In many ways, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has taken on the stature of a Jewish hero of old.
A symbol of solidarity and national unity, when first offered safe passage from his country, he refused. Zelensky, 44, told U.S. officials, “the fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.”
In addition to the support he has drawn from heads of state, the European Union, UK Parliament, and the U.S. House and Senate, he has inspired the praise and support of Jews and Jewish communities internationally.
Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles describes him as “a symbol of courage.” And speaking from the pulpit he said, “I can’t remember the last time I stood at this pulpit and prayed for someone’s life. But I pray that Zelensky lives.”
“We pray that the Ukrainian people and our Jewish brothers and sisters know that they’re at the front of our mind,” said Rabbi David Novak of Temple Sinai in Palm Desert, California. “We pray that Volodymyr Zelensky survives to lead his people for many more years to come.”
“As a Jew, it is impossible not to feel proud of the courage, dignity, and defiance shown by Zelensky at this moment,” tweeted artist and author Molly Crabapple, after Zelensky posted a video of himself and other government officials in Kyiv facing down advancing Russian forces.
“Tonight, we celebrate Shabbat with a world that is unified in this moment, behind a Jewish president of Ukraine who comes from a grandfather who was the only son of four who survived the Holocaust,” Rabbi Ryan Bauer of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco said in his weekly sermon.
In New York, Rabbi Labish Becker, executive director of the Haredi Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel of America, told The New York Times Zelensky is “a source of pride.”
“Our love of Zelensky is wrapped up in our fear for his death,” wrote Rob Eshman, National editor of Forward. “We watch him and wonder if we are witness to a cruel pre-martyrdom, or if, by some (Jewish) miracle, the story will have a happy ending.”
“Every Jew in the world today can hold his or her head up higher because of Zelensky,” wrote Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, spiritual leader of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida, in a Religion News Service op-ed. “More than that: Every Jewish young person now has a hero that they can call their own. A real, live, not merely historical or Jewish-holidays hero. Zelensky is our generation’s Hank Greenberg. He is our generation’s Sandy Koufax. This is Diaspora Jewish heroism.”
Thousands of Israelis marched through the streets of Tel Aviv, chanting Zelensky’s name. A Twitter message by a former Israeli speechwriter urging people to pray for Zelensky by his Hebrew name was shared tens of thousands of times the weekend the invasion began.
Zelensky was raised in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, whose inhabitants speak Russian. Like so many Soviet Jews, his parents were highly educated: his father was a mathematics professor; and his mother studied engineering. Zelensky and his family were among a few hundred thousand Jews who remained in post-Soviet countries, enjoying the tentative steadiness of their already established careers and positions.
When Zelensky was growing up, Soviet Jews were discouraged from practicing their religion. In fact, the president said in a January 2020 interview in The Times of Israel, “Most Jewish families in the Soviet Union were not religious,” not least because “religion didn’t exist in the Soviet state as such.”
Synagogues were mostly shuttered or they were closely watched by KGB informants, according to a February 27 article in The Atlantic. Even observing Passover seder—the traditional meal that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover—was seen as somewhat subversive. Teaching Hebrew was forbidden.
Zelensky thus came of age when several generations of Soviet Jews had already had their religious identity stripped from them. Not only was Judaism no longer a cultural background—it was a mark of second-class citizenship and a point of exclusion from mainstream society.
Yet Zelensky rose to enjoy public successes, both as an actor and then as a politician. These achievements allowed him to transcend the limits often placed on the ambition of Soviet Jews.
As an actor in the popular television series Servant of the People, Zelensky played the character of a Jewish outsider—a Ukrainian schoolteacher—who becomes his country’s president.
In the 2019 election, he won 73 percent of the vote.
Ben M. Freeman, author of the 2021 book Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People, believes Zelensky is an antidote to misrepresentation that “Jews went like lambs to the slaughter.”
“Jewish people are resilient,” Freeman told the Jewish Telegraph Agency in a February 28 article. “Jewish people fight back. Jewish people have always resisted.”
In an interview in the Jewish Chronicle March 3, Ukraine’s Chief Rabbi, Yaakov Bleich, in America to coordinate the rescue of Jews from cities under attack, spoke of the phone call he received from Zelensky.
“He told me, ‘I need you to pray for the success of our soldiers. We are outnumbered, but they cannot match our determination and will to win’.”
Extolling Zelensky’s leadership, “He understands that 40 million sets of eyes are on him, and that if he falters, 40 million people will falter behind him,” said Rabbi Bleich. “That is somehow giving him the energy to keep going, almost without sleep, day after day.”
“The Talmud says that when a shepherd is angry with his flock, he puts a blind sheep in front to lead it. And the corollary of that is that when the shepherd is favorably disposed, he gives it a sheep to lead it that can see. That is Zelensky.”
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