Book Review: Odesa and Growing Up a Ukrainian Jew
Reading “Jewish Odesa” by Marina Sapritsky-Nahum was a deeply personal experience for me.
As someone born in Odesa, raised in a Russian-speaking, entirely secular Jewish family, and only discovering Judaism much later in life, I found in these pages not only rigorous scholarship but a sensitive articulation of the inner questions I’ve often asked myself: What does it mean to be a Ukrainian Jew when your upbringing was shaped by Soviet silence, Russian culture, and an absence of visible Jewish life? Where do I belong in a Jewish narrative that I was not raised with, but that I now seek to reclaim?
Sapritsky-Nahum’s work captures this complex terrain with grace and depth. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Odesa and interviews spanning generations, she paints a nuanced portrait of a Jewish community navigating memory, identity, and revival in the shadow of Soviet repression and amid the realities of modern Ukraine.
For those of us who grew up Jewish in name but not in practice, who learned about kashrut, Shabbat, or even the meaning of Yom Kippur only as adults, this book feels like a dialogue with our past and a tentative sketch of a different possible future.
One of the most powerful themes the book explores is the tension between personal and collective identity: being Jewish without tradition, being Ukrainian without speaking Ukrainian, and being shaped by Russian cultural codes while slowly disentangling from their political implications. In my own life, I’ve struggled with the term “Ukrainian Jew.”
For much of my youth, it felt more like a contradiction than a coherent identity. I was a teenager when the Soviet Union collapsed, and my earliest memories of Ukrainian independence were marked by uncertainty and transition.
The Soviet regime had systematically erased or suppressed ethnic and cultural difference, enforcing a Russified identity that left little room for minority voices, especially those of Jews, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and others whose histories did not fit the imperial narrative. In that context, “Jew” was my official ethnicity, a Soviet label stripped of faith or tradition, while “Ukrainian” was my nationality tied to a state I was not raised to feel part of, a language I barely spoke, and a history my schooling rarely acknowledged.
And yet, that dissonance has softened over time. Today, as Russia wages war on Ukraine, justifying its invasion with the same imperial logic that once denied our right to self-definition, I feel more rooted in both parts of my identity.
I am a Ukrainian because I was shaped by Ukraine’s post-Soviet emergence, and a Jew because I have chosen to reclaim a heritage the Soviet system tried to erase. Sapritsky-Nahum’s work honors these layered identities and speaks directly to those of us still navigating the long aftermath of erasure.
Her depiction of post-Soviet Jewish revival, particularly the way children sometimes become the bearers of Jewish knowledge, reversing traditional family dynamics, resonated with the longing and curiosity I felt when I first started learning about Judaism.
The book also captures the ambivalence many Odesans feel toward the shifting meanings of “home,” especially for those who have left, returned, or found themselves caught between places. That sense of never fully belonging yet still yearning for connection is something I know intimately.
Even beyond its academic significance, Jewish Odesa offers something rare: an empathetic, multi-layered reflection on what it means to be Jewish in a place like Odesa, where cosmopolitan myth, cultural hybridity, and political turmoil collide.
In light of the recent war and the tragic fragmentation of Ukraine’s Jewish communities, this book becomes even more vital. It preserves voices, memories, and complexities that might otherwise fade, and it reminds us that Jewish identity in Eastern Europe is still being shaped by those who stayed, those who left, and those, like me, who are trying to piece it together from afar.
For anyone grappling with questions of identity, belonging, memory, or the intersections of Jewishness and Ukrainian-ness, this book is not just informative, it’s affirming. It reminded me that I’m not alone in asking: What does it mean to be Jewish here, now? And it offered me a deeper understanding of my hometown, and a heritage that I continue to rediscover as my own.
Source: Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon