I used to say I was Russian – but this week, I became a Ukrainian

Growing up in Ukraine, I was the ‘Jewish girl.’ When I immigrated to Israel, I became the ‘Russian girl.’ With the Russian invasion, I finally became a Ukrainian

An armored medical evacuation vehicle, bearing the Ukrainian flag, on the road in northwest Kyiv on 24 February 2022 (DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)

I remember how offended I was when I discovered I was Jewish. I was four or five years old, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, playing with the neighbor kids in the backyard of our typically Soviet, five-floor building. I knew I looked slightly different from the blonde, blue-eyed Katya and Nastaya. I had dark hair, brown eyes, and darker skin, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

I found out I was Jewish the moment I asked if I could join their game in the sandbox. Katya turned around and, looking straight into my eyes, said, “No, you’re Jewish.” She probably didn’t really know what that meant either. The look on her face, though, and the way she said the word “Jewish” made it very clear it was a dirty word and I was not welcome.

When I turned six, my parents had a long conversation with me, explaining we were about to move to a different country called Israel. I had just started first grade in a Ukrainian school. We had just had a class on the meaning of “motherland”. “Your motherland is the country you are born in, and love the most,” said my first-grade teacher, who wouldn’t seat me in the front of the classroom because my parents couldn’t afford to buy her presents, as the unspoken rule required. My grandfather looked very serious when he explained to me that Jews always had two motherlands: where they were born, and Israel.

We packed our things into 12 large duffle bags, which contained everything our family of five owned. We took an overnight train to the port city of Odessa, to then board a three-day “cruise” chartered for us and several hundred Jewish families – immigrants headed for Israel.

Beginning in 1989, about a million people began immigrating from former Soviet countries to Israel, changing Israel’s demographic and economy forever. By the time we arrived in Tel Aviv at the end of 2001, I was the only new immigrant in my school. Not speaking a word of Hebrew, I instantly became the “Russian girl.”

Regardless of the fact that I have never even been to Russia, I was proud of my “Russian identity,” but also careful about it, as it was never really mine. When mistaken for Russian, Ukrainian Jews in Israel would offer a correction: “I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian,” they would say, and laugh.

I, on the other hand, gave that up very quickly. Who cares if I was born in Ukraine? I thought. I speak Russian, and my cultural roots are Soviet – definitely not Ukrainian. When asked, ignorantly, to explain the differences between the two, I would say something like, “It’s like Jews and Arabs, Hebrew and Arabic. We’re cousins, but we don’t really understand each other.” But to be completely honest, I’m not sure I could really grasp the difference myself.

In the past few weeks, before the war began, I had been trying to figure out the meaning of these threats between Russia and the west. A friend even sent me, half-serious, half-joking, an invitation to a protest to show solidarity with Ukraine. My intuitive response was: Solidarity with what, exactly?

While I’ve always felt a connection to Ukraine, my personal experiences, and that of my family, were, to say the least, unpleasant. Years of systematic oppression and antisemitism, and now you want me to have solidarity? Growing up in Kharkiv, a culturally Russian city, never hearing Ukrainian, I struggled to understand what the big deal was. What was the difference anyway?

The difference, I found out as soon as the invasion began, is in Ukrainians’ ability to evolve. To keep history in the past, and stop obsessing about old wounds. Ukrainians, in 30 years of independence, have built a pretty functional democracy, which seems to genuinely represent the will of the people. And they seem prepared to do everything in their power to defend their homeland, and to keep casualties as low as possible. Russia, on the other hand, seems obsessed with the past, unable to evolve, and stuck in the old and broken ways of Soviet provincialism and xenophobia.

Judaism is part of this conflict, whether it’s in the headlines or not. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is the first Jewish president in Ukraine’s history. If nothing else, his election and proud leadership serve as important benchmarks of just how far Ukraine has come since the end of the Soviet Union.

Yes, the Ukrainian people made me and my family feel unwelcome, years and years ago. But they are my people. We grew up together, we lived together, we learned the same songs, ate the same foods, love the same country. Seeing the Ukrainian people — my people — in my country under such frightening existential threat made me feel something I had never felt before.

For the first time, I became a Ukrainian.