka raised their son Jakob, Jakob moved to Pest and married Jeanette Diamant, and in their family, Theodor Herzl was born — the future founder of modern political Zionism.

Farewell ceremony at Belgrade airport.

July 30, 2026 an official farewell ceremony took place at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade.

It was attended by Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric, Israeli Ambassador to Serbia Avivit Bar-Ilan, Chairman of the World Zionist Organization Yaakov Hagoel, and Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Serbia Isaac Asiel.

The ceremony was accompanied by prayers and the participation of an honor guard. The Serbian Foreign Minister stated that the transfer of the remains should become another chapter in the history of relations between Serbia and Israel.

Ambassador Avivit Bar-Ilan called the event both a personal and historical event. She reminded that for over a hundred years, the Jewish community of Zemun preserved the graves of the Herzl family, and now Shimon and Rivka are embarking on their final journey to Jerusalem.

Yaakov Hagoel thanked the Serbian authorities for their help in implementing the project and linked the transfer of the remains to Theodor Herzl’s last will — after the creation of the Jewish state, his family was to be buried in the Land of Israel.

Key dates

Why the ceremony will take place on August 5

The official reburial is scheduled for August 5, 2026, at 5:00 PM at the site of the leaders of the World Zionist Organization on Mount Herzl.

The ceremony is expected to be attended by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yaakov Hagoel, and other state and public figures. Access is provided by prior registration.

The organizers’ messages state that the ceremony will take place exactly 77 years after the transfer of Theodor Herzl’s remains to Jerusalem. However, according to the regular civil calendar, Herzl was reburied on August 17, 1949, not August 5.

The explanation is related to the Jewish calendar. Herzl’s reburial took place on 22 Av 5709, and August 5, 2026, corresponds to 22 Av 5786. Thus, it is the 77th anniversary according to the Jewish date. The Israeli law of 1949 explicitly established the day of Herzl’s will execution as 22 Av 5709 — August 17, 1949.

How Herzl’s grandfather was connected to early Zionism

Shimon-Leib Herzl was a prominent member of the Jewish community of Zemun. He performed the duties of baal-tokea — the person who blows the shofar during religious services.

His connection with Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, one of the most famous forerunners of political Zionism, is particularly important. Alkalai, long before the First Zionist Congress, spoke about the need for an organized return of Jews to the Land of Israel, the acquisition of land, and the formation of national institutions.

Shimon-Leib blew the shofar in Rabbi Alkalai’s synagogue and is believed to have introduced his grandson to his ideas. Representatives of the World Zionist Organization claim that the grandparents played a significant role in Theodor Herzl’s childhood and the formation of his future worldview.

At the same time, this connection should be formulated cautiously. The historical closeness of Shimon-Leib to Alkalai is confirmed, but there is insufficient direct evidence that the young Herzl personally studied with the rabbi or adopted a ready political program from him.

Rather, it is about a family intellectual environment in which the ideas of returning to Zion were present even before Herzl turned them into an international political project.

Theodor Herzl

Theodor, or Binyamin Ze’ev, Herzl was born on May 2, 1860 in Budapest. He received a legal education but professionally engaged in journalism, literature, and playwriting.

February 14, 1896 Herzl published the book “The Jewish State,” in which he proposed considering the Jewish question not only as a religious or social problem but as a political task requiring the creation of an independent state.

In August 1897 he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel. At it, the Zionist Organization was founded, later becoming the World Zionist Organization, and Herzl was elected its president.

Herzl died on July 3, 1904, 44 years before the proclamation of the State of Israel. Therefore, the common definition “founder of Israel” is a journalistic simplification. It is more accurate to call him the founder of modern political Zionism and the herald of the Jewish state.

Herzl’s will and the path of his family to Jerusalem

In his will, Herzl asked to be buried next to his father in Vienna first. There he was to remain until the Jewish people could transport his remains to the Land of Israel.

After the creation of the State of Israel, the first Knesset passed a special law to fulfill Herzl’s will. In August 1949 his remains were brought from Vienna to Jerusalem and buried on the hill, which later became the country’s main national memorial complex.

The remains of Herzl’s parents and sister were also transferred to Jerusalem. However, the family’s reunification stretched over decades.

In September 2006 his children Paulina and Hans were reburied on Mount Herzl. In December 2007 the remains of Herzl’s only grandson, Stephen Theodor Norman, previously buried in Washington, were brought there.

After the burial of Shimon-Leib and Rivka next to Theodor Herzl, the graves of almost all the closest family members, whose remains were found and transferred, will be located.

Why this event is important for Israel

The history of the Herzl family symbolically connects several eras: the traditional Jewish community of Central Europe, early religious ideas of returning to Zion, the birth of political Zionism, and the modern State of Israel.

Shimon-Leib and Rivka died long before the First Zionist Congress, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust of European Jewry, and the proclamation of Israel. However, it was in the family they were part of that a man grew up who managed to turn a centuries-old dream into a political program.

Therefore, the reburial on August 5, 2026, is presented by the organizers not only as a family ceremony. It is a state and national act of remembrance, in which Herzl’s ancestors will be buried in the country, the creation of which during their lifetime could only be dreamed of.

For NANews — News of Israel, this story is also important as a reminder: the creation of the state was the result of not one decision or one generation. Behind it stood a long chain of religious ideas, family memory, political work, and responsibility to those who did not live to see the realization of the Zionist project.

David Horowitz is a name that represents an incredible journey from the small town of Drohobych on the territory of modern Ukraine to the leadership of the financial system of the state of Israel.

His life's journey, full of challenges and achievements, continues to inspire generations.

David Horowitz was born on February 15, 1899 in the city of Drohobych, which at that time was part of Austria-Hungary, and later became part of Western Ukraine.

The region, known for its ethnic and cultural diversity, played an important role in shaping the young Horowitz's worldview.

Drohobych of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a city with an active Jewish community, which made up about 40% of the population. The Jews of Drohobych were engaged in trade, crafts and art; there were synagogues, schools and cultural centers in the city. It was here that David Horowitz absorbed a love for Jewish traditions and developed an interest in the ideas of Zionism.

Impact of the events of the First World War

David's childhood was spent in conditions of instability. The outbreak of World War I forced the Horowitz family to leave Drohobych and move to Vienna. This forced move became the first big test for young David, who early learned to be independent. In Vienna, he began working selling newspapers to help his family, which strengthened his character.

After the end of the war, the family returned to Lviv, where David continued his studies at the gymnasium. It was here that he began to actively participate in the Zionist movement, which was especially popular among the Jewish youth of Galicia.

“Hashomer ha-tzair”: the beginning of the path to Eretz Israel

Zionist ideas swept Eastern Galicia at the beginning of the 20th century, and David Horowitz became one of the leading representatives of the movement. In 1918, he and like-minded people founded the youth movement Hashomer Hatzair (Young Guardian). The first congress of the movement took place in Tarnov, and the second in Lvov, which indicates the important role of Galicia as a center of Jewish youth activity.

Young Zionists like David saw their mission as reviving Jewish life in Palestine. They sought to create a new society based on equality, work and national identity. In 1920, David Horowitz, along with a group of 131 participants, immigrated to Eretz Israel. These young people, leaving the comfortable conditions of city life in Galicia, became pioneers in the construction of the Jewish state.

Beitaniya Ilit: the beginning of the Zionist kibbutz movement

Beitaniya Illit, or Upper Beitaniya, was one of the first communes in Eretz Israel, created by members of the Hashomer Hatzair movement in 1920. This unique experiment was located on the mountain slopes near Lake Kinneret, where young Zionists from Galicia began to build their new future. The 131-member group, having left a comfortable life in Europe, chose hard work and spartan conditions to realize their dream of reviving Jewish society.

Upper Beytaniya (Beytaniya-Ilit) was a unique project in which most of the participants were indeed Jews from Ukrainian Galicia. These young idealists formed the core of the group that gathered to create the first kibbutz of the Hashomer Hatzair movement. All of them were activists inspired by Zionist ideals and came to Eretz Israel in 1920.

Who were the participants from Ukraine?

Among the leaders and participants who came from Galicia (the territory of modern Ukraine), the following names can be distinguished:

1. Dov Opper from Zolochev – one of the prominent leaders of the group.
2. Arie Alweil from Bibrka – an active organizer of the movement.
3. Meir Wald from near Przemysl – a leader who inspired the participants.
4. Benjamin Freivogel from Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) – one of the leading ideologists.
5. Milek Goldstein from Podvolochisk, near Ternopil – an active participant in the commune.
6. David Horowitz from Drohobych – future economist and president of the Bank of Israel, who in his youth was an important figure in the project.
7. Aba Shneller from Turki, Lviv region – participant in the first “Galician landing”.

These people were driven by the idea of ​​​​creating a New Man – a free Jew, capable of working on his historical land. Many of them left a significant mark on the history of Israel, becoming political, social and military leaders.

Ukrainian connection

Most of the kibbutz members come from small towns and villages in Galicia, such as Zolochev, Bibrka, Drohobych and Stanislavov. At the beginning of the twentieth century, these cities were centers of Jewish culture, where young people actively participated in the Zionist movement. It was Ukrainian Galicia that became the starting point for the formation of the first Zionist communes, which made this region key in the history of Zionism and the kibbutz movement.

Financial Architect of Israel

Despite having no formal education in economics, David Horowitz became a self-taught man whose knowledge and abilities shaped the future of Israel's financial system.

Key achievements:

1. Management of the Economic Department of the Jewish Agency (1935): Horowitz played an important role in developing the Yishuv's economic policies.
2. First Director General of the Ministry of Finance (1948): He led the process of building the financial infrastructure of the newly formed state.
3. Creation of the Bank of Israel (1954): Horowitz became the first president of a state-owned bank, which he headed for 17 years.

Historical heritage

One of the most important works of David Horowitz was the book “In the Service of a Young State.” In it, he described his relationship with the British Mandate authorities and the challenges facing the Yishuv. This work remains an important source for the study of Israeli history.

The influence of Galicia on the worldview of David Horowitz

Galicia, with its unique mixture of cultures and ethnic diversity, shaped Horowitz's broad worldview. Here he acquired skills in interacting with various communities, which later helped him in building economic and political ties in Israel.

Galicia was also a region where the Jewish community actively developed, despite difficulties. David Horowitz imbibed the entrepreneurial spirit and desire for self-fulfillment that later helped him become an outstanding economist.

Connection with Ukraine: Galicia and the future of Israel

Drohobych and Lvov became for David Horowitz the launching pad for his life's journey. These cities, like the entire region of Galicia, occupied an important place in the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe. This is where many of the leaders of the Zionist movement came from, including David Horowitz, who became a key figure in the creation of Israel's financial system.

Horowitz's story is a striking example of how the Jewish community of Ukraine made significant contributions to the construction of the Jewish state. Within the category “Cycle Jews from Ukraine”website NAnews – Israel News continues to talk about outstanding personalities whose roots are connected with Ukraine.

You can read more in the section “Jews from Ukraine” on our website NAnews.

…

Read on WhatsApp — channel NAnews ↓ — Israel News

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This is not just a historical date — it holds deep significance for the memory of both nations, Ukrainian and Jewish, strengthening historical ties between Israel and Ukraine.

Righteous Among the Nations: Ukrainians Among the Heroes of the Holocaust

According to data from the Israeli National Memorial of Catastrophe and Heroism “Yad Vashem”, to date, 2673 Ukrainians have been awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving Jews during World War II.

The stories of these heroic Ukrainians, as well as much other information, can now be obtained in Ukrainian directly at the Yad Vashem Memorial Complex in Jerusalem.

The Ukrainian-language audio guide started its work as part of the initiative of the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska.

These people made heroic deeds that changed the course of history by saving Jewish lives in the harsh conditions of Nazi repression.

Ukraine ranks fourth in the world in terms of the number of righteous people, surpassed only by Poland, the Netherlands, and France. This great achievement demonstrates the significant contribution of Ukrainians in saving the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Righteous Among the Nations come from more than 50 countries, and the number of those honored with this title continues to grow.

How the Heroes Are Recognized: Righteous People Are Still Being Found

The work of searching for new righteous people continues. It is important to note that many heroes passed away before receiving recognition, as the process of searching for and officially recognizing righteous people in Ukraine only began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet era, the topic of saving Jews was silenced, and any mention of saving Jewish lives was politically sensitive.

Today, the search continues, and many righteous people are still finding recognition thanks to the efforts of Jewish organizations, local communities, and individuals who continue to search for evidence of those who saved lives despite the terrible risks and threats.

Why It’s Important to Keep the Memory Alive?

The Day of Memory for Ukrainians Who Saved Jews was officially established by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 2021. This day emphasizes the importance of preserving the memory of the heroism of those who saved Jewish lives during those horrific years. It is important that the memory of the righteous and those who were saved be passed on to future generations. This is not just historical memory but a lesson for all humanity about the importance of saving lives and fighting against any form of hatred and violence.

The introduction of this day of memory also helps restore historical justice, which was disrupted during the Soviet years when the topics of the Holocaust and saving Jews were not properly recognized. This day, established by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, has become an important step in acknowledging historical responsibility and honoring the heroism of the saviors.

Ukrainians and Jews: Shared Memory of Tragedy

The significance of this day is especially important in the context of relations between Ukraine and Israel. The memory of saving Jews and their heroic saviors strengthens the bonds between the two nations and serves as a reminder of the importance of cooperation in preserving historical truth. It is important that such dates remind us of the price paid by those who could not remain indifferent to the tragedy of others, risking their own lives to save them.

NAnews emphasizes the importance of this day for both countries. Israel and Ukraine, despite political differences, share a common memory of the heroism and courage of those who, despite the threat, saved lives. These historical events should be preserved in memory for many years, so that future generations remember those who became symbols of courage and compassion.

Day of Memory in Israel and Ukraine: Mutual Respect and Recognition

For Israelis, this day holds special significance, as a large number of people of Ukrainian origin live in Israel. They take pride in their heritage and strive to pass on the memory of saving Jews to their children and grandchildren. Israel also actively supports initiatives aimed at preserving the memory of the righteous, and the importance of this day for the Jewish community in Ukraine cannot be overestimated.

It is also a reminder for everyone that heroism knows no borders or affiliation to any state or nation. On days of memory and mourning, it is important to remember the universal values of compassion, help, and salvation, which became the foundation for establishing this important day.

…

Co-author of the project Katerina Trushik:

“We decided to create a Ukrainian YouTube channel in Israel – and our interview section “Know Ours”!
This is a special section that tells the stories of Ukrainians in Israel, Ukrainian Jews, and Israelis who feel deep love and support Ukraine.
We proudly share their stories and achievements.
Don’t miss the fascinating stories of Ukrainians in Israel, Ukrainian Jews, and Israelis who are proud of their cultural heritage and support Ukraine.”

The main character of the pilot episode is the founder of the Ukrainian Salon in Haifa, Pavel Galich.

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For the Israeli audience, there is a particularly important detail in this poster: the tour starts from Israel.

The first concert is scheduled for November 10, 2026 in Tel Aviv, at the Reading 3 club.

The next day, November 11, 2026, the band will perform in Haifa, at the Theatron Hatzafon hall.

Details and tickets are published on the tour page on UNOW: https://unow.com.ua/tour/boombox-eu/

Why this tour starts with special meaning

Boombox is one of the most recognizable Ukrainian musical phenomena of the last two decades.

The band was founded in 2004 and became known for its combination of rock, hip-hop, soul, and live stage energy.

But after February 2022, Boombox’s story gained another dimension.

The band’s leader, Andriy Khlyvnyuk, became one of the voices of Ukrainian resistance.

His a cappella performance of “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow” on Sophia Square in Kyiv became a symbol of Ukraine’s struggle and gained viral popularity far beyond the country’s borders.

This song was picked up by musicians, volunteers, artists, and ordinary people in different countries.

Thus, the Ukrainian melody turned into an international flash mob supporting Ukraine.

Therefore, “Dronotour ’26” is not just a concert route.

It’s a meeting with a band for whom music, stage, donations, merch, and public voice have become part of one big story — a story of help, memory, resistance, and connection with Ukraine.

Boombox concerts in Israel

Tel Aviv — November 10, 2026

The first concert of “Dronotour ’26” will take place in Tel Aviv.

Venue — Reading 3.

The UNOW page for this date lists the starting ticket price — from 249 ILS.

For Israel, this is the main start of the tour: it is from Tel Aviv that the entire Boombox route through European countries begins.

Haifa — November 11, 2026

The second Israeli concert will take place in Haifa.

Venue — Theatron Hatzafon.

The tour page lists the starting ticket price — from 219 ILS.

For northern Israel, this is a separate important date because Haifa traditionally gathers a large audience connected with Ukraine, Ukrainian culture, and the Russian-speaking scene without political slogans, but through music, memory, and personal experience.

Details and tickets are published on the tour page on UNOW: https://unow.com.ua/tour/boombox-eu/

Route of “Dronotour ’26” by cities

Bratislava — November 19, 2026

After the Israeli concerts, the tour will continue in Bratislava.

Venue — MMC.

This date opens the European part of the route after the start in Israel.

Frankfurt — November 21, 2026

The next stop is Frankfurt.

The concert will take place at Haus Sindlingen.

Germany occupies a prominent place in the tour route: several German cities are included in the Boombox poster.

Stuttgart — November 22, 2026

In Stuttgart, the band will perform at LKA Longhorn.

This date follows immediately after Frankfurt and continues the German block of the tour.

Düsseldorf — November 24, 2026

The concert in Düsseldorf is scheduled at Stahlwerk.

In the tour poster, this city is listed as one of the key stops in Germany.

Bremen — November 26, 2026

In Bremen, Boombox will perform at Aladin Music-Hall.

The route in Germany continues almost throughout the second half of November, showing the scale of the band’s audience outside Ukraine.

Dresden — November 27, 2026

The next date is Dresden.

Venue — Club Tante JU.

For Ukrainian listeners in Germany, such concerts often become not only a musical evening but also a meeting of the community, friends, and people with a shared memory of home.

Hanover — November 29, 2026

In Hanover, the concert will take place at Kulturzentrum FaUST.

This date closes another stage of the German part of the route before Hamburg.

Hamburg — November 30, 2026

The last November concert of the tour is announced in Hamburg.

Venue — Grosse Freiheit 36.

After Hamburg, “Dronotour ’26” will move to the December part of the route.

Dublin — December 2, 2026

Boombox will start December in Dublin.

Venue — Opium.

The band’s message separately emphasized that the route goes “from Israel to Germany, from England to Poland, from Ireland to Slovakia and the Czech Republic.”

Dublin just becomes the Irish point of this big tour.

London — December 3, 2026

In London, Boombox will perform at Electric Brixton.

The British date follows immediately after Dublin and is part of the December block of the tour.

Prague — December 5, 2026

In Prague, the concert will take place at SaSaZu.

The Czech Republic became one of the countries on the route where the Ukrainian audience has been particularly noticeable since 2022.

Krakow — December 7, 2026

The Polish part of the tour will start in Krakow.

Venue — Klub Studio.

The UNOW page for this date lists the starting ticket price — from 179 PLN.

Warsaw — December 9, 2026

The final date of the poster is Warsaw.

The concert will take place at Progresja.

The tour page lists the starting price — from 199 PLN.

It is Warsaw that concludes the announced route of “Dronotour ’26”.

What Boombox is bringing to this tour

The tour description states that Boombox will present the maxi-single “Zhiviy“.

The program will also include songs from various albums of the band.

Boombox formulated this very precisely: they will bring a new maxi-single on tour, enhanced by compositions under which listeners grew up, and under which their children are now growing.

This is an important detail.

Boombox has long ceased to be a band of one generation.

For some listeners, this is the music of student years and first concerts.

For others, it is the voice of wartime, a symbol of support for Ukraine, and a reminder that culture can also be a form of resistance.

The band separately addressed listeners with a request to buy tickets in advance, as well as to prepare money for donations and merch.

Therefore, the name “Dronotour” in this poster sounds not like an ordinary marketing move, but as a continuation of the line in which concerts help gather support for Ukraine.

Where to see details and buy tickets

Tickets, prices, cities, and venues are published on the UNOW tour page.

Before purchasing, it is worth carefully checking the city, date, venue, and ticket category.

For Israel, two dates are currently listed in the poster:

November 10, 2026 — Tel Aviv, Reading 3

November 11, 2026 — Haifa, Theatron Hatzafon

Details and tickets are published on the tour page on UNOW: https://unow.com.ua/tour/boombox-eu/

For NAnews readers — Israel News this is one of the main Ukrainian music posters of autumn 2026 in Israel.

Because “Dronotour ’26” starts here — from Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Information about the availability of demonstrations, travel geography, and payment options is provided by the company representative; current conditions should be clarified before contacting.

In a religious or Haredi family, house cleaning is rarely limited to one major campaign a year. Preparation for Shabbat is repeated every week, and throughout the year, it is joined by Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot, and family celebrations.

The larger the family, the harder it is to leave all the work for the last day. The kitchen continues to be used, children move from room to room, festive dishes are prepared, spaces are cleared for guests, and additional sleeping places are organized. A freshly washed floor can get dirty again, and fingerprints quickly appear on glass doors, cabinets, and tables.

For the preparation of this material, Israeli blogger and author of NANews Elena Gunko, who has Ukrainian roots and media experience, spoke with a representative of the GENIUS steam cleaning system. The focus of the conversation was not on advertising promises but on practical questions: what tasks the equipment can really ease, for which surfaces hot steam is not suitable, how to safely use the system in a home with children, and what happens during a free demonstration.

You can clarify the possibility of a free GENIUS home demonstration, available cities, and current payment options on the website: https://green-cleaner.nikk.co.il/

A large house needs a different cleaning order

The usual advice “start cleaning in advance” is of little help to a family where the kitchen operates several times a day, the living room simultaneously serves as a place for rest, study, and children’s games, and the bathroom is constantly used by all family members. During the conversation, the GENIUS representative explained that it is more practical to divide the house into zones and determine in advance which tasks can be completed over several days and which inevitably have to be left for the eve of Shabbat or a holiday.

In advance, you can tidy up window and door tracks, grout lines, space under furniture, guest rooms, and hard-to-reach areas of the kitchen. It is also better to perform work in advance that requires moving tables, chairs, or other pieces of furniture.

Closer to the holiday, floors, sinks, work surfaces, the dining table, the entrance area, and rooms that the family continues to use every day usually remain.

This distribution does not make cleaning instantaneous. But it helps avoid a situation where, in the last few hours, the whole family tries to simultaneously clean the kitchen, prepare rooms, set the table, and make space for guests.

Why the kitchen takes the main load

In a home where large family meals are regularly prepared, the kitchen usually becomes the most challenging area.

Grease settles around the stove and oven, steam rises to the hood and cabinets, crumbs fall under appliances, and dirt gradually darkens in the grout lines between tiles. Cabinet handles, countertop edges, chair legs, and the sides of the refrigerator quickly get dirty.

Before the holiday, attention is most often focused on the countertop, stove, and sink. However, many contaminants remain in window tracks, under the table, around appliances, and in the joints between furniture elements.

The GENIUS representative told Elena Gunko that hot steam can ease the cleaning of some suitable hard surfaces and hard-to-reach places. It helps soften certain types of dirt and reach areas where it is inconvenient to work with a regular sponge or cloth.

At the same time, the result depends not only on the power of the equipment. The material of the surface, the nature of the contamination, the chosen nozzle, and the correct use of the system are important.

For which tasks hot steam can be used

When following the manufacturer’s recommendations, the steam system can be considered an additional tool for regular home maintenance.

This may involve grout lines, window tracks, certain tile areas, the bathroom, suitable kitchen surfaces, some glass elements, and those types of floors for which temperature and moisture exposure is allowed.

The main advantage of this approach is not in trying to clean the entire house in one day. Separate labor-intensive tasks can be distributed throughout the week: today deal with the tracks, in a few days — the bathroom grout, then — a suitable kitchen area.

As a result, preparation for Shabbat or a holiday begins not with dirt accumulated over several months, but with regular tidying up.

Which surfaces require caution

During the conversation, limitations were discussed separately. There is no universal mode suitable for absolutely all materials.

Natural wood, some types of laminate, painted coatings, adhesive joints, and delicate upholstery may be sensitive to high temperature and moisture. Damage may not appear immediately: the material can change color, deform, lose its protective coating, or start to delaminate.

Before treatment, it is necessary to check the manufacturer’s recommendations for the surface and test the impact on a small inconspicuous area. The steam jet should not be held in one spot for too long.

The fact that the system operates on water does not mean it can be used without checking on any furniture, floor, textile, or kitchen equipment.

Can household chemicals be completely abandoned

In a home with children, not only cleanliness matters but also the ability to quickly return the room to regular use. After using some strong agents, the kitchen or bathroom may need to be ventilated, and treated surfaces additionally rinsed with water.

The steam system operates on water and, when performing suitable tasks, can reduce the need for some traditional household chemicals.

However, it is not about completely abandoning cleaning agents. Some stains require special compositions, and certain surfaces cannot be safely treated with hot steam.

You can clarify the possibility of a free GENIUS home demonstration, available cities, and current payment options on the website: https://green-cleaner.nikk.co.il/

Therefore, it is wiser to evaluate each task individually. When dirt can be removed with water and steam, there is no need to automatically apply a strong-smelling agent. If the material or stain requires special treatment, the manufacturer’s recommendations should be followed.

How to safely use the system in a home with children

The system should be used by an adult. Children and pets should be kept at a safe distance from the hot steam jet, heated nozzles, and the equipment itself during operation.

During the demonstration, it is important to ask the representative to show how to prepare the device for operation, correctly install the nozzle, hold the hose, stop the steam supply, and clean the equipment after use.

It is also necessary to find out:

• how long it takes for the system to heat up and cool down;
• which surfaces are prohibited from being treated;
• how to change nozzles;
• whether water can be added during operation;
• what actions can damage the equipment;
• where special caution should be exercised.

Safety should be more important than cleaning speed.

How preparation changes before Jewish holidays

Each holiday has its own household tasks. Therefore, there is no single cleaning plan for the entire year.

Rosh Hashanah

Before Rosh Hashanah, the main focus is on the kitchen, festive table, chairs, living room, bathrooms, and rooms where relatives will stay overnight.

If guests are expected, it is advisable to complete deep kitchen cleaning before the active preparation of festive dishes begins. Bedding and additional sleeping places should also be prepared in advance.

Yom Kippur

Many families strive to complete major household tasks before the start of the fast. Almost immediately after Yom Kippur, preparation for Sukkot begins, so it is better not to postpone complex tasks to the short interval between holidays.

Sukkot and Simchat Torah

In addition to regular house cleaning, the balcony, yard, entrance area, sukkah installation site, and passages that guests will use are added.

After the holiday, it is necessary to clean leaves, dust, crumbs, and traces from moving tables and chairs.

Hanukkah

During Hanukkah, additional load falls on the stove, kitchen backsplash, table, and floor. Oil, frying, donuts, candles, and children’s activities can leave greasy, sticky, or waxy traces.

Wax should be removed in a way suitable for the specific material. Hot steam should not be automatically directed at it without checking the permissible method of surface treatment.

Purim

Mishloach manot, drinks, sweets, packaging, and the festive meal increase the load on the kitchen and living room.

Sticky stains are better removed immediately before they dry on the table, chairs, or floor.

Shavuot

Before Shavuot, the load on the kitchen, oven, refrigerator, and dining area increases again. It is more convenient to combine baking and dairy dish preparation with phased cleaning, not leaving all the work for the last hours.

Can steam replace koshering before Passover

Elena Gunko discussed this question separately with the representative, as before Passover, regular physical house cleaning intersects with the requirements of family religious practice.

During preparation, cabinets, drawers, the refrigerator, tracks, space between chairs, areas under appliances, and other places where crumbs might have remained are checked.

The steam system can help with the physical cleaning of suitable surfaces. However, using hot steam by itself is not halachic koshering of the kitchen, dishes, or equipment.

Questions of hagalah, libun, separation of meat and dairy, and family traditions should be discussed with a rabbi.

The physical cleanliness of a surface and its halachic status are not the same. The steam system can be a tool for cleaning but does not replace religious rules for preparing the kitchen and dishes for Passover.

Not only holidays: guests and family events

Large families prepare the home not only for dates in the Jewish calendar. Additional cleaning is required before a brit milah, bar mitzvah, engagement, Shabbat Chatan, family meal, or the arrival of relatives.

In such cases, priority is given to areas that guests will use: the entrance area, living room, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms, and prepared sleeping places.

The complex and less noticeable part of the work can be done in advance. On the day of the meeting, floor washing, table setting, and final arrangement of things remain.

How the free GENIUS home demonstration works

One of Elena Gunko’s main questions was how a family can evaluate the system before deciding to purchase.

The GENIUS offer is structured so that a person does not have to rely solely on photos, advertisements, or videos. First, a representative’s visit is agreed upon, who comes home and shows the equipment’s work on real surfaces.

The family can pre-select one or two areas that really create difficulties during regular cleaning. For example, grout lines, window tracks, tiles, glass surfaces, part of the kitchen, or a suitable floor area.

During the meeting, the representative shows the nozzles, explains the operation procedure, maintenance, limitations, and safety requirements. They can be asked questions about specific materials and check how well the equipment meets the conditions of this particular home.

According to the provided information, the demonstration is conducted for free and does not create an obligation to purchase the system. The decision is made after the family has seen the equipment in action.

Detailed information about the home demonstration is available on the website:

https://green-cleaner.nikk.co.il/

When cost and payment options are discussed

The cost and payment methods are discussed after the demonstration if the family decides that the equipment suits them.

The representative informs about the current payment options. This may include the possibility of spreading the amount over several payments.

The number of payments, payment methods, and other commercial conditions should be clarified directly before ordering, as offers may change.

This sequence allows first to see the result on one’s own surfaces, ask questions, assess the convenience of use, and only then proceed to discuss the purchase.

In which cities can the possibility of a demonstration be clarified

According to the information provided by the GENIUS representative at the time of preparing the material, the possibility of a home demonstration can be clarified in several cities in the north and center of Israel.

In the north, this includes Haifa, Kiryat, Akko, Nahariya, Karmiel, Safed, Tiberias, Afula, Nof HaGalil, Nazareth, Nesher, Tirat Carmel, Yokneam Illit, Migdal HaEmek, and Katzrin.

In the central region, the possibility of a demonstration can be clarified in Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, Ra’anana, Hod HaSharon, Givat Shmuel, Ramla, Lod, Modi’in, and Rishon LeZion.

Representatives can also work in certain areas with a large number of religious and Haredi families. In Haifa, this includes Hadar, Ramat Vizhnitz, and Meonot Geula. In Bnei Brak — Ramat Elchanan, Zichron Meir, Kiryat Herzog, Pardes Katz, and Kiryat Vizhnitz.

The availability of visits depends on the specific address and the specialist’s schedule. Before scheduling a meeting, it is necessary to confirm whether the home is within the current service area. The list of cities and areas is provided in the material.

What questions to ask during the demonstration

The home demonstration is useful not only for the opportunity to see the result. It allows getting answers to practical questions.

It is advisable to find out in advance:

• which surfaces are allowed to be treated;
• which materials are sensitive to temperature and moisture;
• how long it takes to prepare the system;
• which nozzles are included in the kit;
• how to clean and maintain the equipment;
• how to use it safely in a house with children;
• what are the existing limitations;
• what is the current cost;
• is installment payment available;
• does the specific address fall within the service area.

It’s better to choose in advance a section that is really difficult to clean in the usual way. Then the demonstration will show not abstract possibilities of the system, but its operation in the conditions of a specific house.

Not a miracle remedy, but an additional home tool

The steam system does not cancel regular cleaning, is not suitable for all materials, and does not turn a large house into a constantly sterile environment.

Its possible advantage lies elsewhere: individual labor-intensive tasks can be distributed throughout the week. One day to clean the guides, another day the tile joints, then tackle the appropriate section of the kitchen or bathroom.

It is reasonable to make a final decision only after testing the equipment on real surfaces and getting answers to questions about safety, limitations, maintenance, and payment.

You can find out about the possibility of a free GENIUS home demonstration, available cities, and current payment options on the website: https://green-cleaner.nikk.co.il/

The decision to purchase is made after the demonstration. The possibility of installment payments and other commercial terms must be confirmed directly before processing.

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“Bright memory to Maksym Bulygin.
We remember. We respect. We will not forget.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet – Blessed is the True Judge“, – from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.

On January 20, 2026, in Zhytomyr, a commemorative event was held dedicated to the unveiling of a memorial plaque for Maksym Bulygin — a graduate of the private lyceum “Or Avner!, who died on June 10, 2024, defending Ukraine. The ceremony was attended by parents, relatives, students, teachers, and representatives of the city’s Jewish community.

Maksym Bulygin was a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a volunteer who decided to defend the country from the first months of the full-scale war. The memorial plaque, installed on the walls of the lyceum where he studied, became a sign of respect and gratitude from the community and the educational institution, as well as a reminder of the price Ukraine pays for freedom and independence.

Memorial ceremony at the school where he studied

The unveiling of the memorial plaque took place in a restrained and focused atmosphere. For the Or Avner lyceum, this event holds special significance: Maksym was not an abstract hero but a student of this school, a graduate who was well remembered here.

During the event, words were spoken about his life path, character, choices, and courage. Those present honored Maksym’s memory with a minute of silence. For the school’s students, the ceremony became an important moment of realizing that the war is not a distant news story but a reality that affects their environment, their city, and their school.

Official position of the community

The event was also reported by representatives of the Jewish community of Ukraine. In the published message it says:

Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine:

«🕯 Honoring the memory of the Hero — Maksym Bulygin.

On January 20, a solemn event was held at the private lyceum “Or Avner” in the city of Zhytomyr, dedicated to the unveiling of a memorial plaque for Maksym Bulygin — a graduate of the lyceum who died on June 10, 2024, defending Ukraine.

The event was attended by parents, students, teachers, and guests. Those present honored the memory of the Hero, recalled his life path, courage, self-sacrifice, and the road he traveled for the freedom of his country. This day became a reminder of the price of freedom and of those who gave the most valuable thing for it — their lives.

Bright memory to Maksym Bulygin.

We remember. We honor. We will not forget.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet — Blessed is the True Judge».

Biography and personal history

Maksym Bulygin was born and raised in Zhytomyr. He had Ukrainian citizenship, and by nationality, he was a Ukrainian Jew — this information is indicated in the Ukrainian Wikipedia and is confirmed by his biography and participation in the life of the city’s Jewish community.

He was the only child in the family. He attended a Jewish kindergarten, later, after graduating from the Chabad lyceum “Or Avner” (where his grandmother worked as a teacher for 25 years), he entered Vocational School No. 18, where he obtained the profession of “Cook-Baker”.

He was a diligent student, sang in the choir, found a long-term hobby — chess (backgammon). From childhood, he was an active member of the Jewish community of Zhytomyr. From 2019 to 2021, he served in the Ukrainian army, serving as a rifleman. After demobilization, he worked at “Nova Poshta”, first as a loader, later becoming a scanner.

On February 24, 2022, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Maks received a summons and immediately stood up to defend his native Ukraine. He fought in various formations. Shortly before his death, he was in the ranks of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade. He served for 2.5 years in the east — Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Zaitseve, and beyond. He almost died several times.

In 2024, Maksym was transferred to another battalion, offered to become a UAV operator, he mastered this specialty, and when he went on his first combat mission, he did not return. UAV operator Maksym-Wolf Bulygin heroically died on June 10, 2024, during a combat mission to defend Ukraine from Russian aggressors in the village of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia region, when the occupiers dropped explosives on his position.

A year before his death, Maksym found a beloved, they set a wedding date for the end of June, the defender agreed on leave, but two weeks before the desired day, he died.

“Grandma’s boy”

Behind the official formulations and biographical references lies the personal side of Maksym’s life, which his relatives talk about. Maksym’s grandmother, Tatyana Lipinska, recalls:

“He called himself ‘grandma’s boy’.”

This simple phrase sharply contrasts with the image of a soldier and emphasizes the human dimension of his fate. For the family, Maksym was not only a serviceman and hero but also a grandson, a close person, with a warm attachment to his relatives.

Service and death

On June 10, 2024, Maksym Bulygin died while performing a combat mission in the Zaporizhzhia direction. His death was a heavy blow to his family, friends, and community.

On June 25, 2024, after a traditional Jewish farewell ceremony near the synagogue in Zhytomyr, conducted by Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, Maksym Bulygin was buried at the Smolyansky City Military Cemetery.

For personal courage shown in the defense of the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, selfless fulfillment of military duty, he was awarded – by Decree of the President of Ukraine dated November 27, 2024, No. 787, the Order of “For Courage” III degree (posthumously).

On June 20, the Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine Moshe Asman wrote about Maksym Bulygin’s death on his Facebook page. By the same Presidential Decree No. 787, and the same award, (posthumously) was given to the son of Rabbi Moshe Asman — Samborsky Matityahu.

The significance of the event for the community and the city

The unveiling of the memorial plaque in Zhytomyr is significant not only as a local event. It is part of a broader process of preserving the memory of the fallen defenders of Ukraine — regardless of their origin, religion, or nationality.

Maksym Bulygin’s story refutes propagandist myths about the alleged “detachment” of national minorities from the defense of Ukraine. The country’s Jewish community has been involved in the defense from the first days of the war — on the front lines, in volunteering, in humanitarian aid.

Memory as responsibility

At the Or Avner lyceum, they emphasize that the memorial plaque is not only a sign of mourning but also an element of educational work. It will remind students of the real fates of the school’s graduates, the price of decisions, and that freedom does not exist by itself.

Maksym’s story is the story of a person who made a choice and remained true to it until the end. For his school, city, and community, this choice became part of the collective memory.

“We remember everyone who holds the sky above us”

“We remember everyone who holds the sky above us” — this formula, voiced during the ceremony, became the unofficial conclusion of the event. The memorial plaque on the walls of the lyceum is a reminder of a specific life, a specific fate, and a specific loss.

Maksym Bulygin will forever remain in the memory of his family, teachers, classmates, and the Zhytomyr community. His name is inscribed not only on the school walls but also in the modern history of Ukraine — a history that is being written here and now, at the cost of human lives. It is precisely such stories, behind which stand real people and real losses, NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency consider important to preserve and tell, so that the memory of the fallen defenders does not turn into a dry line of the chronicle.

In the Righteous Among the Nations Garden in Haifa, where 20 memorial stones bear the names of those who saved Jews and once lived in the city, Yaroslava Levytska remains the only one honored with a memorial plaque during her lifetime.

At the Latin Cemetery in Haifa, 11 Righteous Among the Nations are buried. In their honor, the Haifa municipality created a unique memorial garden in the Ramat Alon district.

On May 18, 2008, a solemn opening ceremony was held in Haifa’s Ramat Alon neighborhood for the “Haifa Residents’ Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations” (גן חסידי אומות העולם).

The garden features several paths with stone plaques engraved with names and brief descriptions of their heroic deeds. At the time of its opening, 19 Righteous Among the Nations were known to have lived in Haifa: 9 from Poland, 6 from Ukraine, and one each from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Sweden. Later, a 20th plaque was added.

Only five of them were still alive at the time of the park’s opening.

Four were honored for their acts of bravery committed as children.

Yaroslava Levytska is the youngest person ever awarded this title for rescuing Jews.

At the park’s entrance, on an uneven stone, three symbols are engraved: the emblem of the Righteous, the Yad Vashem logo, and the emblem of the City of Haifa. Below them is a quote from the Talmud: “Whoever saves one Jewish life is as if they have saved the entire world.”

Memorial Stones of the Righteous Among the Nations in Haifa

The Righteous Garden in Haifa features plaques honoring those who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Here are brief summaries of their stories:

• Halina Lugovska (Poland): Hid a Jewish woman in her home for 32 weeks and later helped her find refuge with her family.
• Anna Hornung-Tomachak (Ukraine): Pretended to be the mother of a Jewish family to save them in the Ternopil region.
• Victoria Tsukrovych-Aichberger (Poland): Together with her sister, hid a Jew who was fleeing the Nazis.
• Pelagia Guchak-Springer (Poland): Saved 20 Jewish women and the family of a Jewish workshop owner.
• Yaroslava Levytska (Ukraine): As a teenager, brought food to the ghetto and hid Jewish children with her family.
• Jerzy Shelaga (Poland): Delivered food and letters to the Warsaw Ghetto, risking his life.
• Julia Kaldi-Ralbovska (Czechoslovakia): Hid a Jew and buried his mother to keep the hiding place secret.
• Elisabeta Nikopoi-Strul (Romania): Warned of a pogrom, sheltered and fed more than 15 Jews despite arrest and beatings.
• Tamara Maksymeniuk-Bromberg (Ukraine): Delivered food to the ghetto with her mother, rescued families, and organized shelters.
• Bela (Valya) Lipper (Ukraine): Hid her Jewish husband and six others for 19 months.
• Victor Melnyk (Ukraine): Hid Jews with his family, provided forged documents, and helped them escape.
• Zofia-Marta Avni (Poland): Hid six Jews in an attic in Warsaw with her family for a year and a half.
• Irena Yakira-Ziental (Poland): Hid 13 Jews with her mother in a specially prepared hiding place.
• Raoul Wallenberg (Sweden): Diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary; disappeared after being arrested by Soviet forces in 1945.
• Anna Dobrucka-Ezerska (Poland): Saved a family during the liquidation of the Tarnow Ghetto and later married one of those she rescued.
• Franya Dedek-Belska (Ukraine): Born in Nadvirna, rescued two Jewish boys and survived a displaced persons camp, the “Exodus” ship attempt, and eventually immigrated to Israel, where she converted to Judaism and became Fruma Belska.

Each name is a reminder of courage, humanity, and sacrifice. The Haifa memorial preserves the memory of those who risked everything to save others.

On February 12, 2025, students from the Bosmat School visited the “Beit Gil Zahav” nursing home in Kiryat Eliahu to congratulate Yaroslava Levytska on her 90th birthday and express their gratitude for her heroism. The event was part of the activities of Haifa’s Municipal Institute for Holocaust Studies, which works to preserve the memory of the Righteous Among the Nations and pass on Holocaust remembrance to future generations.

According to Yad Vashem, as reported by journalist Shimon Briman, Ukrainian native Yaroslava Levytska is the only Righteous Among the Nations currently living in Israel. She has lived in Haifa since the early 1990s and receives full support from the State of Israel.

Biography of Yaroslava Levytska: The Journey of a Righteous Among the Nations from Zolochiv to Haifa

Yaroslava Levytska, according to journalist Shimon Briman, was born in 1935 in the town of Zolochiv, which was then part of Poland and today is in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. In July 1941, the German army occupied the region and began the systematic extermination of the Jewish population. A ghetto was established in Zolochiv, and Jews were stripped of their rights, food, and any chance of survival. It was during this time that the Levytsky family’s courageous acts became part of history.

The Heroism of the Levytsky Family: 29 Lives Saved

Yaroslava’s grandfather, Oleksandr Levytsky, began supplying food and medicine to his Jewish friends from the start of the occupation. In December 1942, when the Zolochiv Ghetto was officially created, he started sending supplies through his seven-year-old granddaughter Yaroslava. She walked two kilometers from their home to the ghetto each week for ten months. The risk was immense — German guards could have executed them. But Yaroslava carried out her task calmly and bravely.

Thanks to her actions, many Jewish families and children survived.

Yorek Shenker and Richards Feiring: Stories of the Rescued

One of the children saved was Yorek Shenker, only six years old, now known as Yoram Miron. To avoid suspicion, Yaroslava would play with him outside while he was in hiding. The family also sheltered Richards Feiring. Both boys survived the Holocaust thanks to the courage of Yaroslava and her family.

Additionally, for ten months, the Levytsky family provided food to a group of 25 Jews hiding in the basement of a destroyed building. Despite fear and fatigue, Yaroslava kept delivering food. This entire group survived until the Red Army liberated the area in July 1944.

Life After the War

After liberation, Yaroslava graduated from School No. 2 in Zolochiv in 1952 and went on to attend medical college. She worked as a feldsher and later as head of the infectious disease prevention department. She lived modestly and never sought any personal gain for her family’s heroism. Her father Petro Levytsky also played a key role in rescuing Jews but was not officially recognized by Yad Vashem — a fact that remains painful to this day.

Recognition and Immigration to Israel

On August 20, 1989, two of the people she rescued — Avraham Shapiro and Israel Fenster — submitted a petition to Yad Vashem to recognize Oleksandr, Kateryna, and Yaroslava Levytska as Righteous Among the Nations. On September 21, 1989, Yad Vashem officially awarded them the title. Yaroslava herself planted a tree in honor of her family in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem.

In 1995, she permanently moved to Israel, where she was granted citizenship, a government pension, and an apartment. Later, she settled in the Beit Gil Zahav senior care facility in Haifa.

90 Years of Heroism and Humanity

On her 90th birthday, Yaroslava Levytska was honored by the Haifa Holocaust Education Municipal Institute, the Moriah-Haifa Rotary Club, and students of the “Basmat” school. She shared:

“I am happy to live here, in Israel. At 90, I want for nothing. This is a special country.”

Words of Gratitude from Israel

“Israel and the Jewish people will never forget the vital role played by the Righteous Among the Nations during World War II, when they took great risks to save the lives of thousands of Jews.”

Some of these heroes, like Yaroslava, chose Israel as their new home — and became part of its living history.

NAnews – Israel News continues to tell these stories to ensure the memory of Jewish-Ukrainian solidarity lives on and inspires future generations.

The Lessons of History and the Power of Memory

Today, Yaroslava Levytska’s name is engraved on a memorial stone in Haifa’s Righteous Garden — while she is still alive, a unique distinction. She is recognized, respected, and cared for.

Her story is a profound example of selfless humanity in the face of ultimate evil. It reminds us that children, adults, and the elderly alike can act with courage and conscience.

NAnews – Israel News believes that telling these stories is essential to preserving the bond between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples. In an age of war and terrorism, when hatred rises again, these stories help us to see the human being in one another.

According to Moshe Asman, the enterprise is currently expanding and looking for new employees. The published announcement mentions a salary of approximately 60 to 80 thousand hryvnias per month, free housing, and the opportunity to work in a team, a significant part of which consists of Ukrainians with Jewish roots.

According to the official NBU exchange rate on August 3, 2026, the declared salary of 60–80 thousand hryvnias corresponds to approximately 4.1–5.5 thousand shekels per month. For Ukraine, this is a high level of pay: the offer is about two to two and a half times higher than the average salary in the country, and considering free housing, it looks especially attractive for production workers. However, it is unclear from the announcement whether the amount is before or after taxes.

“Few people know, but a matzah bakery has been operating in Ukraine for many years, making matzah for the whole world under the Made in Ukraine brand,” the rabbi wrote.

NAnovosti studied the history of the enterprise and found that it is most likely about the company “Tiferet HaMatzot” — Tiferet HaMatzot, producing handmade kosher matzah in Dnipro and Uman. This is not a seasonal small bakery, but a Ukrainian production created more than two decades ago, whose products are indeed purchased in Israel, the USA, the UK, and other countries.

What the enterprise offers to new employees

According to Moshe Asman’s publication on August 2, 2026, vacancies are open in production. The rabbi specifically emphasized that the labor of employees is “valued with dignity.”

The announcement lists the following conditions:

However, the publication does not specify specific professions, shift duration, number of working days, registration procedure, or whether the amount is before or after taxes. Therefore, the salary and free accommodation should be correctly presented as the conditions stated in Moshe Asman’s announcement.

Contact numbers were published.

The number of the Dnipro enterprise is also listed in the open catalog of Ukrainian companies. It is reported that the private enterprise “Tiferet HaMatzot” was officially registered on December 4, 2002, and its main activity is the production of bread and bakery products.

More than 20 years of Ukrainian matzah

The history of “Tiferet HaMatzot” began in Dnipro in the early 2000s. According to Chabad org, its own matzah production in the city was launched in 2002. Before that, the Jewish community of Dnipro, like many other communities of the former Soviet Union, received matzah mainly from Moscow. After the restoration of Jewish religious life in independent Ukraine, the situation changed: Dnipro not only provided itself with matzah but also sent it abroad.

According to Ukrainian registration data, the enterprise was legally registered in December 2002. In a number of publications, the opening of the production site is attributed to 2003. Thus, by 2026, the production has been operating for about 23 years.

The project developed as a family business associated with the Stambler family. In 2021, a second production branch was opened in Uman — a city that occupies a special place in Jewish life in Ukraine and annually receives tens of thousands of Hasidic pilgrims. The management of the new site was associated with Mendy Stambler.

How much matzah is produced in Dnipro and Uman

Public data on volumes differ as they relate to different years, seasons, and production sites.

In February 2022, just before the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, management reported that about 90 people worked at the two enterprises. The production plan for that year was approximately 100 tons of handmade matzah.

Most of the products were intended for export to the countries of the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, and other regions. A separate part was intended for 160 Jewish communities that were part of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.

In February 2024, the head and founder of the Dnipro enterprise, Stella Umanskaya, said that only the site in Dnipro produces about 60 tons of matzah per year. Among the supply directions, she named the USA, Israel, France, Belgium, Italy, and Hungary.

In reports after the Russian missile strike on Uman in December 2025, a figure of about 70 tons of products was mentioned. Probably, different figures reflect the volumes of a specific site, a separate season, or the entire production association. Therefore, the most accurate general formulation is as follows: Ukrainian enterprises annually produce tens of tons of handmade matzah, and the declared total plans in certain years reached 100 tons.

Ukrainian matzah is sold in 14 countries

In December 2023, Ukrainian Forbes reported that the products of “Tiferet HaMatzot” are exported to 14 countries.

Among the main markets were named:

• Israel;
• USA;
• United Kingdom;
• France;
• Belgium;
• Italy;
• Portugal;
• Canada;
• Mexico;
• Argentina;
• Australia;
• Hungary.

The enterprise gained fame thanks to the combination of Ukrainian wheat, manual labor, and strict kosher control. Ukrainian matzah was present in the markets of Israel and the USA even in the early years of the bakery’s operation. In a publication by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from March 2004, it was reported that a significant part of the products was sent to Israel, Western Europe, and the United States.

For the Israeli audience, this story is especially important. A product without which Passover is unimaginable has been produced in Ukraine for many years and reaches the tables of Israeli families. This is one of the little-known but real examples of economic and cultural ties between Ukraine and Israel.

As NAnovosti — News of Israel notes, the Made in Ukraine label in this case means not just the country of origin. Behind it are Ukrainian wheat, jobs for representatives of Jewish communities, and the preservation of religious tradition during the war.

Why handmade matzah must be prepared in 18 minutes

“Tiferet HaMatzot” primarily produces handmade shmurah matzah. The word “shmurah” translates as “guarded” or “carefully controlled.”

The process begins with the control of wheat and flour. It is necessary to prevent the grain from coming into contact with moisture, which could lead to fermentation. Only two main ingredients are used in the bakery — flour and water.

After they are combined, a strict countdown begins. From kneading the dough to completing the baking, no more than 18 minutes should pass. Workers quickly knead the dough, divide it into parts, roll out thin round sheets, pierce them, and send them into a hot oven.

A large timer is installed at the Dnipro enterprise, counting down each production cycle. After the batch is completed, work surfaces and tools are thoroughly cleaned so that dough residues do not start to ferment and do not get into the next batch.

The work requires high speed and precise coordination. That is why experienced employees are of particular value to the enterprise: a sequence violation or delay can make the entire batch unsuitable for use on Passover.

Production continued after the start of the full-scale war

As early as February 22, 2022, two days before the full-scale Russian invasion, the bakery management reported that they were trying to produce as much matzah as possible in advance in case of transport stoppage and supply disruptions.

At that time, representatives of the enterprise stated that even in the event of the start of a major war, they would try to maintain production, as Jewish communities must receive matzah for Passover.

These words turned out not to be an exaggeration. Production indeed continued to operate during air raids, power outages, and Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities.

A Russian drone nearly destroyed the bakery in Dnipro

On the evening of March 29, 2023, Russian drones attacked Dnipro. One of the drones broke through Ukrainian air defense and hit an enterprise located next to the main Dnipro matzah bakery.

Surveillance cameras inside the building recorded a bright flash. The explosion shook the bakery, after which the electricity went out. A large fire started at the neighboring facility, threatening production and stocks of already prepared matzah.

Ukrainian rescuers managed to stop the spread of the fire. The matzah bakery itself survived and continued preparing products for Passover.

A missile fell 50 meters from the bakery in Uman

The second production site was threatened on December 26, 2025, when Russian troops launched a missile strike on Uman.

According to Ukrainian authorities, six people were injured in the attack, including two children. Residential buildings and other infrastructure were damaged in the city.

Later, representatives of the Jewish community reported that the missile fell approximately 50 meters from the “Tiferet HaMatzot” matzah bakery. At that moment, dozens of employees were inside.

The blast wave knocked out windows, damaged the main entrance, and the technical equipment in the yard. None of the enterprise’s workers were injured.

Thus, both sites — in Dnipro and Uman — have been in close proximity to Russian strikes during the years of the full-scale war.

Not just a religious product, but also jobs

The matzah bakery was conceived from the very beginning not only as a production project. It became a source of permanent employment for representatives of the local Jewish community.

As early as 2015, journalists wrote that the enterprise provided stable work for dozens of Jews and non-Jews in the region, where the economic situation was complicated by Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. For many employees, the bakery was not a temporary seasonal job but a permanent place of work.

Moshe Asman’s new publication shows that this social aspect has been preserved. Now the enterprise offers a salary that significantly exceeds the average income in many Ukrainian regions and also provides housing.

At the same time, potential employees should separately clarify the terms of the employment contract, schedule, probation period, salary after taxes, and requirements related to observing kosher rules.

Why this story is important for Israel

The story of “Tiferet HaMatzot” connects several topics at once: Jewish tradition, Ukrainian production, international export, and the life of communities during the war.

Matzah from Dnipro and Uman:

• is sold in Israel and the USA;
• is supplied to European Jewish communities;
• is distributed free of charge among some needy Jews in Ukraine;
• creates jobs in Dnipro and Uman;
• continues to be produced despite Russian attacks;
• preserves the technology of handmade shmurah matzah.

For NAnovosti — News of Israel, it is especially significant that the enterprise continues to expand after strikes that could have completely stopped production. Ukrainian matzah has become not only a product for the international market but also a symbol of preserving Jewish life in a country experiencing a full-scale war.

Moshe Asman’s publication on August 2, 2026, effectively opened up to a wide audience a little-known part of Ukrainian-Israeli relations. On store shelves or on the festive table in Israel, there may be matzah, handmade by Ukrainian workers in Dnipro or Uman — under air raid sirens, with all religious requirements observed, and with the label Made in Ukraine.

For the Israeli audience, this date is important not as a museum reference.

It is important because it shows the mechanism of anti-Semitism in action. First, the state declares the Jew a “special case.” Then it draws boundaries of permissible existence on the map. Then this administrative discrimination begins to affect education, trade, property rights, career, mobility, and security.

The history of the Pale of Settlement is not only about the past of the Russian Empire but also about how power turns the Jewish question into a tool of governance, suspicion, and pressure.

How the empire created an anti-Semitic geography

The Pale of Settlement did not arise out of nowhere.

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th century, Russia acquired vast territories along with a large Jewish community. It was about 900,000 Jews who found themselves inside the empire after the partitions of Poland. The Russian authorities, who previously did not want to allow a mass Jewish presence within their old borders, decided not to equalize these people in rights but to allocate a special residential zone for them.

This is how the Pale of Settlement was formed. In 1783, 1791, and 1794, Catherine II issued decrees restricting the commercial rights of Jews to territories recently annexed from Poland and the Ottoman Empire. Later, this regime turned into a stable system: the Jewish population could be used in the new western and southern lands but was not allowed free integration into central Russia. Even in the descriptions of historians, it is clear that economic calculation and traditional anti-Jewish prejudices were combined here.

It is important to understand the scale.

The Pale of Settlement was not a small enclave but a vast area of almost 500,000 square miles, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. It included large parts of present-day Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, and other territories. But the large size did not make this regime softer. On the contrary: it was a gigantic zone of limited existence, within which additional prohibitions also applied. Jews were often forbidden to settle in certain municipalities, especially in rural areas, and living outside this zone was generally not allowed.

What the Pale of Settlement did to Jewish life in the lands of present-day Ukraine

For Ukraine, this history is especially important because a significant part of the Pale of Settlement passed through Ukrainian provinces.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Pale included, in particular, the Kyiv, Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, and Taurida provinces. According to the 1897 census, 4,899,300 Jews lived there — 94 percent of the entire Jewish population of the Russian Empire. Of these, 82 percent lived in cities, towns, and shtetls, and in the urban structure of the region, Jews made up 36.9 percent. In other words, the empire not only limited geography. It forcibly formed a special social world of crowding, forced urbanization, and constant legal vulnerability.

It was from this environment that the shtetls of Eastern Europe, familiar from family memory and Jewish literature, grew.

But this picture cannot be romanticized.

The shtetl was not a freely chosen form of life but largely a consequence of legal pressure. The Pale of Settlement directed Jews into trade, crafts, intermediary professions, small urban businesses because access to land, wide resettlement, and many other forms of normal economic life were restricted by law. Later, under Alexander II, exceptions appeared for some merchants, craftsmen, educated people, and those who served in the army, but this did not cancel the main principle: freedom for a Jew was considered not a right but a rare exception.

Such a system almost inevitably generated violence. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new wave of pogroms swept across Ukraine. After Kishinev in 1903 and Gomel in 1903, a series of attacks also engulfed Ukrainian cities, and in 1905, major pogroms occurred in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Yekaterinoslav, Kyiv, Kremenchuk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Chernihiv, Simferopol, and other places.

When the state singles out a group as “alien” for decades, public violence receives a ready ideological framework.

It is no coincidence that millions of people began to leave. Between 1881 and 1914, about two million Jews left the tsarist empire and went to the West, primarily to the USA. This was an exodus not only from poverty but also from a political regime that explained to Jews from generation to generation that they lived in the empire conditionally, under supervision, and according to separate rules.

For many families in Israel, the memory of this era has been preserved not in textbooks but in the biographies of grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And therefore, in the material for NAnews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency April 2 is not an abstract anniversary, but a date that is still heard in the family history of the Jewish East of Europe.

Formally, the system began to crumble during the First World War.

In 1915, significant parts of the Pale turned into a frontline zone, many Jews fled east, and the authorities were forced to lift some residence restrictions almost everywhere except the capitals. But legally, the point was only put by the Provisional Government in the spring of 1917. From that moment, the state no longer had the right to divide residents by national-religious criteria in matters of residence and civil rights.

Why this story resonates again today when it comes to Putin’s Russia

Of course, modern Russia is not the 19th-century Russian Empire, and a literal Pale of Settlement does not exist today.

But the historical logic of anti-Semitism has not disappeared. It has simply changed form.

If earlier the authorities restricted Jews through maps and laws, today they increasingly use the Jewish theme as a political tool, a propaganda plot, and a language of suspicion. The US State Department, in its report on religious freedom in Russia for 2023, wrote about the rise of openly anti-Semitic rhetoric in the public space. And in January 2024, the State Department released a separate material on how successive occupants of the Kremlin used anti-Semitism for disinformation and propaganda.

One of the most famous examples is the words of Sergey Lavrov in May 2022, when he, responding to a question about the Jewish origin of Volodymyr Zelensky, claimed that Hitler allegedly had Jewish roots. Israel called this an unforgivable lie and summoned the Russian ambassador, and the German government’s commissioner for combating anti-Semitism also condemned this statement. It was not about a marginal figure from the street, but about the foreign minister of a nuclear power.

A year later, Putin himself went even further.

In June 2023, he publicly stated that Zelensky was allegedly “a disgrace to the Jewish people.” This was said about the President of Ukraine, whose family is directly connected to the history of the Holocaust and whose Jewish origin has long been known. This approach is important not only for its crudeness. It shows the very principle: the Kremlin again turns to the theme of Jewishness not as a real human identity but as a tool for political humiliation, substitution, and manipulation.

In the fall of 2023, this atmosphere went beyond television rhetoric. In Makhachkala, an anti-Semitic crowd stormed the airport in search of passengers from a flight from Tel Aviv. People were “caught” right after arrival, and then Putin blamed the West and Ukraine for what happened, without providing evidence. A few days later, Reuters separately wrote that local Jews felt particularly vulnerable after these events. When the authorities play with xenophobic myths for years, they cannot seriously pretend that outbreaks of street hatred arise on their own.

In the summer of 2024, Dagestan was again at the center of events: armed attackers attacked a synagogue and a church in Derbent, as well as facilities in Makhachkala. Reuters noted that the synagogue caught fire, and the former chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, after these events, spoke about the worsening situation of Jews in Russia, ongoing anti-Semitism, and that many would be better off leaving the country. This is no longer a dispute about words. It is a matter of the physical safety of Jewish communities.

There is also another important symptom — pressure on Jewish organizations.

In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice demanded the liquidation of the Russian branch of “Sohnut,” a structure associated with the repatriation of Jews to Israel. Reuters noted at the time that many in Israel saw this as a political signal against the backdrop of Russia’s war against Ukraine and deteriorating relations with Jerusalem.

This episode itself is not equal to the Pale of Settlement, but it clearly shows the old habit of the state: Jewish autonomy, Jewish connections with the outside world, and Jewish self-organization are perceived as something that can be controlled and suspected at any moment.

That is why April 2, 1917, sounds modern again today.

Then not just an old norm was abolished, but the very idea that a Jew should live by separate rules. In the empire, these rules were drawn on the map.

In Putin’s Russia, they are more often drawn through propaganda, hints, conspiracy theories, xenophobic mobilization, and selective pressure. The form has changed, but the logic is recognizable: Jewishness is again turned not into part of normal civil life, but into a political object. And therefore, the memory of the abolition of the Pale of Settlement is not only about the past. It is also a way to more accurately see what is happening now.

Heading 'Jews from Ukraine' on the website NAnews #JewsofUkraine reveals inspiring stories of outstanding Jews whose destinies and achievements connect Ukraine and Israel

In Ukraine, a memorial sign was installed on the facade of the house in Odessa at 9 Malaya Arnautskaya Street, where Chaim Bialik lived in 1907.

The Jewish community of Ukraine shaped the personality and work of the poet and Zionist Chaim Nachman Bialik, who became the national poet of Israel. His life is the story of the unification of the Jewish culture of Ukraine and Israel.

Chaim Nachman Bialik was born on January 9, 1873 in the village of Ivnitsa, near Zhitomir, in the Volyn province (now Ukraine).

Ukraine at the end of the 19th century was the center of Jewish culture and traditions. It was in this environment that Bialik's personality was formed, who drew inspiration from the shtetls and the rich spiritual life of the local Jewish communities.

His father, Isaac Joseph, was engaged in the timber trade and mill business, but died when Chaim was only 7 years old. After this, he was raised by his grandfather Yakov Moshe Bialik, who became for him a symbol of Jewish wisdom and spirituality.

Bialik began his education in cheder, and in his youth he independently studied literature and philosophy. He later studied at the famous Volozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania, where he delved into the study of Jewish traditions.

In the 1890s, Bialik began publishing his first poems and poems, which quickly brought him recognition. In Odessa, he became an active participant in the cultural life of the Jewish community and founded a publishing house “Moriah”which contributed to the development of Hebrew literature.

After the revolution and difficult years in Soviet Russia, Bialik emigrated to Palestine, where he devoted himself to the development of Jewish culture. He actively participated in the work of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the theater “Habima” and other key projects.

Bialik died on July 4, 1934 in Vienna, but his legacy lives on today, inspiring millions of people.

Jewish Ukraine: cradle of inspiration

Ukraine at the end of the 19th century was the center of Jewish culture and traditions. It was in this environment that Bialik's personality was formed, who drew inspiration from the shtetls and the rich spiritual life of the local Jewish communities.

• Ivnitsa and Zhytomyr:

  Here Bialik absorbed the atmosphere of Jewish family life, which became the foundation of his worldview.

• Odessa as a cultural center:

  Odessa was the place where Bialik not only developed his creativity, but also participated in educational and publishing projects. It was here that he finally established himself as a poet and thinker.

Chaim Nachman Bialik in Odessa: creativity and cultural influence

Odessa became a real center of inspiration and intellectual growth for Chaim Nachman Bialik. This city, with a thriving Jewish community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, provided him with opportunities for literary, publishing and social activities.

Literary environment

Odessa was home to many prominent Jewish writers and thinkers, with whom Bialik actively collaborated:

• Mendele Moyher-Sforim – “the grandfather of Jewish literature”, whose work inspired Bialik.
• Sholom Aleichem – a famous author who created works in Yiddish.
• Yehuda Leib Peretz – one of the leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment.

These connections helped Bialik deepen his understanding of Jewish culture and enrich his own creativity.

Publishing house “Moriya”

One of Bialik’s most important projects in Odessa was the founding of a publishing house “Moriah”.

• Purpose of the publishing house: popularization of Hebrew and creation of educational literature.
• Books: publication of textbooks, works of art and translations.

Bialik saw Moriah as a tool for the revival of Jewish culture through literature and education.

Literary activity

In Odessa, Bialik wrote many of his significant works:

• Poems that reflected the suffering and hopes of the Jewish people.
• An essay on the revival of Hebrew as a literary language.
• Translations including Cervantes' Don Quixote and Schiller's poems, which he adapted for Jewish audiences.

Odessa as a center of Zionism

Odessa was a key center of the Zionist movement, and Bialik actively participated in its activities.

• He supported the idea of ​​​​the return of Jews to Eretz Israel.
• Participated in discussions on issues of Jewish education and culture.
• He was part of the preparations for the Zionist congresses, where issues of national revival were raised.

Departure from Odessa

After the 1917 revolution, increased anti-Semitism and restrictions on the Jewish intelligentsia made staying in Odessa dangerous. In 1921, thanks to the petition of Maxim Gorky, Bialik emigrated.

“Odessa will forever remain the place where I found the voice of my people,” – he wrote.

Heritage of Odessa

Odessa became for Bialik a place where he was able to combine Jewish traditions and modern ideas, laying the foundation for the revival of Hebrew literature. Today, his activities in this city remain a symbol of the unity of the cultures of Ukraine and Israel.

Zionism and the work of Bialik

Chaim Nachman Bialik was not only a poet, but also a staunch Zionist. He actively participated in the Zionist congresses (1907 and 1913) and believed that the revival of the Jewish people was possible only through the return to the homeland of their ancestors – Eretz Israel.

“Jewish culture is a bridge between the past and the future. We must revive our identity to gain strength.” – he wrote.

Bialik celebrated Jewish life, the ideals of the Enlightenment and Zionism, and his work became an important part of the cultural heritage of the Jewish people.

Jewish culture of Ukraine in the works of Bialik

In his poems and poems, Bialik reflected the life and traditions of Jewish Ukraine. His works are filled with shtetl motifs, Jewish wisdom and pain for the suffering of the people.

• In a poem “Violinist” he celebrates the spirit of Jewish music heard in the shtetls.
• In the poem “Dead Trees” Memories of village life, full of difficulties and hopes, are conveyed.
• His essays talk about the need for spiritual revival and preservation of traditions.

Moving to Palestine: a dream come true

In 1921, Bialik moved to Palestine, where he continued his cultural and literary heritage.

• He initiated the creation Technion and participated in the theater “Habima”.
• His poems were included in school curricula, and his songs became the anthems of the Yishuv.

Bialik's legacy

1. House Museum in Tel Aviv:

   His works, letters and documents are collected here.

2. Bialik Prize:

   Awarded annually for outstanding achievements in literature.

3. Memory in Ukraine:

   Bialik’s grandfather’s house in Zhitomir has been preserved as a symbol of his connection with his homeland.

Conclusion

Chaim Nachman Bialik is a symbol of Jewish culture who connected Ukraine and Israel in his work. His life inspires us to preserve traditions and build a bright future for the Jewish people.

Read more about great Jews from Ukraine at NAnews – Israel Newswhere we talk about what unites our peoples.

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However, almost immediately after the minister’s speech, the army press service reported that his statement was not coordinated with Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. The IDF emphasized: Blut continues to command the Central District, enjoys the full confidence of the Chief of Staff, and decisions on replacing generals should be made in accordance with established procedures.

On the morning of August 3, Katz’s office tried to shift the focus. Representatives of the minister stated that he allegedly did not announce the immediate dismissal of Blut, but only confirmed a future personnel rotation proposed by the Chief of Staff himself back in the spring.

As a result, several questions were at the center of the scandal: who appoints generals in Israel, can the defense minister publicly announce the successor of the current commander without coordinating the timing with the Chief of Staff, and is a military commander obliged to abandon a professional security decision if it contradicts the minister’s political line.

What exactly did Israel Katz say

During an interview on Channel 14, Katz sharply criticized Avi Blut for his actions in the case of settler Tal Inon Dardik.

The minister stated that the commander of the Central District and the Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office went to court contrary to his policy. Katz acknowledged that the general might have had legal authority for such a step, but emphasized that military command should consider the decisions of political leadership.

After this, Katz announced that he decided to implement the appointment of Major General Dado Bar-Kalifa to the position of commander of the Central District.

“I announced that I decided to implement the decision — to appoint Major General Dado Bar-Kalifa as the commander of the Central District,” the minister said.

Katz described Bar-Kalifa as a representative of the “generation of heroes and victory” and expressed confidence that he would pursue a more aggressive policy.

From the context of the television appearance, it could be concluded that Katz decided to replace Blut due to disagreements over the Dardik case. This is why the first reports from Israeli media presented the statement as an announcement of the general’s resignation live on air.

The IDF publicly opposed the minister’s version

The reaction of the army press service followed almost immediately.

The IDF stated that the defense minister’s words were not coordinated with Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. The army separately emphasized that Avi Blut continues to command the Central District “in a complex environment, professionally, courageously, and selflessly.”

“Major General Avi Blut enjoys full confidence,” the statement said.

In addition, the IDF reported that the Chief of Staff does not intend to change commanders in key positions during the current sensitive period. If a decision on a personnel replacement is made, it must be made by the Chief of Staff, after which it will be approved in accordance with existing rules.

This statement was essentially a public refutation of the defense minister’s words. The army command made it clear that there was no agreed decision on the immediate termination of Blut’s powers.

For the Israeli security system, such an exchange of statements is extremely unusual. As noted by NANews — News of Israel, disputes between the defense minister and the Chief of Staff have occurred before, but they were usually discussed in closed meetings, not in a live television broadcast.

Katz stated that it was not about dismissal

After the sharp reaction of the IDF, Katz’s office presented a different version of events.

According to the minister’s representatives, back in late April 2026, Eyal Zamir recommended appointing Dado Bar-Kalifa as the next commander of the Central District. The Chief of Staff allegedly asked Katz to interview the candidate.

In June 2026, the minister met with Bar-Kalifa and concluded that he was a suitable candidate. Therefore, the statement on air, according to Katz’s office, was not about the immediate dismissal of Blut, but about appointing Bar-Kalifa during the next personnel cycle.

Thus, the parties are essentially talking about different things.

The main dispute, therefore, concerns not only Bar-Kalifa’s candidacy but also the timing, the order of announcing the decision, and who had the right to publicly announce the future replacement.

Who appoints generals in the IDF

The assertion that generals are appointed exclusively by the Chief of Staff is incomplete. But the defense minister cannot unilaterally appoint or remove a district commander.

According to the current system, the Chief of Staff determines candidates for positions at the major general level and presents the chosen candidate to the defense minister. The minister acts as the approving authority.

The State Comptroller of Israel indicated that the Chief of Staff is the body that appoints officers starting from the rank of colonel, and the defense minister approves such appointments. For positions at the major general level, the process takes place directly between the Chief of Staff and the minister: the former determines the candidate, the latter must approve it.

Therefore:

• Katz cannot independently appoint a new district commander without the Chief of Staff’s decision;
• Zamir cannot finalize the appointment without the minister’s approval;
• both parties must agree on the candidate, timing, and order of assuming the position;
• announcing the decision live on air does not replace the official personnel procedure.

The State Comptroller also previously noted that the procedure for appointing major generals was not fully formalized and largely relied on the established practice of negotiations between the defense minister and the Chief of Staff.

This is why the current public dispute has created such a dangerous precedent: each side can claim that the other is interfering with its authority.

The case of Tal Inon Dardik

The immediate reason for the confrontation was the case of settler Tal Inon Dardik.

An administrative restraining order was in effect against him, signed by the commander of the Central District on the recommendation of the Shin Bet. Such orders can prohibit a person from being in certain areas of Judea and Samaria, returning to a specific outpost, contacting certain people, or moving freely.

The decision can be made based on closed intelligence materials that are not always fully provided to the suspect and his lawyers.

Dardik was prohibited from being at the farm outpost where he lived. After violating the order’s conditions, he was detained. Therefore, formally, he was in custody not because of administrative detention without trial, but because of the alleged violation of the administrative restraining order.

According to a Shin Bet document published by Israeli media on July 22, 2026, Dardik is suspected of involvement in violence, abuse, and severe sexual humiliation of a Palestinian.

The police reported that during the investigated incident, a group of Jews attacked Palestinians, among whom were women and children. Several victims, according to the investigation, were tied up, and four required medical assistance. The mere existence of suspicions does not mean that Dardik’s guilt has been established by the court.

No ordinary criminal indictment was filed against him. This is why the security services used administrative measures, relying on closed information about the alleged danger.

Why the commission lifted the restrictions

The military appeals commission did not find Dardik innocent and did not reject the Shin Bet’s intelligence materials.

The dispute concerned whether the commander of the Central District had the right to require Dardik to serve house arrest at his mother-in-law’s house. The commission ruled that a relative cannot be forced to provide her home for the execution of an administrative restriction.

The army was offered to find another realistic solution. This could be another agreed apartment or separate housing that the state would have to rent to enforce the order.

Thus, the commission’s decision was primarily procedural. It did not mean that Dardik was found not involved in the alleged violence or that the Shin Bet abandoned its assessment of his danger.

The minister visited Dardik in custody

Even before the current conflict, Katz took an extremely unusual step — personally met with Dardik at his place of detention.

Along with the minister, reserve Colonel Avichai Tanami, appointed by Katz as a special coordinator for working with the so-called “hill youth,” attended the meeting.

During the meeting, Dardik was offered several alternative options for house arrest. However, he refused them and demanded to be allowed to stay either in his own home or in his parents’ house. At that time, Dardik was on a hunger strike.

On July 28, 2026, Katz stated that due to deficiencies in the order’s issuance, it should not be extended, and the problem should be solved “by other means.”

However, this statement did not mean the immediate cessation of existing restrictions. According to Ynet, the order was calculated to last until the end of 2026. In addition, the appeal of the prosecutor’s office and the Central District concerned not Katz’s decision on future extension, but the court’s requirement to find an enforceable alternative to the current house arrest.

Blut and the prosecutor’s office continued to consider Dardik potentially dangerous and appealed to the Jerusalem District Court, trying to maintain the restrictions in another form.

It was this step that Katz called actions contrary to the minister’s policy.

Avi Blut remains the commander

As of August 3, 2026, Avi Blut has not been officially dismissed and continues to hold the position of commander of the Central District.

He assumed the position in July 2024, replacing Major General Yehuda Fuchs, who commanded the district for about three years.

Blut comes from the religious Zionism community, wears a knitted kippah, and previously held positions as commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, commander of the commando brigade, commander of the “Maglan” unit, and military secretary to the prime minister.

Therefore, the current dispute is difficult to present as a usual confrontation between a right-wing government and an allegedly “left-wing” army general. In reality, it is about a deeper question: is a district commander obliged to follow the professional assessment of the IDF and the Shin Bet, even if this assessment contradicts the defense minister’s policy.

Reaction of the opposition and the settler movement

Katz’s statement was criticized by representatives of the opposition and former high-ranking military officials.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated that the government is trying to “dismantle the IDF from within.” Former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot called the incident an unprecedented decline in relations between political and military leadership and emphasized that the army should not become a tool for party primaries.

Reserve Major General Ofer Winter also criticized the manner in which Katz announced the commander’s replacement.

Notably, representatives of the settler movement also spoke out against the way Katz announced the replacement of the commander.

The head of the Beit El local council, Shay Alon, stated that the unexpected announcement live on air without coordination with the Chief of Staff harms the settlements and the fight against terror. The Judea and Samaria Settlements Council also supported Blut, noting his results in countering terrorist structures.

At the same time, Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the “Otzma Yehudit” party supported Katz. She stated that Blut allegedly paid more attention to prosecuting settler activists than fighting Palestinian terror and acted contrary to the elected leadership’s policy.

Why this conflict is more important than the fate of one general

The dispute over Avi Blut and Tal Inon Dardik goes far beyond a single personnel appointment.

Political leadership has the right to determine Israel’s overall defense policy. However, operational decisions about specific threats are made by professional structures — the army, the Shin Bet, the police, and the prosecutor’s office.

If a minister can force a military commander to abandon a security assessment due to political pressure, there is a risk of politicizing IDF decisions. But if the army command can completely ignore the orders of the elected minister, the opposite problem arises — the erosion of civilian control over the armed forces.

As emphasized by NANews — News of Israel, the stability of the Israeli system depends not on the victory of one side, but on adherence to procedure. The Chief of Staff must professionally select candidates, the defense minister must approve appointments and determine overall policy, and decisions on specific cases must be made based on law and verifiable security assessments.

At the moment, Katz considers Dado Bar-Kalifa the future commander of the Central District. The IDF, in turn, states that Blut continues to perform his duties and his replacement is not planned in the near future.

Until the parties agree on an official personnel procedure, the minister’s statement on television remains a political declaration, not a completed appointment.

https://renovation.nikk.co.il/

That is why the topic of apartment painting goes far beyond repair as such.

In northern Israel, it is closely linked with trust, local housing specifics, humidity by the sea, old housing stock, apartments after tenants, and the owner’s desire to put the property in order without heavy capital intervention. For NAnews readers, this story is also interesting because it very accurately shows how client behavior is changing in Israel: people are less and less reacting to the loud ‘cheap’, and more and more looking for peace of mind, a clear estimate, and normal human organization of the process.

Why apartment painting has become a separate topic for the Israeli housing market

In theory, painting seems like one of the simplest services. But in reality, it often becomes decisive for the perception of an apartment. Old traces from fixtures, stains on the ceiling, scuffs, unevenly painted areas, traces of dampness, darkened corners, visual fatigue of the walls — all this makes the housing less attractive, even if otherwise it is quite suitable for living.

For Haifa and the entire Krayot belt, this is especially noticeable. Humidity, the age of some buildings, an active rental market, and constant tenant turnover lead to the fact that it is the walls and ceilings that begin to show the apartment’s fatigue the fastest. Therefore, painting in the local reality is not a cosmetic trifle, but a full-fledged tool for preparing real estate.

Where this is especially felt

The most typical scenarios for northern Israel look like this:

• the apartment is being prepared for a new family to move in;
• the housing needs to be quickly refreshed after tenants;
• the owner wants to make the property visually tidier before selling;
• after dampness, stains, or a local leak, the room needs to be returned to a normal appearance;
• the family does not want to start a major renovation but wants to remove the feeling of neglect.

In all these cases, the client is looking not for ‘the cheapest painting’, but for a solution that will relieve household and financial anxiety.

Why the Israeli client looks at such a service differently

In Israel, there is a very strong sensitivity to time and predictability of expenses. People are willing to pay not only for manual work but also for the absence of chaos. That is why for Haifa, Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Haim, Nesher, and Tirat Carmel, not abstract promises of quality work best, but specific and understandable formulations: a predetermined volume, agreed deadlines, the ability to work in a residential apartment, neatness, help with damp walls, and no sudden additional charges.

What exactly the apartment painting market in Haifa and nearby sells

If you look at how the topic of apartment painting is presented in Israel, it quickly becomes clear: the market sells not just a master. It sells peace of mind, speed, a clear price, and no surprises. This is the key logic that today cannot be ignored by either business or the editorial office if it wants to honestly explain to the audience why some offers work better than others.

The main triggers that the client responds to

Urgency

One of the strongest motivators is the ability to do it quickly. Before moving in, after tenants, before holidays, before selling — in these situations, it is important for a person not in a month, but now. Therefore, the promise of quick deadlines and a predetermined schedule has become one of the strongest market arguments.

Work in a residential or furnished apartment

This is no longer an additional bonus, but a full-fledged competitive advantage. Not every family can move out furniture, vacate the apartment, and turn off normal life for several days. The ability to paint housing without moving and without completely freeing up space is a serious factor in choice.

Dampness, mold, and problematic walls

For coastal Haifa and parts of the northern regions of Israel, this is a separate topic. The client often looks not just for painting, but for a solution to a more painful problem: traces of moisture, mold, peeling old paint, and tired ceilings. Where the contractor can not just ‘paint over’, but honestly assess the condition of the surface and prepare it, trust is higher.

Clear estimate before starting

The Israeli client is extremely sensitive to an inflating price. Therefore, the strongest offers are those where the estimate is discussed in advance, the volume is fixed before the start, and does not spread during the process.

Cleanliness and neatness

For a residential apartment, this is one of the main factors. People are not afraid of the painting itself, but of turning the house into a mess. Where neat work, furniture protection, and normal handover of the object are promised, conversion is higher.

Why a cheap offer is not always the best for the northern Israel market

At first glance, it may seem that the one who promises a lower price wins. But in reality, too aggressive cheap offers often attract not the highest quality leads. The client comes for the price ‘from…’, and then faces the fact that in reality, everything is more expensive, more complicated, and more unpleasant. As a result, both sides are dissatisfied.

For Haifa and Krayot, a different model works stronger. Not ‘from 400 ₪ and then we’ll see’, but a calm bundle:

• fix the volume in advance;
• work neatly even in a residential apartment;
• help with mold, dampness, and problematic walls;
• do not impose unnecessary;
• discuss deadlines in advance;
• do not create sudden additional charges out of thin air.

This logic is perceived today as mature and reliable. For the Israeli audience, this is much closer to the real request than the loud ‘cheapness at any cost’.

How this is related to the real estate market and the psychology of the apartment owner

Painting is also about control. When an apartment is being prepared for rent, sale, or occupancy, the owner wants to quickly regain a sense of manageability. He is not always ready for large-scale repairs, but wants to remove obvious visual problems.

Here the practical power of the service is manifested. Well-organized painting allows:

• quickly change the first impression of the apartment;
• make the property visually brighter and tidier;
• reduce the feeling of ‘fatigue’ without heavy investments;
• prepare the housing for the next stage of use.

For the Israeli reality, this is especially relevant in cities where the rental market is active, and apartments often work as an investment asset. And here NAnews — Israel News can look at the issue more broadly than the household level: painting becomes part of a real estate management strategy, not just a household trifle. That is why NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers this topic not only as a service but also as socio-economic: it is about how Israelis reduce costs, speed up housing preparation, and try to minimize stress around property.

What is especially important for Haifa, Krayot, Nesher, and Tirat Carmel

The local context is critical here. You cannot talk about painting an apartment in a conditionally new residential complex and in an old house with a history of dampness, dozens of traces of previous rentals, and walls that have not been updated for years in the same way.

Local specifics of the area

For this zone, the following are characteristic:

• old housing stock;
• coastal humidity;
• apartments after long-term rentals;
• the need to quickly prepare housing for re-renting;
• high sensitivity to deadlines and price.

That is why a separate service page, separate advertising, and a separate presentation of the topic work better than general texts ‘about repairing everything in the world’.

Why it is important to list cities, not hide behind the word ‘Krayot’

For trust and SEO, it is very important to say not only ‘Krayot’, but specifically: Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Haim, plus Nesher and Tirat Carmel. When a person sees their place directly, the text is perceived as a response to their real situation, not as a universal template.

Which offers really work best

Below is a short table of what most effectively removes client fear and better sells the service in this market.

What apartment owners should consider before ordering painting

Before choosing a contractor, it is useful for the owner to check not only the price but also the logic of the offer itself.

What to look at first

Is there a clear explanation of the scope of work

If it is unclear what exactly is included in the price, there will almost always be problems later.

Are they ready to work in a furnished apartment

For families and busy people, this is often one of the main questions.

Is there an honest conversation about problem areas

If there are traces of moisture on the ceiling or mold on the walls, it is important not the promise ‘everything will disappear’, but a real assessment.

Do they understand the local specifics

Haifa and northern Israel are not an abstract market. Here, humidity, old stock, and quick housing preparation scenarios are important.

Where you can view services on the topic

Russian version:

https://renovation.nikk.co.il/

Hebrew:

https://renovation.nikk.co.il/he/

English version:

https://renovation.nikk.co.il/en/

Conclusion

Apartment painting in Haifa, Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Haim, Nesher, and Tirat Carmel is no longer a story about ‘finding a painter and refreshing the walls’. Today it is a full-fledged service where peace of mind, speed, a clear estimate, neatness, work in a residential apartment, and no unpleasant surprises are sold.

For the Israeli audience, this is especially sensitive because an apartment here is not only a place of life but also an expensive asset, a rental object, family security, and a constant source of household solutions. That is why the market is increasingly moving away from cheap loud promises and moving towards normal, clear, and predictable service.

For business, this means one thing: the winner is not the one who shouts the loudest about the price, but the one who best alleviates the client’s fears. And for the reader, it means something else: when choosing a painting service, it’s important not to look at the attractive number in the first line, but at how well the scope, deadlines, limitations, and real results were explained to you in advance.

NANovosti believes that it is precisely such local topics that today form the true picture of everyday Israel: where decisions are made not at the level of advertising, but at the level of trust, practicality, and the ability to save a person time, money, and nerves.

New York Post: An American Jew Found Respect in Ukraine and Faced Hatred in the US

New York Post is one of the largest American newspapers, founded back in 1801. Today, its circulation exceeds 625,000 copies on weekdays and 386,000 on Sundays. Since 1993, the publication has belonged to News Corporation of the famous media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
It was for this newspaper that on July 26, 2025, 32-year-old Jew and US Air Force veteran Sam Nahins shared his experience volunteering in Ukraine and his impressions upon returning to the campus of Columbia University in New York.

From the Front in Ukraine to Protests in New York: A Personal Story

Sam Nahins is a Columbia University graduate student and former US Air Force drone operator. In May 2025, he volunteered on the front lines in Ukraine, working with the humanitarian organization Help is on WayUA. As part of the 25th Ukrainian battalion, Sam spent three weeks under shelling and drone attacks. However, according to him, in Ukraine, he felt much calmer and more confident than in America.

“In Ukraine, I always knew who my enemy was. Here, in New York, it feels like people hate each other,” says Nahins.

Upon returning to New York, he found himself literally trapped — in Butler Library, he was blocked by protesters from the radical group Unity of Fields, known for its anti-Israel and anti-American slogans. On campus, Nahins was insulted and called a “colonizer” and “child-killer” — just for serving America and helping Ukraine.

“My reason for going to Ukraine was simple: I piloted US Air Force drones, flying remotely in the Middle East, fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda. I served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. But I had never been in a combat zone.
I was shelled and attacked by drones when I was with the 25th Ukrainian battalion. But I was in safe hands. No one tried to stab me in the back — at least I knew who my enemy was.

It turned out that in Ukraine I felt calmer than in New York.”

Contrast: Attitudes Toward Jews and Americans in Ukraine and the US

In an interview with the New York Post, Sam admits:
— In Ukraine, people wave American flags, respect volunteers, and value the contribution of Israel and Jews.
— Among students in New York, on the contrary, antisemitism has become commonplace, and support for Israel is called a “crime.”

“On the front, even under fire, I felt unity and support. In New York, I no longer feel needed by my hometown,” he notes.

Among other things, Sam recalled: on Veterans Day at the university, they celebrated “Martyrs’ Day” — for him, this was a shock, as a Jew and a patriot.
Statistics: According to surveys, over the past two years, the number of antisemitic incidents on US campuses has nearly doubled. At the same time, 70% of Ukrainians, according to various sociological services, have a positive attitude towards Jews and Americans.

Who Are Help is on WayUA and Why Is This Important

Help is on WayUA is a non-profit organization founded by US veterans to provide rapid humanitarian support to those affected by the war in Ukraine. The fund operates on the principle of maximum transparency: all donations go directly to aid, and bureaucracy and overhead are kept to a minimum.
The team consists of experienced military personnel who personally handle the delivery of humanitarian cargo and organize aid both in Ukraine and for refugees abroad. Special attention is paid to creating support centers for displaced persons and the long-term recovery of families who have lost everything due to the war.

Help is on WayUA actively cooperates with volunteers, administrative staff, and specialists to quickly respond to real needs on the ground. Their mission is to help without delay and unnecessary words, setting an example of honesty and efficiency.

More information is available on the official website.

NAnews — News of Israel: How Jews and Ukrainians Become Brothers

This story of Sam Nahins is yet another confirmation: the respect and support given to Jews in Ukraine is not uncommon. For the NAnews — News of Israel website, such examples are important: they show that Israel and Ukraine can be true allies in difficult times.
In the midst of war, as Europe and the US face growing xenophobia, Ukraine sets an example of solidarity and true unity, where nationality and religion take a back seat.

Conclusions for the Jewish and Israeli audience:

• American Jews and Israelis in Ukraine feel support and respect.
• Antisemitism in Western universities is an alarming challenge for all Jewry.
• The experience of the Ukrainian front is an example for Israel and the diaspora of how to value solidarity even in times of crisis.

Read more analytics, stories, and news on NAnews — News of Israel.

Shmuel Agnon (born July 17, 1888, Buchach, Ukraine) is a famous Jewish writer whose life and work are closely connected with Ukraine. The events of his most famous novels, “The Bridal Canopy” and “A Guest for the Night,” for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, take place in his native Buchach and its surroundings.

In Ukrainian Buchach

To date, not many of Agnon’s works have been translated into Ukrainian, but interest in them is growing in Ukraine, which means that Ukrainian readers are in for an acquaintance with his books.

The Nobel Prize in Literature laureate of 1966 “For his profoundly original narrative art with motifs from Jewish folk tales.” He became the first laureate of one of the Nobel Prizes representing Israel. He wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish.

The influence of the Talmud on Shmuel Agnon’s work was significant. He was born as Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes in July 1887 in Buchach, now Chortkiv district of Ternopil region. His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevi Czaczkes, was a rabbi and fur trader, knowledgeable in the Torah and Talmud, and often explained them to the local Jewish community.

Shmuel’s mother, Esther Farb, and grandfather, Yehuda Farb, were also educated people. Shmuel attended a cheder and received a good home education, studying Yiddish, Hebrew, German, and Ukrainian languages, as well as the Talmud under his father’s guidance.

Starting to write early, at the age of 8, Shmuel published stories in local newspapers. At 19, he moved to Lviv and worked in a Jewish newspaper. In 1907, his first novella “Forsaken Wives” was published, which in Hebrew sounds like “Agnon,” becoming his pseudonym and official surname since 1924.

Palestine and Berlin

In the same year, Agnon went to Palestine, and then to Berlin, where he wrote, lectured, gave private Hebrew lessons, and published works in the newspaper Jude.

He was supported by patron Zalman Schocken, who provided a five-year scholarship for organizing an anthology of Jewish literature and writing new works. Agnon’s works were published in German at Schocken’s publishing house in Berlin.

Love Against All Odds

In Berlin, Shmuel Agnon found true love — Esther Marks, or “dear Esterlein,” as he called her. The girl’s father was against their marriage, but they married anyway, and the ceremony was conducted by Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg.

They had a daughter, Emuna (“faith”), and a son, Shalom Mordechai, whom they called Hemdat (“soul’s desire”) at home.

Three Destroyed Homes

In 1924, the family moved to Jerusalem. The move was preceded by tragedy: the writer’s house in Hamburg burned down, destroying the library and manuscripts, including the novel “The Community of the Ever-Living.”

Agnon decided to return to the Promised Land. He moved to Jerusalem first, and a year later called for Esther and the children. In 1927, an earthquake occurred in Jerusalem.

“The disaster did not destroy our souls,” Agnon wrote, “only the house we lived in.”

Two years later, in 1929, the new Agnon home in Jerusalem was looted during Arab riots. “Esterlein,” he wrote to his wife, “we need to start everything anew: the house is ruined, things are stolen or broken. But… do not grieve and do not think about it.”

World Fame and the Nobel Prize

Agnon gained world fame in the late 1940s when his works began to be published in English. In 1966, Agnon became the first writer writing in Hebrew and Yiddish to receive the Nobel Prize for the novels “The Bridal Canopy” and “A Guest for the Night.”

In his speech, he noted that he draws inspiration from spiritual literature.

“Keep Quiet! Agnon is Working!”

Israel is proud of its Nobel laureate. When a construction site was opened in the Talpiot area, Mayor Teddy Kollek installed a sign saying: “Keep quiet! Agnon is working!” European critics compared him to Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and William Faulkner.

Agnon wrote in various genres but was wounded by the fact that many of his readers became victims of the Holocaust. His last novel, “Just Recently,” set in Palestine during the Second Aliyah, is dedicated to the catastrophe of European Jewry.

Memory of the Writer

Shmuel Agnon died of a heart attack on February 17, 1970, in Jerusalem at the age of 82. He was buried on the Mount of Olives, and his apartment became a memorial museum.

In his native Buchach, which he last visited in 1930, a monument was erected in his honor, a street is named after him, and a bas-relief of the writer adorns the entrance to the local “ART-Court.”

Each of them founded or led a world‑class company: Jan Koum was one of the creators of WhatsApp, Leonid Radvinsky turned OnlyFans into a global phenomenon, Michael Polsky founded Invenergy LLC in the “green” energy sector, and Max Levchin co‑founded PayPal and now runs Affirm.

This is reported in a publication by Forbes. By the number of billionaire immigrants, Ukraine ranked 9th among 41 countries.

From Kyiv’s Courtyards to Global Heights

How Their Stories Began in Ukraine

• Jan Koum was born in February 1976 on the outskirts of Kyiv. In the family of an electronics engineer there were no trendy computers, but there were radios that the boy would take apart and reassemble. In a school BASIC club he wrote his first programs to send text messages over a local network.
• Leonid Radvinsky was born in the early 1970s in Odesa, near the famous Privoz Market. Together with his mother he sold souvenirs to tourists, calculating profit and bargaining for every dollar. These lessons in commerce and the ability to connect with people laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial drive.
• Michael Polsky was born in 1947 in a rural area of the Kharkiv region. In his free time he built wind turbine models from bicycle spokes and tin cans, dreaming of an energy future. After technical college he worked at a power plant, where he first encountered the ideas of alternative energy.
• Max Levchin was born in July 1975 in Kyiv into a family of historians. At school he became passionate about chess and the Pascal programming language. By organizing a “Young Programmer” club, Max not only deepened his algorithmic knowledge but also learned to share expertise and build teamwork.

In the Emigration Lab — A Step West

Each of them took the risk to leave their homeland and go to the United States with minimal resources:

1. Jan Koum arrived in 1992 with his mother and grandmother under a repatriation program. For the first years he worked as a cleaner and barista to pay for his studies at San Jose State University.
2. Leonid Radvinsky settled in Chicago on a humanitarian visa, graduated from Northwestern University, and began working in internet marketing.
3. Michael Polsky was invited as an energy specialist in 1976. With $500 in his pocket, he got a job as an electrician, and twenty years later founded his own company, Invenergy.
4. Max Levchin obtained political asylum in 1991, moved to Memphis, and by the end of the decade had co‑founded PayPal.

Breakthroughs and Achievements

• WhatsApp by Jan Koum and Brian Acton amassed over 2 billion users in a few years, and its sale to Meta netted Koum over $16.9 billion.
• OnlyFans by Leonid Radvinsky became a platform generating over $1.3 billion in annual revenue and awarded him personal dividends of over $1 billion.
• Invenergy by Michael Polsky executed projects worth more than $7 billion, including wind and solar farms across America.
• Affirm Holdings under Max Levchin’s leadership became a key player in fintech, and Levchin’s net worth is estimated at approximately $2.1 billion.

How They Stay Connected to Ukraine Today

• Jan Koum supports several educational programs and grants for IT camps in Kyiv, aiming to inspire a new generation of programmers.
• Leonid Radvinsky donated $5 million in 2022 to humanitarian aid for Ukraine, affected by military conflict.
• Michael Polsky speaks at European energy conferences promoting green economy practices in Eastern Europe.
• Max Levchin organizes student exchanges between Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and American universities, supporting young engineers.

On the NAnews – Israel News website, we share how mutual support and knowledge exchange strengthen bridges between Israel and Ukraine.

Conclusions and Significance

• Childhood interests — whether radio electronics or chess — can lead to global discoveries.
• Emigration tests resilience: courage and adaptability turn challenges into opportunities.
• Maintaining cultural roots and caring for one’s homeland create synergy between innovation and tradition.

These stories from NAnews inspire Israeli startups and show that by combining diaspora experience and technology, we can reach new heights.

“This is my way of saying thank you to G-d that we have food and shelter,” – says Mordechai.

The story of Mordechai Kreuser is a shining example of human solidarity and selflessness. An Israeli citizen who came to Transcarpathia to revive the Jewish community became a savior for thousands of Ukrainian immigrants.

For the third year now, he has been providing them with free kosher meals, bringing light during the difficult times of war.

A report about Mordechai Kreuzer showed Ukrainian TV channel ICTV .

Mordechai Kreuser came to Mukachevo in 2022 with an ambitious goal: to open a kosher restaurant and breathe new life into the Jewish community. However, Russian aggression changed his plans.

When the war began, Mordechai used his funds to set up charity canteens in Mukachevo, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernigov.

At the beginning of 2022, about 500 people came to the dining room in the Mukachevo synagogue four times a week, now – 250.

“This is my way of saying thank you to G-d that we have something to eat and a place to sleep. I came here for a different purpose and found myself among hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war and becoming its victims. I feed the hungry and this is my way to help them.” – says Mordecai.

Help with numbers

At their peak, Kreuser's canteens fed up to 500 people daily.

Over time, the number of visitors has declined due to fewer migrants, but the need for hot meals remains high.

Why kosher food?

Kosher dishes are not only a tradition, but also a sign of respect for every person, regardless of their faith.

Features of Mordecai's cuisine:

• Suitable for people of all religions.
• Meets strict kosher standards.
• It is being prepared with the participation of volunteers, including displaced people.

Volunteer work

The Kreuzer canteen is staffed by four women who are themselves displaced people.

Stories that touch the heart

One of the visitors to the canteen was Nadezhda from Mariupol, who spent 40 days under occupation without food or water. As a result, she lost her sight and hearing.

“These people cook with warmth and kindness. Here I felt that I could live again,” — Nadezhda shares.

Problems and challenges

Today, charity canteens in Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernigov have closed due to lack of funds. However, Mordecai continues to seek support.

“I had a calling from my heart. I cannot remain indifferent, even if the funds are not enough.” – he says.

Kreuzer appeals to wealthy people with a request to open their hearts and support those who are in trouble.

The role of the initiative for relations between Israel and Ukraine

The Mordechai project is not only humanitarian aid, but also an important symbol of cooperation between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples.

Our website NAnews – Israel News continues to tell stories that unite Israel and Ukraine.

Conclusion

Mordechai Kreuser's initiative demonstrates the power of the human spirit and the potential for uniting peoples. His story is an example of how you can overcome boundaries while supporting those who need it most.

“The war will pass, but the memory of good deeds will remain,” – Mordechai is sure.

Let's support such initiatives together and make the world a better place.

…..

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Project “УкраЇдиш” (UkraYiddish), created by the Jewish musician Oles Volynchik, became a symbol of the interaction of two great cultures – Ukrainian and Jewish.

Through music and song translations, he creates a unique space where tradition and modernity intertwine.

As part of its project, music translates Ukrainian songs into Yiddish and Jewish songs into Ukrainian. Traveling around Ukraine, he records his unique compositions with local musicians.

Videos have already been released from Lviv, Dnieper (CDC “Menorah”) and Kharkov. A video from Odessa will be released in a month.

How did “UkraYiddish” come about?

Oles Volynchik (Amiram in Hebrew) is a musician living in Germany, but working at the intersection of Ukrainian and Jewish cultures. His project “УкраЇдиш” includes:

• Translations of Ukrainian folk songs into Yiddish. For example, “Oh at the cherry orchard” sounded in the language of Ashkenazi Jews.
• Translations of Jewish songs into Ukrainian. One of these was the song “Oyfn veg shteyt a boym”, a deep parable that takes on a new meaning in the context of modern events.
• Musical travels around Ukraine. Oles collaborates with musicians from Lvov, Kharkov, Dnieper, Odessa to create unique videos.

As the musician himself notes:

“The cultures of Ukrainians and Jews have always intersected and enriched each other. Jewish culture is an integral part of the cultural heritage of Ukraine.”

Kharkov: “Oh at the cherry garden” in Yiddish

Kharkov became one of the first cities where a music video was recorded as part of the project. The song “Oh at the Cherry Orchard,” known to all Ukrainians, sounded in Yiddish.

Entry details:

• Translation, vocals and guitar: Oles Volynchyk
• Clarinet: Gennady Fomin
• Video: Kharkiv Media Hub
• Audio: Anton An

This folk composition, translated into Yiddish, symbolizes the connection between the traditions of the two peoples.

“This song is a bridge between our history and modernity,” noted Oles Volynchik.

Dnepr: “Oyfn veg shteyt a boym” in Ukrainian

In Dnepr, on the roof of the Menorah Center, the famous Jewish song “Oyfn veg shteyt a boym” was performed, translated into Ukrainian.

Song Context:

• Written by Itzik Manger in 1938.
• Theme of the song: freedom, pain of loss, nostalgia.
• The translation into Ukrainian emphasized the relevance of the words in the context of modern warfare.

Entry details:

• Guitar and vocals: Oles Volynchyk
• Video: Yuri Smirnov and Elena Bubnova

“This song penetrates the soul of everyone who knows what loss and hope are,” the musician shared his impressions.

Lviv: “Charming violin” in tango style

In Lvov, “The Charming Violin,” the famous Ukrainian love song, was translated into Yiddish and performed in tango style.

Recording participants:

• Accordion: Orest Nakonechny
• Guitar and vocals: Oles Volynchyk
• Video: Andrey Kravchuk

This composition combined the romance of Ukrainian melody with Jewish flavor.

Odessa: Upcoming video

Oles Volynchik completed work on the video in Odessa, which will be released in a month. This city, with its rich Jewish heritage, will become another pearl in the Ukraindish music collection.

“Odessa is a place where culture speaks all languages. Expect surprises! ” – the musician intrigued.

The project is like a bridge between Ukraine and Israel

“УкраЇдиш” is not only a musical project, but also a cultural bridge between Ukraine, Israel and the global Jewish diaspora. It unites people through common values ​​and music, which is especially important in the face of complex geopolitical challenges.

Our website NAnews – Israel News regularly covers such initiatives, emphasizing the importance of strengthening ties between our peoples.

Values ​​of “UkraYiddish”

1. Recognition of cultural heritage.Jewish culture in Ukraine is part of a common heritage, which Volynchyk emphasizes.
2. Strengthening dialogue.Translations of songs promote mutual understanding between the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples.
3. Support for Ukraine and Israel.Project participants take a clear pro-Ukrainian and pro-Israeli position.

“Glory to Ukraine! עם ישראל חי!” – the motto of the participants of “УкраЇдиш”.

“UkraYiddish” on social networks

The project is actively distributed through the platforms:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraYiddish .
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ukrayiddish
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UkraYiddish/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ukra.yiddish/

These resources help popularize culture among young people and support dialogue between diasporas.

Why is this important?

The УкраЇдиш project is a reminder of how culture unites peoples. Against the backdrop of geopolitical challenges, such initiatives are becoming an important element in preserving identity and strengthening international cooperation.

We, the editors NAnews – Israel Newsare confident that projects like Ukraydish will help create a world where the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples can overcome challenges together and build a future.

………………..

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The Western Wall in Jerusalem is one of those places where history is not behind glass and does not wait for a tour guide’s explanation. It stands openly before a person: ancient stones, prayer plaza, notes in the cracks, voices in different languages, tourists, soldiers, families, pilgrims, and a special silence that sometimes proves stronger than any noise.

But what is visible today in the plaza is only a small part of a vast historical space.

The open section of the Western Wall at the modern prayer plaza is about 70 meters long. Meanwhile, the entire western retaining wall of the Temple Mount stretches for almost half a kilometer. Most of it is hidden underground, beneath streets, houses, and layers of Old City construction that have formed over centuries—from antiquity to the Middle Ages and later periods.

It is there, in the tunnels of the Western Wall, that Jerusalem becomes not a postcard but a deep stone biography.

In European usage, this place is often called the ‘Wailing Wall.’ The name is recognizable, familiar, almost literary, but it reflects more the European view of the 19th–20th centuries on Jewish prayer at the ancient wall. In the Israeli and Jewish context, it is more accurate to speak of the Western Wall, Kotel—the surviving part of the vast retaining system of the Temple Mount, associated with the memory of the Second Temple, which existed until its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE.

‘Wailing Wall’ is a name of sorrow given from outside.

The Western Wall is no longer just sorrow. It is memory, connection, hope, prayer, and physical proof that Jewish history in Jerusalem does not begin yesterday, does not start with modern political disputes, and does not need external permission to be part of this city.

Why ancient Jerusalem ended up beneath the modern city

The tunnels of the Western Wall were not built as an underground museum. They appeared because Jerusalem changed, rose, was destroyed, rebuilt, and built up again over centuries.

Even during the Second Temple period, especially in the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, a deep Tyropoeon Valley, known as the Valley of the Cheesemakers, ran near the Temple Mount. It separated the Temple Mount from the western part of the ancient city, creating a sharp elevation difference and making access to the sacred platform difficult.

Over time, this terrain began to change.

In different eras, the valley was covered with arches, bridges, vaults, and massive structures. New levels appeared above the old streets. Stone passages turned into foundations, open areas went into darkness, and ancient walls gradually ended up under layers of later urban life.

After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century, the city acquired new religious and architectural centers. In the 12th century, after the return of Muslim control over Jerusalem under Saladin, and then in the 13th–16th centuries under the Mamluks, construction around the Temple Mount continued to densify. The city did not just live next to ancient stones—it gradually covered them with new quarters.

Thus, the lower rows of the Western Wall, streets from the Second Temple period, Roman traces of the 2nd century, Crusader elements of the 12th century, and Mamluk vaults of the 13th–15th centuries ended up in one space. Not because someone wanted to create an ‘underground city,’ but because Jerusalem built itself over itself for millennia.

And this is the main effect of the tunnels: a person walks not just along an archaeological route, but through a cross-section of time.

From Herod to British explorers: how the hidden Wall was discovered

The main architectural power of the Western Wall is associated with the era of King Herod the Great, who ruled Judea from 37–4 BCE. It was under him, at the end of the 1st century BCE, that the Temple Mount was expanded to grandiose proportions, and the retaining walls became part of one of the most impressive engineering projects of antiquity.

Herodian masonry is hard to confuse with anything else.

Each large stone block has characteristic processing: a neat frame is carved around the edges, and the central part is left smooth and slightly protruding. These stones are laid with incredible precision, without cement mortar, as if ancient craftsmen worked not with multi-ton limestone but with perfectly calculated details of a giant structure.

Next to such blocks, history ceases to be abstract.

It becomes heavy, cold, physical. It can be seen in the joints between the stones, in the tool marks, in the scale of the wall that has withstood earthquakes, wars, changes of empires, and almost two thousand years of human memory.

Western Stone: a megalith that cannot be forgotten

One of the strongest points of the underground route is the famous Western Stone.

Its weight is usually estimated at about 570 tons. It is not just a large building block but one of the most impressive megaliths of the ancient world, embedded in the thickness of the Western Wall during the massive reconstruction of the Temple Mount under Herod the Great, at the turn of the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE.

Its length exceeds 13 meters, and next to it, a person instantly loses the usual sense of scale.

The question arises by itself: how was this done?

How did ancient builders manage to quarry such a stone, deliver it to the Temple Mount, lift it, level it, and install it with such precision that it still remains part of the wall? Without modern cranes. Without trucks. Without laser instruments. Without the technology that today we consider essential even for much simpler construction tasks.

The Western Stone does not need beautiful exaggerations. It is enough to see it.

Wilson, Warren, and the first descents into the ancient levels of the city

The first serious studies in the area of the Western Wall in modern times are associated with British engineers and archaeologists of the 19th century.

In 1864, Charles Wilson began work that allowed for a better understanding of the hidden structure of the area near the Temple Mount. His name is associated with the famous Wilson’s Arch—a powerful ancient arched structure near the Western Wall, which became one of the key landmarks in the study of underground Jerusalem.

Later, in 1867–1870, Charles Warren continued the research and descended into shafts that revealed hidden levels of the ancient city. His work became one of the important stages in the study of the underground topography of Jerusalem in the 19th century when the archaeology of the Holy Land was just becoming a systematic scientific discipline.

These were not comfortable museum routes with lighting and neat railings.

Researchers worked in difficult conditions, through shafts, narrow passages, stone debris, and spaces where every meter required caution. But it was these first studies that showed: beneath modern Jerusalem lies a vast historical layer that cannot be understood from the surface.

After the Six-Day War of 1967, a new phase began. Israel gained access to the area of the Western Wall, and large-scale work began to uncover the continuation of the wall, clear underground spaces, and turn individual archaeological sites into a connected route.

For Israel, it was not just archaeology.

It was a return to the hidden part of its own history—to those stones, streets, and passages that had been under later construction for centuries and remained inaccessible for full study.

Roman Odeon, ancient mikvahs, and prayer at Warren’s Gate

The tunnels of the Western Wall show not only the era of Herod and the Second Temple. Here are traces of those who came after the destruction of the Temple, tried to rebuild the city for themselves, and leave their own mark.

After the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, Jerusalem experienced a historical catastrophe. Later, in the first half of the 2nd century, under Emperor Hadrian, the city was turned into the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina. It was an attempt not just to govern the city but to change its image, memory, and spiritual geography.

In the underground space near the Western Wall, archaeologists discovered a small Roman theatrical structure, often called an odeon. It is associated with the Roman period when, after the destruction of the Temple and the suppression of Jewish revolts, the city was attempted to be integrated into the imperial architectural logic.

This structure is not like the huge amphitheaters familiar from Rome or Caesarea. It is more chamber, but its significance is no less.

The odeon stands as a stone reminder of a sharp turn in history: where Jewish memory is connected with the Temple, Roman power tried to create a city of a different meaning. In one underground space, two worldviews collide—Jerusalem of the Temple and Jerusalem of the imperial colony of the 2nd century.

Mikvahs at the Temple Mount: traces of people, not just kings

One of the most touching details of the underground excavations is the ancient mikvahs, pools for ritual purification, associated with the life of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period.

Such finds return the city to a human scale. Because the history of Jerusalem is not only Herod the Great in the 1st century BCE, Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century, Crusaders of the 12th century, Mamluks of the 13th–16th centuries, British researchers of the 19th century, and modern Israeli archaeologists after 1967.

It is also the pilgrims who came to the Temple Mount two thousand years ago, descended the stone steps to the water, and prepared to enter the sacred space.

The worn steps of the mikvahs speak quietly but very strongly.

Ordinary people walked on them. We do not know their names. They did not leave royal inscriptions, did not build empires, and did not command armies. But it was they who filled ancient Jerusalem with life, prayer, and expectation.

NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency views such places not as ordinary tourist attractions but as part of a living Israeli context: here archaeology directly connects with the question of identity, memory, and the right of a people to remember their city not through others’ retellings but through their own stones.

Warren’s Gate: where the route becomes a prayer

There is a point in the tunnels of the Western Wall where even the most detailed story begins to sound superfluous. This is the section at the ancient Warren’s Gate—a place associated with the research of Charles Warren in the 19th century and considered especially close to the presumed location of the Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount.

Here the atmosphere changes.

Until then, a person looks at stones, listens about dates, rulers, excavations, arches, and megaliths. But at Warren’s Gate, history suddenly becomes very personal. People stand by the wall, touch the ancient stone, pray, sometimes just remain silent.

It is important to speak about this carefully. The Holy of Holies was the spiritual center of the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant is primarily associated with the tradition of the First Temple, which existed until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. But it is the proximity of this place to the sacred center of the Temple Mount that makes it one of the most emotional points of the route.

In Jerusalem, there are places where the past is explained.

And there are places where it is felt.

Two underground routes: Great Stone and Great Bridge

Today, visiting the tunnels of the Western Wall is only possible in organized groups with a guide. It is not possible to go there independently: the route passes through narrow archaeological spaces where safety, control of the flow of people, and respect for the place itself are important.

The official Western Wall Heritage Foundation indicates two main routes—the Great Stone Route and the Great Bridge Route.

The Great Stone Route is associated with the classic underground passage along the hidden part of the Western Wall. It is here that visitors see the giant stones of Herodian masonry from the end of the 1st century BCE, including the famous Western Stone, and approach sections associated with a deep prayer tradition.

The Great Bridge Route reveals another side of underground Jerusalem—the space of ancient bridges, vaults, passages, and archaeological levels that show how the city connected with the Temple Mount and how its structure changed from antiquity through the Middle Ages to later eras.

This is not an hour’s entertainment or an ordinary tour for a checkmark.

Modern lighting, models, museum technologies, and the work of guides help to see what would remain just a stone without explanation. But the strength of the route is not only in technology. The strength is that a person leaves there with a different feeling of Jerusalem.

Outside, the city seems noisy, contentious, political, modern.

Underground, it becomes ancient, deep, and almost stubborn. It shows that it cannot be reduced to a news headline, a diplomatic dispute, or a tourist postcard. Jerusalem stands on layers of memory, and the Western Wall is one of the main entrances to this memory.

Every year, millions of people come to the plaza at the Western Wall. During major Jewish holidays—especially in the days of the month of Tishrei in the fall and on Passover in the spring—the flow becomes enormous. But far fewer visitors enter the tunnels because the underground route is physically limited: narrow passages, group schedules, advance booking, strict order.

And perhaps this is what makes the visit even stronger.

In the plaza, the Western Wall speaks to the masses. Underground, it speaks almost personally.

Where sunny Jerusalem remains above, a person walks along hidden stones and understands: the city did not disappear, even when it was attempted to be renamed, rebuilt, forgotten, or appropriated. It continued to preserve its layers. Continued to wait for those who could read them again.

The tunnels of the Western Wall are a place where archaeology ceases to be a dry science. It becomes the breath of the city, proof of memory, and a meeting with Jerusalem that is much deeper than it seems from the plaza.

In Odesa, 4th Suvorovska Street was officially renamed. It now bears the name of Yosyp (Joseph) Fisher — a prominent theoretical physicist of Jewish origin, whose scientific works remain a foundation for many modern studies. He was born in Minsk in 1919, but spent most of his professional life in Odesa.

This recognition is especially meaningful today, as Jewish and Ukrainian communities seek new points of connection in their shared historical and cultural memory. NAnews — News from Israel explains why the name of Yosyp Fisher deserves to be known by anyone interested in the relationship between Ukraine, Israel, and global science.

A Legacy That Spans a Lifetime

Yosyp Zalmanovych Fisher was a professor at Odesa National University named after I.I. Mechnikov. A theoretical physicist, he devoted over 20 years to advancing science in Odesa. From 1963 to 1983, he headed the Department of Theoretical Physics and created one of the most influential scientific schools in the Soviet Union.

• 150+ PhD candidates — his students
• 15 Doctors of Science — successors of his academic school
• Graduates work on every continent and at most universities in Odesa

What Made Him Famous in Science?

Fisher’s work covered a wide range of fields in the physics of liquid matter. His research explained why water has unusual properties and how fluids behave under critical conditions. He also studied gravitational effects and developed theories that shaped modern understanding of molecular and thermal interactions.

Summary of His Research Areas:

Fisher and Odesa — A Connection That Became Destiny

Although born in Belarus, Odesa became Fisher’s true home. At ONU, he built not just an academic base, but a true intellectual center. A memorial plaque was installed on the university’s main building, and in 2025 — 30 years after his death — the street where he lived and worked was named in his honor.

Ukraine’s scientific community has long highlighted his contributions to global physics, and only now has the city officially acknowledged his legacy.

Why This Matters for Jewish and Ukrainian Identity

NAnews — News from Israel consistently covers topics that help the Jewish diaspora in Israel better understand their roots and feel connected to Ukraine. The story of Yosyp Fisher is one such example. His life is a testament to how a person of Jewish descent became a symbol of Odesa’s scientific greatness.

It is also a response to Russian propaganda claiming that Ukraine disrespects Jews. Renaming the street is not just a tribute to one scientist — it is an act of cultural and historical justice.

Memory as a Foundation for the Future

Commemorating Yosyp Fisher’s name contributes to a shared historical memory. His works are still relevant, his students work across the globe, and now his name will live on in Odesa’s toponymy.

For the Jewish community of Israel, this is a source of pride: one of us became part of Ukraine’s scientific and urban history.

NAnews — News from Israel will continue to share stories about people who serve as bridges between Ukraine and Israel, between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples.

Participants marched in a mourning procession from the Entrance Gate along the Alley of Martyrs to the Alley of the Righteous. The ceremony continued near the memorial sign “Roma Wagon”, dedicated to the Roma who were exterminated by the Nazis during the occupation of Kyiv and other territories of Ukraine.

It was in 2026 that ten years since the installation of the monument in Babyn Yar was marked. The official opening of the “Roma Wagon” took place on September 23, 2016, although the idea of the memorial appeared more than two decades before that.

Mourning procession and ceremony near the “Roma Wagon”

The official program began on August 2, 2026, at 11:00. Participants gathered at the Entrance Gate of the reserve at the address: Kyiv, Yuri Ilyenko Street, 44.

At 11:00, the mourning procession began, at 12:00 a musical memorial program was planned, and at 19:00 — an evening screening of Amaro Kino short films at the “Living Memory” film club. These times and locations were previously published by the National Reserve “Babyn Yar” and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

The central moment of the ceremony was the laying of flowers and honoring the victims near the “Roma Wagon”. This metal depiction of a traditional Roma wagon is installed in memory of the people whom Nazi policies of persecution and physical extermination condemned to death solely because of their origin.

The General Director of the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar”, Roza Tapanova, reminded how long the path to public recognition of the Roma people’s tragedy was:

“This year marks ten years since the opening of the memorial sign “Roma Wagon”. And from conception to opening, twenty-one years passed. This path reminds us how long the road to recognizing the tragedy of the Roma people was.”

According to Tapanova, the duty of memorial and state institutions is not only to hold an annual ceremony:

“Our duty is to make the history of each community visible and to return it to the collective memory. We are convinced that memory should not remain just a date on the calendar. It should live in research, museum work, education, art, and above all — in cooperation with the modern Roma community.”

Who participated in the commemorative events

Representatives of Ukrainian state bodies, international organizations, and the diplomatic corps participated in the ceremony.

The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine was represented by Ivan Verbitsky. From the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Viktor Yelensky participated, from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory — Anna Sdobnova.

Also present at the event were Julian Kondur, representing the structure of the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, Natalia Oleynik from the Council of Europe, and Katrin Buchholz from the German Embassy in Kyiv.

The cultural program was presented by the Kyiv Academic Music and Drama Gypsy Theater “Romance”, People’s Artist of Ukraine Leonid Sandulenko, and musician Sergio Babuchi.

Babuchi’s participation had special symbolic significance: his music combines Roma and Jewish traditions. In Babyn Yar, which became one of the main symbols of the Holocaust on the territory of Ukraine, such a combination of two cultures of memory acquires special meaning.

The organizers of the events were the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar”, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the youth organization “ARKA — Agency for Advocacy of Roma Culture”, and the theater “Romance”.

Why the victims of the Roma genocide are remembered specifically on August 2

The date is associated with events that occurred on the night of August 2-3, 1944 in the German Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On the territory of the camp, there was a so-called Zigeunerfamilienlager — a “family camp” for Roma and Sinti. Families were initially kept together there, but this did not mean milder conditions. Prisoners died from hunger, infections, forced labor, medical experiments, and systematic killings.

On the night of August 2-3, 1944, the Nazis liquidated this sector. The remaining prisoners, among whom were especially many women, children, and elderly people, were sent to the gas chambers.

Different historical sources provide different figures. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory reports approximately 2,900 Roma and Sinti killed in one night. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum uses a broader estimate — about 4,300 last prisoners of the Roma camp destroyed during its final liquidation. The difference is due to the peculiarities of counting registered prisoners, transferred inmates, and people not included in camp documents.

In total, about 23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum indicates that approximately 21,000 were registered as prisoners, and another two thousand people were killed without being included in camp lists. Most of the deported Roma did not survive the imprisonment.

From 220,000 to 500,000 victims

The exact number of Roma exterminated by the Nazis and their allies in Europe cannot be established.

Historians estimate from 220,000 to 500,000 dead. Documents on shootings were not always compiled, many killings occurred in small groups outside major camps, and entire families and settlements disappeared without preserved lists of names.

Nazi policy towards Roma, like the policy towards Jews, was based on racial ideology and the desire for the physical extermination of people declared “alien” or “inferior”. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory emphasizes that the genocide of the Roma remained outside public attention for a long time even after the defeat of Nazism.

In modern Ukraine, researchers have identified more than 140 sites of mass murder of the Roma population. However, the real scale of the tragedy may be significantly larger, as not all shooting sites have been established and investigated.

Roma among the victims of Babyn Yar

Babyn Yar is primarily known as one of the main sites of mass extermination of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

On September 29 and 30, 1941, nearly 34,000 Kyiv Jews were shot here. Killings in the ravine continued throughout the occupation of Kyiv — from 1941 to 1943.

Among the victims of Babyn Yar were also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, patients of a psychiatric hospital, Ukrainian nationalists, underground fighters, hostages, and other civilians. Roma camps were destroyed not only directly in Babyn Yar but also on the then outskirts of Kyiv — in Svyatoshyn and on Berezniaky.

At the same time, the names of most of the killed Roma remain unknown. Entire families could be destroyed, leaving behind neither witnesses nor documents.

For NANews — News of Israel, it is especially important to emphasize: preserving the memory of Roma victims does not diminish the significance of the memory of the six million exterminated Jews. On the contrary, an honest history of Babyn Yar requires naming each group of victims and returning to the dead their belonging, names, and human biographies.

Why the “Roma Wagon” had to wait more than 20 years

The author of the monument was Ukrainian architect and sculptor of Roma origin, Shevchenko Prize laureate Anatoliy Ignashchenko.

The life-size monument depicts a traditional Roma wagon. It is made of ship steel at the Kyiv plant “Kuznya na Rybalskom”. The metal body is covered with symbolic bullet marks and decorated with forged flowers.

The monument is also called “Black Horror” or “Kali Trash”.

It was planned to be installed back in 1998, but the project was not implemented then. For some time, the already manufactured composition was located in Kamianets-Podilskyi — on a cliff above the Smotrych River.

Only in September 2016 was the monument transported to Kyiv. Its opening took place on September 23, 2016, during events marking the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy. The official transcript of the Verkhovna Rada confirms that more than twenty years passed from the idea’s inception to its realization.

Thus, Roza Tapanova’s words about the decade of the “Roma Wagon” refer to the period from September 2016 to August 2026.

Key dates in the history of memory

Ukraine began officially marking the commemorative date after the Verkhovna Rada’s resolution No. 2085-IV, adopted on October 8, 2004. The European Parliament adopted a corresponding resolution on April 15, 2015, calling to recognize August 2 as the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Roma Holocaust.

Amaro Kino: memory through modern Roma cinema

After the official ceremony, participants were invited to an evening screening of the short film program Amaro Kino. The name translates from Roma as “our cinema”.

The screening began on August 2, 2026, at 19:00 at the “Living Memory” film club. The program was supported by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture ERIAC.

The 2026 program included four films:

• The Angry Bird, directed by Jack Lillywhite, UK, 2025;
• The Exhibition, directed by Dasha Raimanova and Bela Varadi;
• The Gift, directed by Lara Izagirre Garisurieta, Spain, 2025;
• Fifteen Minutes, directed by Sejad Ademaj, Germany, 2022.

Documentary and feature films tell about the modern life of Roma in Europe, the search for identity, family experience, creativity, discrimination, and attempts to maintain their own voice in society.

The choice of modern cinema continues the thought expressed by Roza Tapanova: the memory of genocide should not be limited to a mourning date. It should exist in education, museum work, and art, and the Roma community itself should not be the object of someone else’s story but a direct participant in creating its own history.

Why this ceremony is important for Israel

For the Israeli reader, the history of the Roma genocide is especially understandable through the experience of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

The Jewish and Roma tragedies are not identical in scale, organization of extermination, and historical circumstances. However, at the core of both was Nazi racial ideology, dividing people into those supposedly entitled to live and those who should be deprived of civil rights, expelled from society, deported, and exterminated.

Babyn Yar shows that the policy of mass murder could be directed against different groups on the same territory. That is why near the Menorah, preserving the memory of the shot Jews, there is also the “Roma Wagon”, returning the history of Roma families to the public space.

NANews — News of Israel views such events as part of a common counteraction to anti-Semitism, racism, and attempts to make certain groups of victims “invisible”.

The ceremony on August 2, 2026 reminded: memory begins with a mourning procession and laying flowers, but should not end with them. It continues in research, films, theater, music, school programs, and in society’s readiness to hear those whose history has remained on the sidelines for decades.

“Roma Wagon”, which could not be installed for more than twenty years, became not only a monument to the dead. It became a testament to how difficult it is for society to return the repressed pages of its past — and how important it is not to stop this work.

A few years later, his father would be forced to hide after participating in Jewish self-defense during a bloody pogrom. The family would leave Odessa and move to Eretz-Israel. And four decades later, this child from Odessa, now known as Yaakov Dori, would lead the transformation of a Jewish underground defense organization into the regular army of independent Israel.

His biography combined two eras of Jewish history. In the first, the Jews of Odessa tried to protect their homes from pogromists, often without receiving protection from the authorities. In the second, a Jewish state emerged with its own army. Yaakov Dori was one of those who built a historical bridge between these eras.

…

Odessa, the Dostrovsky family, and the 1905 pogrom

Yaakov Dostrovsky was born on October 8, 1899, in Odessa, which was then part of the Russian Empire and is now in Ukraine. The Israeli Museum of the Jewish People ANU directly calls him a native of Odessa, Ukraine, and notes that the family left after the anti-Jewish pogrom of 1905.

The early Israeli “Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel” provides a more detailed family history. According to this source, the future Chief of Staff’s father was named Avraham-Zvi Dostrovsky, and his mother was Miriam, daughter of Yitzhak Levinson.

In 1905, Avraham-Zvi participated in the armed Jewish self-defense of Odessa. After the pogrom, the tsarist authorities intended to prosecute the Jews who resisted the attackers. Yaakov’s father was forced to hide and flee to Eretz-Israel. About a year later, his wife and three children — Shlomo, Yocheved, and little Yaakov — joined him. The family first reunited in Jaffa and then settled in Haifa.

The Odessa pogrom of 1905 became one of the bloodiest anti-Jewish outbreaks in the city’s history. According to the YIVO encyclopedia, about 300 Jews were killed in Odessa, including more than 50 members of self-defense units. These units tried to protect Jewish streets, homes, and families but faced not only pogromists but also hostility or inaction from imperial authorities.

It cannot be claimed that Yaakov Dori later publicly cited the Odessa pogrom as the main reason for his choice of a military career. There is no confirmed quote about this. However, the family continuity is evident: his father defended the Jews of Odessa with weapons, and the son dedicated his life to creating a system that would make organized defense of the Jewish people a state responsibility.

This is why NANews — News of Israel considers the story of Yaakov Dori not just as the biography of an Israeli general accidentally born outside the country. It is one of the key stories in the cycle “Jews from Ukraine” — the story of an Odessa family whose experience was linked to the formation of the defense doctrine of future Israel.

From Odessa to Haifa

In Haifa, Yaakov’s father initially worked as a laborer. The Dostrovsky home was open to Jewish pioneers moving between Judea and Galilee. Among the family’s guests were members of the “Ha-Shomer” organization, who spoke about protecting Jewish settlements, fighting robbers, and the need to independently ensure community safety.

Thus, the theme of Jewish self-defense, which arose in the family’s life back in Odessa, continued to accompany Yaakov in Eretz-Israel.

He studied at several Jewish schools in Haifa and then graduated from the famous “Reali” school. Even in his school years, Yaakov showed abilities in organization, planning, and maintaining discipline. In the student association, he led a group and gained his first experience in route planning, task distribution, and people management.

Later, these qualities would prove to be as important as weapon handling. Dori would go down in history not primarily as a field commander of a specific operation but as an engineer, organizer, and builder of a military system.

The Jewish Legion and first military experience

After the British troops entered Haifa, Yaakov Dostrovsky voluntarily joined the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers — one of the units of the Jewish Legion within the British Army.

He trained in Egypt, served in guarding the railway communication between Kantara and Lod, completed a machine gunner course, and received the rank of sergeant. After this, Dori himself trained soldiers in handling machine gun weapons.

The official biography of the IDF also confirms that during World War I, the future Chief of Staff served in the 40th Battalion of the Jewish Legion.

After the disbandment of the legion, Dori intended to continue serving in a Jewish defense formation. In 1921, he participated in the defense of Tel Aviv during Arab attacks. Later, he joined the “Haganah” and received the underground name Dan.

A symbolic historical parallel arises. In 1905, his father took up arms to defend the Jews of Odessa. In 1921, it was the son’s turn to defend Jewish quarters.

The engineer who began building an army

After military service, Dori went to Belgium and studied civil engineering at Ghent University. After receiving an engineering education, he returned to Eretz-Israel in 1926.

But his engineering knowledge was in demand not only in building structures and infrastructure. Dori became increasingly involved in the activities of the “Haganah,” which at that time was still an underground and largely territorially fragmented self-defense organization.

He commanded the “Haganah” forces in Haifa and its surroundings, developed a plan for the city’s defense, led the technical bureau, and the national system for training fighters.

The official biography of the IDF emphasizes that Dori was one of the early organizers of the “Haganah.” It was his engineering mindset, ability to create structures, and establish subordination that allowed the gradual transformation of voluntary local units into a unified military organization.

He built not just one defensive line or fortification. Dori created a system:

• training commanders;
• military training;
• technical support;
• defense planning;
• communication between territorial units;
• centralized force management.

His approach was engineering: a large structure must consist of reliably connected elements. It was this kind of “structure” that the future army of Israel gradually became.

From “Haganah” to regular armed forces

In 1939, Yaakov Dori was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the “Haganah.” His task was to transform the disparate self-defense organization into a disciplined and prepared military force.

Researchers at the Museum of the Jewish People ANU point out that it was during his leadership that the transition from improvised self-defense to a regular army model took place. Dori was involved in training commanders, establishing staff work, and developing the overall military structure.

Various sources have slight discrepancies regarding the last year of his first term as head of the “Haganah” staff. The Israeli Ministry of Defense archives indicate the period 1939–1945, while ANU and IDF biographical materials state until 1946. What is indisputable is that in June 1947, Dori was reappointed as Chief of Staff when the likelihood of a large-scale war was becoming increasingly apparent.

In 1946–1947, he also headed the Jewish Yishuv delegation engaged in purchasing weapons in the United States. For the future state, which was under British restrictions and preparing for war, establishing supply channels was critically important.

The Odessa publication “GRAD,” telling about its famous compatriot, also emphasizes that Dori commanded the “Haganah” forces in the Haifa area, led the technical direction, and participated in preparing the defense infrastructure. In Odessa itself, he is remembered as an Odessan who became the first head of the Israeli General Staff.

The first Chief of Staff of the IDF

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence. The new state immediately had to fight for its existence. At the same time, it was necessary to create a unified army subordinate to the government and general command.

The “Haganah” forces, “Palmach” units, former underground formations, volunteers, and new immigrants had to become parts of a single state military structure.

When creating the Israel Defense Forces, Yaakov Dori became its first Chief of the General Staff and the first officer to receive the highest rank of Rav Aluf, usually corresponding to the rank of lieutenant general. Official IDF materials indicate that he held this position in 1948–1949.

Sometimes publications claim that his official appointment took place precisely on July 27, 1948. However, Israeli military archives do not tie the start of his duties to this date: Dori led the “Haganah” staff even before the IDF was created and automatically became its first Chief of Staff after the army’s formation. Therefore, it is historically safer to say that he took this position upon the formation of the IDF in 1948.

Dori had to lead the army in conditions for which there were no ready-made instructions. The state had just appeared, fronts were changing, weapons and trained personnel were lacking, and military leaders had to simultaneously wage war and create army institutions.

Meanwhile, Dori’s health seriously deteriorated. Illness periodically prevented him from fully managing daily operations, so a significant part of the operational work was performed by his deputy, Yigael Yadin. Israeli sources do not hide this fact.

This, however, does not diminish Dori’s organizational role. He was not the sole author of victory and did not personally lead every battle. His main achievement was different: he helped create a staff, command system, and unified army where only recently there were underground organizations and territorial units.

The IDF did not emerge from nothing in one day. Its foundation was formed over years, and Yaakov Dori was one of the main architects of this process.

Key dates in the life of Yaakov Dori

Dori’s term as head of the IDF ended on November 9, 1949. His successor was Yigael Yadin.

After the army: building scientific Israel

After leaving the army, Dori did not retire from public work. He headed the Scientific Council at the Prime Minister’s Office and in 1951 became President of the Technion in Haifa.

He held this position until 1965. During his leadership, the Technion rapidly expanded: new scientific departments and research centers were created, and a new university campus was formed in the Neve Sha’anan area.

In 1951, under Dori, the Faculty of Natural Sciences was established, including departments of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and mechanics. In 1952, a research system was formed to support Israel’s infrastructural and technological development. In 1953, the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering was created.

Thus, the engineer from an Odessa family who helped build Israel’s army engaged in developing its scientific and technological potential.

For Dori, the security of the state was not limited to the number of soldiers and weapons. It depended on education, engineering, research, industry, and the ability to independently create modern technologies.

This was the second part of his life’s mission. First, he participated in building Israel’s military system. Then he helped create its scientific infrastructure.

This dual role is emphasized by NANews — News of Israel: Yaakov Dori was simultaneously a soldier and a builder, a military organizer and an engineer, a man of the army and a man of science.

Family continuation

The military tradition of the family was continued by Dori’s son, Yerachmiel. He served in the IDF Engineering Corps and later became the commander of the Engineering Corps.

Yaakov Dori’s daughter, Etana Padan, became a renowned biochemist and professor of microbial ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Thus, the children of the first Chief of Staff continued both main directions of his life: the defense of the state and the development of Israeli science.

Yaakov Dori died in January 1973 in Haifa — the city where his childhood, service, academic activities, and most of his adult life took place. A military facility and streets in several Israeli cities were named in his honor.

Why Yaakov Dori is one of the Jews from Ukraine

Calling Yaakov Dori a “Ukrainian general” would be historically inaccurate. He left Odessa at about six years old, was not a military figure of the Ukrainian state, and dedicated his entire conscious life to the Jewish Yishuv and Israel.

But it would be equally wrong to reduce his Ukrainian connection to a mere record of his birthplace.

He was:

• a native of Odessa;
• a descendant of a Jewish family from the territory of modern Ukraine;
• the son of a participant in the Odessa Jewish self-defense;
• a child whose family left the city after the pogrom;
• a person who transferred the family history of the struggle for Jewish security into building Israel’s institutions.

Modern Ukrainian sources classify him as an Israeli military figure of Ukrainian origin, and Odessa publications preserve his memory as a famous Odessan. However, the main significance of this connection lies not in a modern national label.

Dori’s story shows the contribution of Jews born in Ukraine to the creation of the state of Israel. Odessa gave Israel not only writers, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and politicians. In Odessa, a person was born who was destined to become the first Chief of the General Staff of the IDF.

His father defended Jews on the streets of Odessa in 1905 when the state authorities did not provide them with security and then intended to prosecute those who resisted. His son, decades later, led the army of a state created, among other things, so that the Jewish people would no longer depend on the will of others for their own existence.

Yaakov Dori left Odessa as a child. But it is with the Odessa story of his family that the path from disparate Jewish self-defense units to the regular army of independent Israel begins.

Category: Jews from Ukraine.

“… my girlfriend, at one time, repatriated from Ukraine alone. Her entire family remained there, in Ukraine, including grandparents who survived the Holocaust. She grew up in the Jewish community, and the question of living in Israel was always a matter of time for her.

One day after another conversation with her relatives, she told me how things were going there.

Then I thought in my heart:

“Well, what is this if not the Holocaust?”

This naive, rather substantive question firmly settled in my head then. And recently, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, I decided to find out how and what Ukrainian Holocaust survivors live by, what they think, and how they cope with the Holodomor”.

On February 24, 2026, Israeli journalist Dan Goldman published a video about the fates of Ukrainian Jews who survived the Holocaust and the Righteous Among the Nations, who today once again find themselves in conditions of war. The material was released on a symbolic date — the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and became an attempt to answer the complex question: what do people who have already survived one catastrophe feel when history breaks their lives again?