These past few years have been exceptionally hard for Jews as we attempt to juggle our personal identities and faith with the ongoing antisemitism surrounding us. The war in Israel is a major factor in these struggles. Yet for me, who has relatives in both Israel and Ukraine, whose parents still speak with a thick accent, it is doubly challenging to find my place.
My parents fled Soviet Ukraine in the early 1990s. The antisemitism wasn’t always violent, yet alienation was constant. My parents never felt at home in the country where they’d grown up and been subtly turned away by potential employers, refused by universities, and felt the need to work harder than those around them. The message was clear. They were not wanted, and they listened, fleeing the country their ancestors had lived in for generations. Britain eventually became home.
Growing up, I absorbed my parents’ stories of a childhood devoid of any religious or Jewish expression. My father often tells me the only thing he experienced while still in Ukraine was a single shofar blast, each year on Yom Kippur, before heading back to work. My mother, born in Odesa, speaks of how Jewish mannerisms, language and culture was deeply embedded in the ‘Pearl of the Black Sea’. That didn’t stop her classmates bullying her for her Jewish roots, though. There are countless such stories and underscore why Jews left the Soviet Union in search of a better life. Yet, as a family, we never really let go of Ukraine, visiting each summer and spending time with our cousins.
All of this leaves me, someone of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, at a crossroads. As the Israeli conflict often makes front-page news, many forget another war, going on for longer, not too far from the Middle East. I remember February 2022 just as well as I remember watching rockets fly over my head in Israel on October 7. That’s when I began telling people I was Ukrainian, not Russian, even though Russian is my mother tongue. Alongside this, Hamas’ massacre led me to hold Israel and Judaism closer to my heart as I continued my gap year there.
What has been strange – and, frankly, disorienting – is the way the two conflicts have become entangled. In public conversation, the two are never spoken of together, never framed as part of the same global crisis. But for a Ukrainian Jew, they overlap in ways that are sometimes impossible to separate. I feel the pull of my Ukrainian heritage acutely, just as I feel the complexity of my Jewish identity at a moment when being visibly Jewish in parts of London requires a level of caution that keeps me on high alert. Attacks on Jews are rising in viciousness and volume. The local shul has security guards. The online abuse is relentless.
My parents left Ukraine carrying one suitcase for the whole family. They carried their language, their recipes, their memories, and a quiet but unshakeable identity that survived Soviet attempts to suppress it. What they gave me is not just a heritage, but an attitude towards the world. A way of holding on to who you are when the world makes it complicated. A refusal, ultimately, to be defined solely by what surrounds you. I am both Ukrainian and Jewish. I love two homelands at once, because the underlying themes are the same. While Ukrainians have to hold on to their identity as Putin tries to wipe them out, Israelis and Jews must do the same on a global front.
I have spent four years watching missiles fall on cities I have visited, on streets I have walked, on a people I am bound to by blood, history and faith. I have followed the fate of Ukraine’s Jewish community – a community that, astonishingly, has deepened its Ukrainian identity through the war, with Jewish soldiers on the front lines and the first Ukrainian-language siddur only published in 2025. I also hold dear to my heart the land of Israel. My phone pings with every siren warning, and I regularly check WhatsApp groups for updates. These two parts of my life can go hand in hand, and I gladly shoulder the burden of worry for family members in both countries if it means I can hold my multifaceted identity secure.
Arthur Popivker is a student at the University of Birmingham
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