When Ukrainian Jews sit around the Seder table this week, celebrating a very different Passover than in the past, they will be able to use the first Ukrainian-language Haggadah.
The New Haggadah, “For Our Freedom”, is an initiative of Project Kesher, a global Jewish feminist organization that has been supporting Jewish identity and renewal for women of the former Soviet Union for the past 23 years.
The Israeli chapter of Project Kesher found itself inundated late last winter, when thousands of Ukrainian women and their children fled the Russian invasion to Israel.
Rabbi Ola Weinstein, executive director of Project Kesher in Israel, said the organization is currently supporting about 3,000 Ukrainian women. “It was very stressful. The women came without their husbands and their belongings,” Weinstein said.
Responding to the influx of Ukrainian families, Project Kesher added a new roster of programming to meet their needs, filling the gaps left by the Israeli government’s response.
The organization established its own Hebrew-language rocks Classes and additional networking groups for translation assistance, career advice and absorption tips.
“We’re working 24/7,” Weinstein said. “The situation is unpredictable.”
Jewish Ukrainians who fled war zones in Ukraine arrive on a rescue flight at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv on March 17, 2022. (Yossi Zeliger / Flash 90)
Some Ukrainian refugees, here on humanitarian grounds, will attend a Seder for the first time in their lives this year.
However, most are coming from Jewish communities around Ukraine. He said that he did not want to read the Haggadah in Russian. They want to speak about freedom and free choice in Ukrainian.
as mentioned in A JTA passage about the language of the HaggadahUntil now, most of the prayer books and Torah texts used by Ukrainian Jewish communities were created in Russian, the language primarily spoken by Ukrainian Jews. But last year’s invasion prompted many Ukrainians to switch languages as a sign of national solidarity.
“As far as we know, all the Haggadah was never translated into Ukrainian,” Weinstein said. “The Jewish world in Ukraine assumed that everyone spoke Russian and that was fine until this war.”
The main text of the Haggadah is based on “A Different Night”, a 1997 Haggadah created by Noam Zion, who worked with rabbis from the Masorti movement and Hebrew Union College as consultants for this edition.
A new Haggadah in Ukrainian in ‘For Our Freedom’ by Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, available for Passover 2023, an initiative of Project Kesher (courtesy Project Kesher)
This Passover Is “For Our Freedom” available online at haggadot.com, It will be published next year.
The Haggadah includes prayers for the defenders of Ukraine, prayers for peace in Ukraine, and passages from Ukrainian authors, as well as traditional texts.
Weinstein said, in addition to various readings, the Haggadah also includes audio files of Passover songs sung by Ukrainian cantors and rabbis, along with female clergy, to bring the voices of Ukrainian women to the fore.
Most of the Haggadah’s commentaries and translations into Ukrainian were provided by Michal Stamova, a musicologist who directed the Masorti youth movement Noam in Ukraine and came to Israel after the Russian invasion last February.
It is also the first gender-equal haggadah in Ukrainian, and features the vivid artwork of Ukrainian-born Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky-Nnady, whose paintings from last year depicted the dramatic and tragic changes in Ukraine since the Russian invasion is reimagining Kiev. Under siege of his youth.
An illustration in ‘For Our Freedom’ by Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, a new Haggadah in Ukrainian, an initiative of Project Kesher, available for Passover 2023 (courtesy Project Kesher)
Cherkassky-Nnady immigrated to Israel from Kiev with her parents when she was 14, studied at a prestigious Tel Aviv art high school and circulated in art circles for her first decade and a half in Israel. He is not religious—he is an outspoken and outspoken communist—but found a sense of hope in drawing the Ukrainian Haggadah.
“At its essence, the Haggadah tells a story of hope, conveying the idea that even the most lowly of people can find their way to the Promised Land,” Cherkassky-Nnadi said. “This sense of hope is what drives and holds Ukraine together as a country and its people.”
Weinstein of Project Kesher said that Cherkassky-Nanadi’s painting associates women around the Passover table, something that is not present in the classical Haggadah texts.
This is not Cherkassky-Nanady’s first haggadah. She attended a second one in 2002, then learned about Jewish art and the tradition of drawing for Seder lessons.
Cherkassky-Nnady said, “It was very emotional to return to the Haggadah as the first illustrator to work on a Ukrainian translation.” “It was clear to me that the illustrations would be related to the war and the yearning for freedom of the Jewish nation and the Ukrainian nation would be intertwined.”
An illustration by Zoya Cherkassky
‘For Our Freedom’, a new Haggadah in Ukrainian, an initiative of Project Kesher, available for Passover 2023 (courtesy of Project Kesher)
Weinstein, 42, has been working in this corner of the Jewish world for many years, since immigrating to Israel from Russia 23 years ago. His family remained in Russia until this latest war.
This Passover, Weinstein said, she will celebrate the Seder with her husband and children for the first time in more than 20 years, along with her mother, brother and their families.
“This will be our first family Passover together,” she said, adding, “The world has changed.”
