Crimean's Part in Jewish History while Connected to Ukraine and Russia

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

Crimea is a Russian peninsula in the Black Sea.  Jews lived there dating back to the 1st century BCE.  Several Jewish inscriptions from the next centuries have been discovered there.

From the 7th century to 1117, eastern Crimea was controlled by the famous Khazars, a country whose leader set up a debate between a Rabbi, priest and Muslim about the merits of their  religion to determine which was the best, and he chose Judaism. He and most of his people converted.  The Khazars were a Turkish or Finnish tribe which  settled in the lower Volga region with their capital being Itil in the Volga delta.  Russian chronicles called them White Ugrians.  During the 8th to 10th centuries, the Khazar state was powerful, extending westward as far as Kiev, with its royal house intermarrying with that of Byzantium.  Ultimately, about 786-809, their king Bularn and 4,000 of his nobles converted to Judaism with their prince Obadiah being a leader.  A Jew, Judah Ha-Levi, even thought they were one of the Lost Ten Tribes, though they weren't.  Then came the Tartar invasion of 1237.  Descendants of the Kazars probably survived among the Crimea Karaites, Krimchaks, and other Jews of Eastern European origin.  

By the 12th century, a large Karaite population lived there, centering at Eupatoria.  They are a Jewish sect that rejects the Oral Law, a part of Judaism.  The sect began in the 8th century around Persia.  They refused to go along with the head Babylonian gaonate- (intellectual leader with temporal power from 6th to 11th centuries.)

Many Jews became Moslems under Tatar rule from the end of the 13th century.  The Genoese ruled southern Crimea  in the 15th century and prohibited interference with internal Jewish affairs. 

 Under Turkish rule (Ottoman Empire)  from 1475-1783, Chufut-Kale was the Jewish center. 

Many Jewish captives from the Ukraine were sent to Crimea after 1648.                                      

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) a British nurse, 

 whose experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War from October  5, 1853 to March 30, 1856, were foundational in her views about sanitation. She established St. Thomas’s Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860. Her efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced the quality of care in the 19 and 20 centuries. The Crimean War was a military conflict  in which Russia lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.

Following the Russian conquest of 1783, many Ashkenazi Jews settled there. The territory of Crimea, previously controlled by the Crimean Khanate, was annexed by the Russian Empire on 19 April [O.S. 8 April] 1783. The period before the annexation was marked by Russian interference in Crimean affairs, a series of revolts by Crimean Tatars, and Ottoman ambivalence. 

In 1863, the Russian authorities  granted the Karaites equal rights, but other Jews continued to suffer from disabilities until the 1917 Revolution.                             

Members of the Oyflebung commune building a temporary kitchen, Crimea, 1925. 

In the late 1920s, thousands of Jews were settled in Crimea under a plan to establish an autonomous Jewish agricultural center.  A little-known page of Ukraine’s national history is about efforts to create Jewish colonies in the south of Ukraine and in Crimea with the help of Jewish organizations in the United States.

In 1939, when the WWII war already started, the Jewish population numbered 50,000 including 40,000 Ashkenazim, 6,000 Krimchaks, and 4,000 Karaites.  These were mostly wiped out by the Germans in 1941, and only a few,, including some 300 Karaites, survived.  

Yet, the Jewish population by 1980 was 25,614. According to the (2001 census), the ethnic makeup of Crimea's population consisted of the following self-reported groups: Russians:1.45 million (60.4%), Ukrainians: 577,000 (24.0%), Crimean Tatars: 245,000 (10.2%), Belarusians: 35,000 (1.4%), other Tatars: 13,500 (0.5%), Armenians: 10,000 (0.4%), and Jews: 5,500 (0.2%) ...It looks like Crimea became the new residential district for many Russians.  

Russia formally incorporated Crimea on 18 March 2014. Following the annexation from Ukraine, Russia escalated its military presence on the peninsula and made nuclear threats to solidify the new status quo on the ground. 

On the morning of February 24th, 2022,   Russian forces launched a multi-pronged invasion by land, air, and sea on Ukraine. Now in the 7th month, the conflict has caused widespread destruction and killed more than 14,000 civilians, including children. Cities have been reduced to rubble, with virtually no part of the country untouched. In June, the World Health Organization reported hundreds of attacks on health care facilities and personnel. 

By August, 7 million people had fled, while nearly 7 million people were displaced within Ukraine, all searching for safety from the violence and destruction. 

The big question now is how the Donbas people will vote, whether or not to remain with Ukraine or go with Russia.  Voting taking place under Russian imput  is a sham, even getting 13 year olds to vote.  The outcome will be Russia,, of course. The Donbas or Donbass is a historical, cultural, and economic region in eastern Ukraine. Parts of the Donbas are controlled by Russian separatist groups as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian War: the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic.