Ukrainian Jewish History from Khmelnytsky to Zelensky
Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**
This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Google Classroom. Students will be granted access to the class on Google Classroom after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.
Instructor: David Fishman
Ukraine was a major Jewish center from the sixteenth century until the 1990s. It was both the site of great Jewish tragedies (the Khmelnitsky massacres of 1648, pogroms, and Babi Yar) and the locus of extraordinary Jewish creativity (Hasidism, Sholem Aleichem and Abraham Goldfaden, and the Zionist leaders Leon Pinsker and Vladimir Jabotinsky). We will explore the historical path of Ukrainian Jewry down to its current Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Google Classroom.
Questions? Read our 2027 Winter Program FAQ.
David Fishman is a professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He also serves as director of Project Judaica, JTS’s program in Ukraine which is based at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy University, in partnership with the Ukrainian Archival Service. Dr. Fishman is the author of The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (ForEdge, 2017). His other books include Russia’s First Modern Jews, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, and two edited volumes of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Yiddish writings. His translation of Chaim Grade’s novel Women of the Ghetto will appear in YIVO’s Yiddish Voices series in the fall of 2027.
**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.