My parents were already, unfortunately, assimilated, they knew very little about their Jewishness, so they passed even less on to me. I learned that I was Jewish quite early, around elementary school. But what it meant was not very clear. The only Jewish thing we had in the house was matzah. My parents used to go to the synagogue that worked, the only synagogue in the entire city of Odesa. They baked matzah there in the spring, and we always had matzah at home. One of the few things that remained of Jewishness. Plus, there were a couple of words of Yiddish in there, which my parents hardly knew anymore. My grandparents still spoke a little Yiddish. Of course, they didn't teach me that, as it was clear to them that no one would need it. The only Jewish thing I remember from my childhood was when I turned thirteen. In fact, we lived in a one-room apartment in a Khrushchevka building, so there was not much room to organize holidays. So I didn't have a birthday party every year. But when I turned thirteen, we gathered a large number of people. My parents said that when a Jewish boy turns 13 years old, it's his special birthday. I didn't understand what it was. Maybe they didn't really know it themselves. In fact, when a Jewish boy turns 13, it's a bar mitzvah, when a person becomes an adult according to Jewish tradition and takes on all the commandments. And he bears the same obligations as an adult. This is everything that I had from the Jewish tradition in the house until I was almost twenty years old, practically until the collapse of the USSR.
A very illustrative story happened to me in the army. The army was also ... one of the impulses that pushed me into the Jewish world. It was still the Soviet army, literally the last years — [19]88-[19]89. We had practically the whole Soviet Union in our unit, literally, out of 15 republics, we had representatives from 13, I guess. Everybody was... not even that ... everybody was surprised with me. They were all speaking their own languages. They said, “Well, say something in your Jewish language.” And I said, “I don't know Hebrew.” They said, “What kind of a Jew are you if you don't know Hebrew?” I thought, “Yes, there's something in that. There's a logic to it. I should go and study something." And just when I came back from the army, Yiddish and Hebrew courses were already available in Odesa. I went there, then I went to the synagogue. So literally right after I came out of the army, I plunged into everything Jewish... And just at the time when I was in the army, it became permitted. When I joined the army, there was nothing yet, when I came back, there were already Jewish organizations in Odesa. The Society of Jewish Culture was the first Jewish organization that was established after a half-century break. And these courses opened, started operating, and a rabbi came to Odesa after a twenty-year break. That's how I plunged into it, it drew me in. So I continue to participate in it to this day. For over thirty years.
There was literally one time. I had an altercation once. It was a completely mundane, let's put it this way, a fight. And the person who got into a fight with me, he called me a Jew. And then... Again, in Soviet times, the school was an ideological institution. All the propaganda of the Soviet way of life. The Soviet Union declared the friendship of nations, so the teachers were even more afraid. Again, my mom works at the school. She knows all these internal affairs, she can go to the director, she can go to the Raiono [District Department of Education, which oversaw the schools]... anywhere, and make sure they have a bad time. That's why they were more scared than I was. That boy... They threatened him so much that he really regretted behaving like that. Well, that happened. But to recall something specifically anti-Semitic? Well... Again, according to the fashion of the time, anti-Zionism was fashionable then. Condemning the Israeli military. That's the kind of thing that was being said. And even from my own lips sometimes. I remember when there was an event called “Politboy” [Political Battle]. Pupils from several classes organized a debate on political topics. And I just got a question, I had to tell about Zionism. I just gave a rehash of the front page of the then Pravda [newspaper] condemning the Israeli military. I, unfortunately, again, did not know all these nuances. I believed most of what the official sources were saying. Although there were also... Dad was once taught [to listen] to "enemy" [Western] voices on the radio, which said... I sat next to him and listened too... which said something completely different. He and I were lost, didn't know who to believe. What they say here or what they say there. But in my childhood and youth, I suffered more from state anti-Semitism than from everyday anti-Semitism, yes.
Back in the late 80s, back when there were computers... people didn't believe that you could do anything useful on such computers. I got a program on the first PCs, the first IBM PCs, a program for [text] layout. Well, of course, it was such a program... not PageMaker, not InDesign. It was a simple program. There you could write in different fonts, insert photos together with the text. This program had some sort of layout capability. I imagined that I could work in this program. An idea to make a newspaper appeared. My friend and I went to the synagogue, went to the rabbi. It was my first meeting with the rabbi. We told him about the idea. And he said no. "The idea, of course, is good, but it is very expensive: you need a laser printer, you need a decent computer. Now, unfortunately, we can't afford it." And that was where it all stopped. Since I got married... it happened that [certain people] were partying at our wedding. Both I and my wife were quite active members of the community — the entire leadership of all Jewish organizations in Odesa partied at our wedding. We found several people who were willing to chip in — several Jewish organizations that were willing to chip in to publish a Jewish newspaper. We found a computer, we found a laser printer. And I started to publish a Jewish [newspaper]... Now I realize that it was, of course, a very big audacity, a great boldness on my part to imagine that I, knowing a computer, could design a newspaper. Well, it's okay, I pretty much learned how to do it. In the beginning there was a newspaper... a united newspaper of all Jewish organizations. It was called HaMelitz, in memory of the newspaper that was published in Odesa in the late 19th century. A Jewish newspaper, one of the first Jewish newspapers in Odesa and the Russian Empire. Then, you know what a camel is? It is a horse that was made by a committee. This is when there are several organizations, they each have their own interests. They started trying to promote their interests to the detriment of others. That newspaper didn't last for very long. The only benefit I supposedly got from it was that I learned how to layout. And then, literally a year later, in [19]94, a rabbi came to me and said, “Do you remember when you came then with this idea? Now I think we can do it.” And so we started the Shomrei Shabbos newspaper, which was published from [19]94 until the beginning of the [full-scale] war, and then, unfortunately, it stopped coming out. But it also managed to last 25 years, and I was its one and only editor-in-chief.
In [20]14, there was a lot of talk about fascists, Right Sector, anti-Semites. I have been walking the streets like this for thirty years [in a traditional Jewish kippah, with a beard]. And in [20]14, I was walking [like this]. I was walking ... May 2 — it was a Friday. I was walking home from the synagogue the day before the Sabbath. I walked just a block away from the column [of people] that was going to Kulykovo Pole [square park]. I saw these people. I walked by them. They kind of — if they're all so anti-Semitic, I could have been killed right there on the spot. But no — I walked by them. And actually, I encountered fewer anti-Semitic incidents after [20]14 than I did before that. As paradoxical as that sounds. And there was a funny one, my favorite story of all, [it happened in] [20]14, sometime in the summer of [20]14. Somewhere there in the center of the city, they wrote some anti-Semitic slogan on some fence. The head of Odesa's Right Sector came to the synagogue, took our rabbi. They went, and together they painted over this inscription. So they start talking about the Right Sector and Yarosh's business cards [Dmytro Yarosh is the founder of the Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector) political organization, his supposed business cards being conspicuously left on the scenes of various crimes of hatred in Russian news became a well-known meme]... I, of course, laugh at those who can believe such things. Of course, we cannot say that there is no anti-Semitism at all in Ukraine today. I see, I read different things, I see in the comments [on social media] people... there are still [such] people. But there is anti-Semitism everywhere. There are anti-Semites even in Israel. But saying that we have some kind of fascists...
Zvi-Hirsh Blinder is a member of the Odesa Jewish community, editor-in-chief of the Shomrei Shabbos newspaper, and an employee of the Migdal-Shorashim Museum of Jewish History in Odesa. He was born on October 29, 1969, in Odesa to a family of teachers, assimilated Jews from the Vinnytsia region. He became interested in Jewish culture and traditions as an adult, after serving in the Soviet army. In 1992, together with his future wife, he became a student at the newly established Migdal Jewish Educational Center and began his journey back to his roots. The newlyweds organized a traditional Jewish wedding. During the wedding banquet, Zvi-Hirsh Blinder found sponsors among Jewish organizations and later began publishing the newspaper HaMelitz, which revived the tradition of Jewish publications in Odesa. In 1994, he became the editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper of the religious community Chabad Shomrei Shabbos, which was published in Odesa and other cities in the south of Ukraine. When the full-scale invasion began, the newspaper temporarily suspended publication. For the past five years, Zvi-Hirsh Blinder has been volunteering as a guide at the Museum of Jewish History in Odesa.
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