Culminating two weeks of the highest drama Ukraine's Jewish community has witnessed in the post-Soviet era, a new nationwide Jewish group brought delegates from 285 local Jewish communities to Kyiv on April 12-15 in a bid to unite Ukraine's Jews and sideline Ukrainian-Israeli businessman Vadim Rabinovich from Jewish politics.
The founding congress of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine was held just one week after Rabinovich held the founding congress of his own new umbrella group, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. Rabinovich has led the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress since 1997, which until this month was the largest national Jewish group.
In numbers of delegates, the Jewish Confederation's congress was about one-fifth the size of Rabinovich's congress, which drew some 1,640 delegates from about 250 communities.
Confederation leaders said that was because they invited only delegates chosen by their communities to represent them, whereas Rabinovich invited multiple delegates from each group.
The Jewish Confederation clearly upstaged Rabinovich's group, however, in terms of support from other national and international Jewish groups.
Leaders of Jewish umbrella groups from virtually every European country attended the confederation's congress, and it was immediately recognized by the World Jewish Congress and the European Jewish Congress as representing Ukraine's Jews.
'This is the first time when the religious, cultural and social branches of the Jewish movement have been united in one organization – and few countries of the world can boast of such unification,' said Josef Zissels, who was elected executive director of the confederation.
Zissels has for years headed the Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities, one of three smaller national umbrella groups that united to form the confederation.
The Congress elected three co-chairmen rather than a single leader: former acting Prime Minister Yukhym Zvyahilsky, VA-Bank President Serhy Maksymov and Orlan soft-drink company President Yevhen Chervonenko.
Hryhory Surkis, a wealthy businessman who controls the Dynamo Kyiv soccer club, had been expected to be elected leader of the group, but he turned down the offer in a speech to the congress.
'He's got a lot of different positions, that's why he turned down offers of any positions in the confederation, but he was here and spoke for unification of the [Ukrainian] Jews,' said Yaakov dov Bleich, who is chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine as well as one of the main activists behind the Jewish Confederation.
Last spring, Surkis accepted a position in Rabinovich's All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, and he and Rabinovich announced a business alliance at around the same time. But he did not attend Rabinovich's recent congress, signaling a split between the two financial and political heavyweights.
Confederation leaders said Rabinovich's new group was organized mainly to discourage local Jewish communities from participating in the confederation and to preserve his status as the leader of the Jewish movement of Ukraine.
'But for a person to become an ambassador in a different country, it's not enough to be appointed, you also have to be recognized by that country,' said Rabbi Bleich.
Ukraine is home to an estimated 500,000 Jews who are united into approximately 350 communities scattered around the country.
At least half of those communities had delegates at both congresses, indicating that the issue of who represents Ukraine's Jews is far from settled. Apparently, Ukraine's generally poor local Jewish communities are reluctant to choose between the two wealthy groups of patrons.
Surkis appeared at the opening of the Jewish Confederation's congress to deliver a greeting message from himself and another on behalf of President Leonid Kuchma. The president's greeting praised attempts for unification of the Jewish movement and wished the confederation success.
'Our country is one of the few post-Soviet countries which has not had – and hopefully will not have – any interethnic conflicts,' the letter said. 'Ukraine does not have and cannot have anti-Semitism on the state level.'
Both Surkis and Rabinovich are actively supporting Kuchma's re-election campaign, but they and other financial-political groups around the president are at the same time jockeying to strengthen their positions relative to each other.
The congress was also attended by ambassadors from Israel, the United States and Germany.
Apart form the official statutory ceremonies, the delegates approved a number of addresses and resolutions dealing with Jewish property and official relations with other organizations.
One of the resolutions, addressed to Kuchma, asked the president to help resolve disputes over properties that used to belong to Ukrainain Jewish communities by placing a moratorium on privatization of such property.
According to the confederation, the Ukrainian Jews owned up to 15,000 such properties before the Bolshevik takeover of central and eastern Ukraine after World War I and Soviet annexation of western Ukraine during World War II.
Today, only around 2,000 of those properties exist, of which 600 are Jewish cemeteries, according to the confederation. Only 30 synagogues have been returned to Jewish community ownership since independence, confederation leaders complained.
'We understand that this is a very delicate issue and we are ready to wait for years and discuss it,' Zissels said.
