Introduction

Scholars researching the more than 30-year history of the Jewish national, cultural, and religious revival in the USSR/CIS frequently observe what they consider to be a rather widespread phenomenon: the conscious or subconscious effort by the movement's activists, leaders, and ideologists to anchor their initiatives within well-established historical phenomena and processes[1]. There are indeed numerous examples in the history of East European Jewry of utilizing old, positively perceived images established in the collective Jewish consciousness (as is also the case with other ethnic groups[2]) to legitimize phenomena born out of fundamentally new circumstances—a concept David Roskies termed a "usable past"[3].

For instance, the statutes of Jewish communities in early modern Poland and Lithuania, as well as Jewish institutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, contained numerous terminological and legal references to the Old Testament (Tanakh) and Talmudic traditions[4]. Similarly, the Vaad of the Four Lands—the supreme body of Jewish self-governance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 16th to the second half of the 18th century—reincarnated in the name of the Vaad of Jewish Organizations and Communities of the USSR.

This name for the first "umbrella" organization of Soviet Jewry, established in Moscow in 1989, was selected by the prominent ethnographer and linguist Mikhail Chlenov,[5] who was also known as one of the founders of the semi-legal Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Commission in 1981. (A structure which, significantly, also viewed itself as a successor to the socio-professional organization of the same name that operated in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century)[6].

However, it cannot be said that we are dealing with groundless declarations (indeed, the authors and proponents of the "usable past" concept do not claim this either). This also holds true for the multidirectional yet closely intertwined processes of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet eras: mass Jewish emigration to Israel and other Western nations coincided with efforts to institutionalize Jewish organizations and communities within post-Soviet states. These trends (as noted by the renowned scholar of Soviet Jewry M. Altshuler and other experts[7]) largely mirrored similar processes within the Jewish community during the first decades of the twentieth century.

Thus, numerous educational, cultural, and charitable organizations (both entirely "apolitical" and those affiliated with various Zionist, autonomist, and other Jewish political movements) were established at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by Russian Jews to replace the traditional infrastructure of the Kahal[8]. These structures became particularly active during the period of intensive migration of East European Jews both to cities within the Pale of Settlement and beyond its borders, where "permanent" Jewish communities and their functional institutions of a neo-traditional and "modernist" type eventually took shape[9].

Something similar occurred nearly a century later, when, on the eve of and immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, numerous Jewish associations emerged, their development coinciding with the surge of Jewish emigration from the USSR between 1989 and 1991. Public organizations dominated the Jewish movement in the USSR/CIS from 1988 to 1992, after which, as emigration slowed, communal structures or their professional departments came to the fore[10]. Although these phenomena, separated by many decades, resulted from fundamentally different historical situations, certain parallels can hardly be dismissed as mere coincidence. In one way or another, many analogies suggest themselves—ranging from the intensification of social, religious, cultural, and educational activities to the implementation of social welfare and information programs.

At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that among the exceptionally wide spectrum of such initiatives termed the "post-Soviet Jewish revival," there was no place, even symbolically, for one other phenomenon: a brand and strategy of the European-style Jewish national movement in which "Russian" Jews played a leading role. This refers to settlement projects both in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine/the State of Israel and in the Diaspora.

As is well known, three such theories gained the greatest popularity. The first was Autonomism, which positioned itself at the end of the 19th century as the most pragmatic direction of the Jewish national movement. Its tenets were formulated between 1897 and 1902 by the historian Semyon Dubnov, who believed that Jews (as a new type of nation) could preserve their national identity in the Diaspora provided they established cultural-national autonomy in their current places of residence[11]. (Such ideas had a profound impact on Jewish life in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia during the interwar period).

At the same time, settlement activity played a minor role in the strategy and practice of the Autonomists, in contrast to the two other branches of the Jewish national movement—Zionism and Territorialism, whose goals were to acquire and/or return to a Jewish Homeland as a territory with a concentrated Jewish population. The result of Zionist efforts was the settlement of the historical Homeland of the Jewish people—Eretz Yisrael—and the subsequent rebirth of Jewish statehood. The ideas of Territorialism, meanwhile, stem from Leo Pinsker’s famous book "Auto-Emancipation"[12]. The author and his followers, who broke away from the Zionists in 1905 to form a separate organization led by the writer Israel Zangwill, insisted on establishing Jewish statehood or territorial autonomy in any suitable territory, not necessarily in Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish Territorialist Organisation (ITO) made several unsuccessful attempts to realize its plans in various regions of the world and was officially dissolved in 1925, although related structures continued to function for another two decades.

The most successful territorialist projects were implemented in the USSR, where in 1934 the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) was established within the RSFSR, serving as a communist version of the idea of Jewish socialist statehood[13]. In this context, we should mention the existence from 1927 to 1935 of three Jewish national districts in the Ukrainian SSR and two in the Crimean steppe (at that time the Crimean ASSR within the RSFSR)[14]. Notably, the Kalinindorf, Novozlatopol, and Stalindorf districts were created on the basis of Jewish agricultural colonies founded in New Russia (now southern Ukraine) in the first half of the 19th century. These were joined by new colonies established on the initiative of the Society for Settling Working Jews on the Land (OZET). However, by the late 1930s, territorialist activity in the USSR was shut down, and mass repressions against the national intelligentsia and Jewish immigrants from abroad unfolded in the JAO, dealing a severe blow to the idea of building a Jewish Homeland in the Far East.

With that, the chapter on Russian-Jewish settlement in the Diaspora was considered closed. In Israel, where Soviet Jews began to arrive in relatively large numbers in the 1970s after a hiatus of nearly half a century, they made a certain contribution to local settlement initiatives, though far below their potential[15]. Yet within the framework of reviving Jewish life in the post-Soviet space itself, this phenomenon did not exceed the level of museum and historical interest. However, an extraordinary event that took place in Ukraine in 2014 challenges the finality of such a conclusion.

The Refugee Factor and Jewish Philanthropy

This event was the largely forced establishment of what is virtually the first Jewish shtetl after a hiatus of more than 100 years—Anatevka, located 23 kilometers southwest of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv[16]. Its first inhabitants were Jewish refugees from the Donbas who fled their homes in the summer of 2014 at the height of military actions between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists. The refugees were taken in by the congregation of the Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, Moshe Reuven Azman, who temporarily accommodated several hundred people in a summer Jewish children's camp in Shpola, Cherkasy Oblast, providing them with housing, food, and essentials (many refugees did not even have a change of clothes). As one of the displaced persons remarked: "We left our homes thinking it would be for a few days or weeks, but it has been over a year and we still cannot return. We did not know where we were going or what awaited us." When it became obvious that the military conflict would not end anytime soon, the buildings were winterized and heating was installed, allowing people to survive the winter of 2014/2015.

It was assumed that this would be a relatively short period required to complete paperwork before the bulk of the refugees repatriated to Israel, while the minority, like all displaced persons of various ethnicities uprooted by war, would find their place in Kyiv or other Ukrainian cities. It turned out, however, that the majority of the Jewish displaced persons from Donetsk and Luhansk did not plan to leave Ukraine, yet wished to preserve a communal environment that was culturally and psychologically comfortable for them.

Clearly, the facilities of a summer children's camp in the deep provinces were unsuitable for this. The problem could be solved by a permanent settlement that met the housing, municipal, cultural, and educational needs of the community, complete with its own "supportive economy" and located within transit distance of a major city's labor market and social services. Establishing a "neighborly urban community" meeting all these requirements seemed unrealistic at the time. Therefore, the decision was made to purchase land near Kyiv and begin constructing a village for the refugees. From the outset, the initiators and participants of the project realized they were creating specifically a "Jewish village" whose residents would adhere to certain rules of traditional communal life. For example, it was understood that cars should not enter the village on Shabbat, loud music could not be played, and so on.

The new settlement was named Anatevka—in memory of the fictional Jewish shtetl in the south of the Pale of Settlement immortalized by Sholem Aleichem in his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, which became the basis for the famous Broadway musical "Fiddler on the Roof." The village is situated near the once predominantly Jewish but now entirely Ukrainian village of Hnativka, which apparently served as the prototype for Anatevka. (According to the 1897 census, 926 Jews lived in the village, accounting for 85% of its population). Coincidentally or not, immediately after the purchase of the plot, it was discovered to border an ohel—a crypt standing alone in a field over the grave of Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl, the founder of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty, who was buried there in 1837. As our interlocutors noted, "this fact was perceived as a sign from Above that the location was chosen correctly."

It was unrealistic to expect that the state, which due to circumstances provided only minimal assistance to internally displaced persons, would be able to satisfy their specific ethnic needs. Behind the ambitious idea of Anatevka, alongside the energy and charisma of Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, stood a large group of Jewish philanthropists from Ukraine, Great Britain, and Israel, as well as volunteers from Ukrainian Jewish organizations, thanks to whom, according to the Rabbi, "it was possible to achieve the nearly impossible." One of the major sponsors of Anatevka, President of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress and Member of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine Vadim Rabinovich, remarked at the time that "when there are cataclysms in the country, there are people who weep and explain why things are bad and why things cannot be done. And then there are those who build."

Construction in the village did indeed progress rapidly, initially using wood, and later brick and concrete blocks. In the summer of 2015, the first foundations were poured (the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine, Eliav Belotsercovsky, added several shovels of fresh concrete to one of them). The opening of the Jewish town took place on September 1, 2015. Today, Anatevka comprises ten thousand square meters of residential and non-residential premises, utilities, and extensive vacant land for future development. The costs of constructing, developing, and maintaining these facilities are covered almost exclusively by donations, which by the end of 2019 amounted to approximately ten million dollars.

To date, in addition to the aforementioned Vadim Rabinovich, the main donors of the project include: the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) and its president Michael Mirilashvili; investor, media magnate, and philanthropist Yitzchak Mirilashvili; President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Boris Lozhkin; former EAJC President Alexander Mashkevich; head of the Jewish Municipal Community of Kyiv Alexander Levin; and a number of other prominent Jewish public figures and businessmen.

The system for working with donors, according to Rabbi Azman, is simple: "In the beginning there was no money, and there is none now. As soon as the next charitable contribution is received, we make the next prepayment for construction." Thus, with funds from businessmen Borukh Avraam Dubinsky and Roman Korenblit, the "Tehilat Hashem" synagogue was established in Anatevka. A contribution from EAJC Vice President and head of the Jewish Congress of Moldova, Emmanuel Grinshpun, enabled the construction of a mikveh (a Jewish ritual bathhouse) and a museum house; thanks to the efforts of Alexander Mashkevich and Vadim Rabinovich, a square and a park were added to the village, respectively. Another square, "26 Iyar," was created with the support of Moscow businessman and philanthropist German Zakharyaev, President of the STMEGI Foundation.

It appears that the "founders" of Anatevka have succeeded in turning their project into a prestigious undertaking: a presence among its trustees has become not only a respectable way to demonstrate Jewish sentiment but also a passport to the elite club of Jewish leadership, which yields substantial personal credit at both national and international levels. Notably, the "honorary mayor" of Anatevka is Rudolf ("Rudy") Giuliani, former Mayor of New York, personal attorney to former US President Donald Trump, businessman, philanthropist, and public figure, to whom Rabbi Moshe Azman presented the symbolic keys to the village in Paris in the summer of 2019[17].

In other words, participation in the development of Anatevka has become a matter of prestige, drawing many representatives of the first post-Soviet generation of major entrepreneurs into the Jewish movement[18]. Additionally, the emergence in Ukraine of the first "modernized shtetl" in over a century gives its initiators significant standing in the eyes of the Ukrainian authorities. Many view Anatevka as a pilot project whose success could help address the issue of displaced persons and refugees across Ukraine. (In this context, the initiative was lobbied by parliamentary opposition leader Vadim Rabinovich and Georgiy Logvinskiy, former chairman of the subcommittee on international legal issues and internally displaced persons, and former vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe). Furthermore, the social and production facilities located in Anatevka offer an expanding range of services to the local Ukrainian population.

One such facility is the "Beit Shmuel" community rehabilitation center, established with the support of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) and Alexander Levin in memory of his brother, who initiated the project but tragically died in New York. The three-story Center includes social services and a multi-disciplinary medical and rehabilitation clinic, serving—in addition to Anatevka residents—members of the Kyiv Jewish community and all residents of the district. The creators of the center drew inspiration from the New York clinics founded by Jews and still perceived as "Jewish": Maimonides Medical Center, Beth Israel, and Mount Sinai, which today serve all those in need. Another "communal-national" project is a garment workshop located on the second floor of the synagogue, which produces protective medical suits (some of which are donated to clinics) as well as protective coats and bags under the brand "Anatevka super coat," employing both settlement residents and neighbors from the village of Hnativka. It is no coincidence that, according to observers, the Kyiv Oblast Administration fully assists the development of this "Jewish village," resolving its current issues quickly and without unnecessary bureaucracy.

Communal Infrastructure

As of March 2020, the village population was approximately 150 people, with prospects for expanding to 500 or more residents. (The 5 hectares currently occupied by Anatevka represent only a portion of the land acquired by Rabbi Azman). The development of the village follows three tracks that form the core elements of the social and economic infrastructure of a new type of Jewish community: the residential and municipal environment, education and spiritual life, and a supportive economy and employment.

The first issue was addressed by gradually moving away from the concept of a "camp for displaced persons." Instead, people are provided with housing in permanent apartment buildings or allocated land for individual construction (both are currently free of charge). The only remaining hotel-type building in the village is intended for the temporary stay of newly arrived families.

The nucleus of the second, religious-educational track is the "Tehilat Hashem" synagogue—the first synagogue built in Kyiv Oblast in the last 100 years. (Many media outlets repeat the touching story that its gabbai is Isaac, a 75-year-old refugee from the Donbas who performed the same role for 20 years in the Luhansk synagogue, and who remarked that "his life began in evacuation, and is ending in evacuation")[19]. Anatevka’s educational complex includes a kindergarten where children are introduced to four languages (Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Hebrew), and the "Mitzvah—613" school, founded in 2002 by the Chabad community in Kyiv and relocated to the village. The school holds the status of a state educational institution with a national component, combining mandatory subjects with the study of the foundations of Judaism, Jewish history, and Hebrew.

The total number of students in the school and kindergarten at the time of writing was about 200—comprising children of Anatevka residents and schoolchildren arriving daily on school buses donated by American Jews from Kyiv and its suburbs. The individualized learning model is dictated by the small class sizes (up to 10-15 children per class), and in 2019-2020, the 8th and 11th (graduating) classes did not open due to a lack of students. (Among the reasons, observers cite the renewed mass Jewish emigration from Ukraine in recent years, while others, pointing to the lack of recruitment issues in other Jewish schools in Kyiv, suggest considering students' reluctance to spend time traveling to a school outside the city unless it is an ultra-prestigious lyceum).

Proper religious education can be obtained at the cheder opened in 2016—a primary school for boys engaged in in-depth Torah study. The community also plans to open a religious primary school for girls, an orphanage, and ultimately, to establish a Ukrainian-Israeli Jewish University in the village, providing a complete Jewish educational cycle on a single campus—from nursery to university, similar to the model in Moscow and, until recently, Odessa. Finally, Anatevka is envisioned as a site for preserving the cultural and historical memory of Ukrainian Jewry. A museum of Hasidism and the history of the Jews of Ukraine will be housed in vacated and reconstructed wooden buildings, alongside plans for a cultural center.

The new residents of Anatevka, who are almost unanimously described as hardworking and independent, are not willing to view themselves as dependents. It was obvious that without resolving the issue of employment, the community would quickly fracture from within. At first glance, the logical solution was the capital's labor market, located half an hour's drive away, allowing Anatevka residents to work in Kyiv while living in a pastoral area outside the city. Indeed, after settling in, many displaced persons actively engaged in job-seeking in Kyiv, assisted by the Chabad community and the leadership of the Brodsky Central Synagogue. However, transforming the village into just another bedroom suburb of the capital was not seen as the best solution for the development of the community as envisioned by its founders.

For this reason, the economic component of the communal infrastructure was oriented toward stimulating any type of activity within Anatevka itself, regardless of its economic efficiency. Consequently, efforts focused primarily on the development of the village—landscaping, construction, and the operation of various facilities. Thus, local residents erect the buildings, perform most of the interior finishing, and work on infrastructure development. The village has a carpentry workshop where, according to eyewitnesses, a group of highly skilled craftsmen is employed; seamstresses work to serve the residents; and a small souvenir production facility is operational. A portion of the vacant land was used for vegetable farming, and in the summer of 2016, the residents harvested a good crop of cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage, and pumpkins, which—like subsequent harvests—is used almost entirely for internal family consumption and the kosher kitchens of the village's educational institutions.

In the long term, the community plans to open technological facilities in the village, such as for the production of organic kosher cheese or soy milk to be supplied to Kyiv stores, but at this stage, the self-sufficiency of the village is not being discussed. The village was initially conceived as a charitable project, and not only in the basic sense of the word: to shelter, feed, educate, and provide a trade to Jews fleeing the war in eastern Ukraine. This task has, on the whole, been accomplished—especially since the flow of refugees has subsided. Meanwhile, the village continues to take in those in distress, such as those who lost their jobs during the quarantine, meaning that all apartments and dormitory rooms are almost 100% occupied. Yet this is no longer the sole, nor perhaps even the primary function of the project.

A more critical task, judging by the statements of the Azman family and their staff, is not merely the creation of a living (rather than a quasi-tourist "demo version") (neo-)traditional Jewish shtetl, but its transformation into a fully-fledged ethno-religious center and a symbol of care for one's neighbor. "To save and feed people means to achieve both physical and spiritual revival [of the community]," Rabbi Moshe Reuven noted in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine in August 2016[20]. "Our intention is not to compel, but to engage. To be a resident of Anatevka means to live in accordance with Hasidic customs and the norms of an observant Orthodox Jewish community." In practice, this means kosher food, modest dress, observance of Shabbat and Jewish holidays, religious education, regular prayers in a minyan, and so on. All of this, as planned by the initiators, serves as a catalyst for shaping a religious lifestyle among people who were deprived of such experience for generations during the Soviet era.

It appears that the sponsors of the community also accept this approach to some degree. In any case, those with whom the author of this article spoke in May 2019 acknowledged that they view their financial support of the project not so much as an act of charity, but as an "investment in the Jewish future" of local communities. Boris Lozhkin, quoted by the Kyiv website Svoi.City, expressed this idea as follows: "I have supported this project for more than a year and believe that Anatevka is one of the most powerful landmarks, a Jewish project to restore the traditional [way of] Ukrainian-Jewish life. Anatevka cannot be imagined in Western Europe. I think it will be a place of Jewish life on the world map, visited by religious Jews and non-Jews alike"[21].

What is meant by the "traditional Ukrainian-Jewish way of life" (apart, of course, from the religious component corresponding to Chabad ideology) is not yet entirely clear. The development of the concept of a 21st-century Jewish shtetl is not yet complete. At the same time, it is clear that this is not about a full-scale revival of the shtetl culture and daily life of a century ago. This is also evidenced by the low status of Yiddish in Anatevka. While it is an important cultural component of the traditional shtetl, and despite the reverence shown to it in Chabad (as studying Hasidic heritage is impossible without Yiddish), it does not play a significant role in the daily life of the village.

Preliminary Conclusions

So, what sociological phenomenon does Anatevka represent—defined by Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman as "a fairytale dream town where people are saved, given a future, and where the past and present are united"? By 2019, journalist Sh. Briman believes, "Anatevka has turned into a suburban 'satellite' community, connected by a spiritual 'umbilical cord' and human contacts to the Brodsky Central Synagogue in the capital of Ukraine." While Rabbi Moshe Azman leads the capital's congregation, his two sons live with their families in Anatevka, helping their father run the "Jewish village"—and Briman sees this as an important marker.

In practice, the further development of the process may follow one of two opposing directions. The outcome of the first was described by Azman in a conversation with French journalist Benoît Vitkine. The rabbi would like not only to secure refugee families in the village but also to concentrate the majority of his Kyiv congregation there, securing official municipal status for Anatevka[22]. If these are indeed the true intentions of the project's initiators (which seems doubtful), then the idea of creating a modern shtetl based on a suburban ghetto—or, if you will, a Diaspora version of a religious kibbutz—does not seem realistic.

The second possible version is the transformation of the first new Jewish village in a century into a sort of "resource center" for the urban Chabad community, designed to train a new generation of followers and administrative staff. (In this case, there is no question of the village becoming self-sufficient in the near future). Thus, Anatevka will become an institutional component of the model of rabbinical elite leadership within the Jewish segment of Ukrainian civil society that has taken shape in Ukraine and the CIS[23].

In other words, this is a vision that fully links the future of local Jewry with the prospects and fate of the host country. In the aforementioned interview with the French publication Le Monde in 2017, Rabbi Azman stated that "if a new wave of mass Jewish emigration begins, it will be not just a bad sign, but a tragedy for Ukraine. But if we show that we, the Jews, can build something, it will mean that all of Ukraine can build a future"[24]. At the same time, the community leaders insist that Anatevka is by no means an anti-Zionist project. According to them, people are not discouraged from repatriating; on the contrary, assistance is provided to anyone wishing to make Aliyah to the Holy Land, but now with a strengthened Jewish identity. Moreover, the graduates of the "Mitzvah" school represent the future Jewish elite of Ukraine, maintaining strong ties with Israel.

Conclusion

In any case, it is difficult to say today in which direction the project, initiated by charismatic leaders for whom the word "impossible" is merely an invitation to think of a creative solution, will develop.

 Returning to the convenient historical analogies (the usable past) mentioned at the beginning of the article, Anatevka does not correspond to any of the settlement models known in the Jewish national movement. It is far not only from Zionism or Territorialism, but also from the version of Autonomism closest to the designs of the founding fathers of the modern shtetl, embodied in the Jewish agricultural colonies of Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region from the mid-19th century to the 1920s–1930s.

It seems that the closest analogy to this idea (and it is not certain that the initiators had these specific analogies in mind) are the settlements founded by the Jewish Colonisation Association. This includes the partnership within the JCA of international and Russian Jewish gvirim (the French Hirsch and the Russian Baron Guenzburg) and the cooperation for the benefit of Anatevka of Jewish major businessmen who are members of the leadership of leading Jewish "umbrella" organizations and/or leaders of post-Soviet Jewish communities.

The term "new shtetl" carries, in this case, a figurative meaning. The project was a response to meeting the urgent daily needs of specific groups of the Jewish population, a solution that the initiators "packaged" into ideological doctrines of "settlement" and the "shtetl" close to their hearts, which automatically lend a positive image to this initiative.

The founders of Anatevka view it as an exemplary response to the challenges facing a new local ("ethno-civic") group—"Ukrainian Jewry"—as well as a solution to problems of national Ukrainian significance.

At the same time, they see their initiative as a breeding ground for future national and communal elites. Thus, the spiritual leader of Anatevka, as mentioned, believes that the village will become a center for training Jewish leaders of Ukraine.

In an economic sense, Anatevka and similar initiatives in the Diaspora develop as units integrated into the economy of their country and, at least at this stage, are not self-sufficient. Unlike the settlement projects of Eretz Yisrael and the first and partly second-generation Diaspora, they also do not operate under the slogan of "returning to the land." Apart from household plots with flower gardens, vegetable patches, and trees, we can speak at most of auxiliary production for processing their own and supplied agricultural products.

The difference between Anatevka and the new settlement initiatives of Russian-speaking Jews in Israel (for example, "Our Home in Galilee," described in another of our articles) is that the Jewish village in Ukraine will remain dependent on external charity for a long time. (The local bureaucracy barely interferes, so all issues are resolved quickly, but there is little it can do to help).

Therefore, it is still impossible to predict the fate of the 21st-century Jewish settlement initiative presented in this article—whether it will gain long-term viability or remain a historical curiosity. In other words, whether this project will mark the beginning of a major movement of a new type, or become marginalized if sponsors lose interest in financially supporting their creation.

However, in any case, this is a highly interesting sociological and Jewish phenomenon of modern times, worthy of thoughtful academic and applied study.

1 |  See, for example: Anna Shternshis, “White Piano in a Shtetl: Material Culture and Ethnic Identity in the Post-Soviet Jewish Urban Community “, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 16, No 2 (Winter 2010), pp. 111-126; Dymshits V., «Review of: Jeffrey Veidlinger. In the Shadow of the Shtetl (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013)». Forum for Anthropology and Culture, No. 26 (2015), pp. 296-302

2 |  See, for example, Bondarenko D. "Ghosts of the Past": Historical Memory as a Factor in the Mutual Perception of African-Americans and Contemporary Migrants from Africa in the US," Forum for Anthropology and Culture. 2015. No. 26, pp. 87-126

3 |  David G. Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past (The Helen and Martin Schwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies, 1998) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999

4 |  Israel Bartal. From Community to Nation: Jews of Eastern Europe 1772–1881. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 2002 (in Hebrew). Russian translation: Jerusalem—Moscow: "Gesharim—Bridges of Culture", 2007

5 |  Baruch Gur-Gurevitz. Open Gates: The Inside Story of Mass Aliya from the Soviet Union and its Successor States (Jerusalem, The Bialik Institute, 1996)

6 |  Krupnik I., “How We Studied History and Ethnography: On the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Commission 1981-1990.” Soviet Jewish Studies: History, Problems, Personalities. Ed. M. Kupovetsky. Jerusalem — Moscow: Gesharim, 2017, pp. 286-360

7 |  Mordechai Altshuler, “Soviet Jewry — A Community in Turmoil”, in Robert S. Wistrich (Ed.), Terms of Survival – The Jewish World Since 1945 (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 195-230

8 |  Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics. Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)

9 |  Nathans B. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. — M.: ROSSPEN, 2007

10 | For details, see Khanin V. (Z.), "In Search of Community: Models of Reviving Organized Jewish Life in the Late USSR and Post-Soviet Countries," Diasporas. Moscow, 2011, No. 2, pp. 64-79; Baruch Gur-Gurevitz, Open Gates: The Inside Story of Mass Aliya from the Soviet Union and its Successor States (Jerusalem, The Bialik Institute, 1996)

11 | Dubnov, S.M., Letters on Old and New Jewry (1897–1907). St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaya Polza, 1907

12 |  First German edition: «Autoemancipation!» Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden, Berlin, Commissions-verlag von W. Issleib, 1882

13 |  Marundik E. A Town of Global Proportions. — Birobidzhan: "Birobidzhan" Publishing House, 2018

14 |  For more on Jewish national districts in the USSR, see: Pasik Ya., "Jewish Agricultural Colonies of the South of Ukraine and Crimea," http://evkol.ucoz.com; Brener I., The Land of Birobidzhan. — Birobidzhan: Sholom-Aleichem Priamursky State University, 2013; Gurevich V.S. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast: From Past to Present. Birobidzhan — Khabarovsk, 2020

15 |  Khanin V. and Chernin V., "'A Home in Galilee'? Third Generation Russian-Jewish Zionism." Jews of Europe and Asia: State, Heritage and Prospects, Vol. 2 (2019-2020/5780). — Jerusalem and Herzliya: Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (Herzliya) — Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2020, pp. 247-270

16 |  This section of the article is written using material from an essay by journalist Shimon Briman, "Anatevka: The Phenomenon of the Revival of the Ukrainian Jewish Shtetl in the Conditions of the 2014-2019 War" (IEAJS Archive, March 2019), as well as the author's personal observations and interviews with the project's initiators in May 2019

17 |  Stephanie Baker and Daryana Krasnolutska, “Rudy Giuliani Has Curious Links to a Jewish Village in Ukraine”, Bloomberg, November 27, 2019

18 |  Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin, “Money and Politics: Notes on the Revival of Jewish Communities in Post-Communist Ukraine”, Shvut: Studies in Russian and East European Jewish History and Culture (Tel-Aviv) 9/25 (2000), pp. 205-220

19 |  See, for example: "Yesterday, the Grand Opening of the 'Tehilat Hashem' Synagogue in Anatevka Took Place," March 01, 2016/21 Adar 5776 http://www.sinagoga.kiev.ua/node/8374

20 |  Linda Kinstler, “Fiddler on the Front Line”, Foreign Policy, August 10, 2016

21 |  Quoted in: "The Mayor is Trump's Attorney, and Lozhkin's Protection: How Jews Live in the Displaced Persons Settlement Near Kyiv," Svoi.City, 26.07.2020 https://svoi.city/read/korotko/92087/reportazh-iz-evrejskoj-obschini-pereselencev-v-anatevke

22 |  Quoted in: Benoît Vitkine, “En Ukraine, retour à Yiddishland [In Ukraine, Return to 'Yiddishland'],” Le Monde, 25 Janvier 2017, https://www.lemonde.fr/m-actu/article/2017/01/25/en-ukraine-retour-a-yiddishland_5068631_4497186.html

23 |  Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin, “A Rabbinical Revolution? Religion, Power and Politics in the Contemporary Ukrainian Jewish Movement”, Jewish Political Studies Review, Jerusalem, 10, Nos. 1-2 (Spring 1998), pp. 73-91

24 |  Quoted in: Vitkine, “En Ukraine, retour à Yiddishland”