The UK has made a Jewish woman ambassador to the Ukraine - an appointment that has a speial resonance for her.
Melinda Simmons, who is a member of Finchley Reform Synagogue an due to take up the role in the summer, told the JC: "I’m reasonably certain that I’m not the first [British] Jewish female ambassador, but I think I might be the second."
She added that Foreign Office employees tended not to specify whether they were Jewish “until fairly recently. I think it’s part of a wider shift in the civil service about people talking more openly about whatever defines their diversity.”
She said: “My great grandparents on my mother’s side came from Ukraine… the city of Kharkiv.” She added that her great grandfather later moved to Kiev to find work.
“The idea that you would come back to a country that your family felt the need to leave, and in such a positive way… is something that is both personally meaningful to me and my wider family, but also just feels like it will bring an extra perspective to the time when I’ll be there.
“I absolutely will, if I possibly can, go to Kharkhiv and see if I can find out more about my extended family who lived there.”
Ukraine is a country of contradictions. Its bloody history with regards to the Jews is well known, from the Khmelnytsky massacres to the ravine of death at Babi Yar.
But it has just become the first country in the world outside Israel to have both a Jewish Prime Minister and President at the same time, with the latter, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected by a landslide last week.
“The conflicts and challenges are all things I find deeply interesting”, Ms Simmons said.
“It’s very difficult for me to talk about what that means in the country, because I don’t yet know the country well enough and I’m not yet the ambassador.
"But… if you look at this from outside, the idea that anybody is able to think about competing for the highest office in the country and run a campaign in which nobody thinks it’s an issue that they are of Jewish heritage, I think must tell you a lot about what the country aspires to be.”
While she said she would miss Finchley Reform — “a really fantastic, warm and progressive community” — she said she intended to “seek out and learn about how Jews express themselves across Ukraine”.
