"Future of the Major Post-Soviet Jewish Communities in the Context of Migration and Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East," with Ze'ev (Vladimir) Khanin, Bar-Ilan University

"Future of the Major Post-Soviet Jewish Communities in the Context of Migration and Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East," with Ze'ev (Vladimir) Khanin, Associate Professor, Bar-Ilan University

The invasion of the Russian army into the territory of Ukraine, beginning on February 24, 2022, has caused dramatic impacts on the Jewish population of post-Soviet states, above all on its two largest communities – Russian and Ukrainian. Some crucial questions are to be raised on the prospects of post-Soviet Jewish communities, even if risking any unambiguous answers to them are premature today. Will the Jewish communities in the Ukraine be able to survive the ongoing Russian internecine War (against the State of Ukraine in general)? Is the majority of Ukrainian (and Russian) Jewish refugees/emigres of this disastrous war heading to Israel or rather to the West? And finally: will Russian speaking Jewish communities across the World, till now often consisting by formerly Russian and Ukrainian members in equal shares, be able to survive as coherent (transnational) entities, or will they decay? In this presentation we will try to answer these questions by analyzing the situation based on the empirical data that was collected from the available demographic assessments of the FSU Jewish population and results of a few sociological studies as well as collected data/information during the recent months.

Ze'ev (Vladimir) Khanin is an Israeli expert on the Russian-speaking Jewish community in Israel and the Diaspora; Transnational migrations and ethnic diasporas; the Israeli society, and the Israel-FSU relations and politics. He got his Ph.D. in Political Science/Contemporary History from Moscow Institute for African Studies, the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1989 and in 1991 completed post-Doctoral studies in the Institute for Russian and Soviet Studies, St. Antony’s Collage, the University of Oxford, U.K. Since his Aliyah to Israel in 1992 he worked a lecturer and researcher at Tel-Aviv University; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Interdisciplinary Center (currently – Reichmann University) Herzliya, and other higher academic establishments. In 1998-2012 and again since 2022 he lectures at the Department of Political Studies, and currently heads the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University. In 2009-2022 he served as chief scholarly expert of the Israeli Ministry of Aliya and Integration. Since March 2022 he is also a Chief co-editor of the academic series Post-Soviet Jewry in Transition at the De Gruyter-Brill academic publishers (Berlin and Leiden).

This event is cosponsored by The Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, The Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, The Center for Global Studies: Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies Research Program, and The Department of History.

This event is open to our campus audience.

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