April 10, 2015

From Shylock to Sheptytsky

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“When we think of the [sic] Ukraine, we think of pogroms.” With some such words, I heard a BBC correspondent introduce an interviewee around 1990. Now it is true that history has traditionally focused on dramatic events like war or revolution. Thus, the popular image of Ukrainian history emphasized the massacres of Jews during the Khmelnytsky uprising, as well as 19th and 20th century pogroms. Socio-economic and religious factors bred mutual distrust. Yet for nearly all of a thousand years, Christians and Jews in Ukraine lived in peaceful coexistence, even symbiosis. Symbolic of this was Andrey Sheptytsky’s custom of addressing Jewish communities in Hebrew during his episcopal visitations.

During the Holocaust, Metropolitan Sheptytsky went further than other Christian leaders, speaking out against violence and sheltering Jews from the Nazis. It is this aspect of his legacy that is the subject of “Archbishop Andrei Sheptytsky and the Ukrainian Jewish Bond.” Meticulously edited by the Rev. Dr. Peter Galadza and jointly published last year by the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (MASIECS) and the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE), this publication appeared in time for the 150th anniversary of Sheptytsky’s birth (as a note on the inside back cover explains, there are several ways to spell his name).

To readers of Shakespeare, the reference to a Ukrainian Jewish “bond” may recall the Jewish moneylender Shylock’s hardhearted insistence on the pound of flesh promised by Antonio as a bond to guarantee his friend Bassanio’s debt of 3,000 ducats: “I’ll have my bond; speak not against my bond/I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond” (The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene iii, 4-5). Yet in Act III, Scene 1 Shakespeare gives Shylock an eloquent defense of the dignity and humanity of the Jews (lines 49-69). And it was considerations of dignity and humanity that prompted Sheptytsky, ignoring the negative stereotypes, to defend this historically maligned people.

More than a brochure but not quite a coffee-table book, this large-format, soft-cover publication’s imaginative graphic design invites perusal. Skillfully blending a variety of colors, typefaces and rare photographic images, the composition constantly changes, carrying the eye forward through its 48 pages. Even the group photographs – an ordinarily boring though obligatory feature – are presented in an engaging manner.

“Archbishop Andrei Sheptytsky and the Ukrainian Jewish Bond” tells us about the churchman’s activity as a friend and rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust in Ukraine. It also documents recent related events, chiefly the unanimous passage of a resolution in the Canadian House of Commons on April 24, 2012, honoring the archbishop’s heroism; a banquet that evening; a MASIECS symposium held the following day at St. Paul University in Ottawa; the awarding of the annual Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Medal of Honor to Donbas-born Canadian entrepreneur James Temerty (founder of UJE) in Kyiv on June 24, 2013; and the posthumous presentation to the metropolitan of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League’s Jan Karski Courage to Care Award on October 31 of that year.

In addition to excerpts from speeches by various dignitaries, the booklet contains a brief biography of Sheptytsky by historian Paul Robert Magocsi. A rare letter that Sheptytsky wrote in Hebrew in his own hand to the Jewish community of Zavaliv in 1903 is introduced, translated, and annotated by Leon Chameides, M.D., who as a boy was sheltered by the metropolitan. In a tribute delivered at the April 24 banquet, Dr. Chameides pointed out that saving 150 Jewish lives “must have taken the silent cooperation of hundreds of priests and their households. And yet, despite the danger, there was not a single case of betrayal and, after our liberation in 1944, not a single case of a child being kept by the Church against the family’s wishes” (p. 21).

Also noteworthy are the remarks by Jason Kenney, then Canadian minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, at the banquet; the address by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church at the April 25 symposium; and James Temerty’s acceptance speech in Kyiv the following year.

Mr. Kenney observed that the sight of an Orthodox rabbi, an Orthodox Christian patriarch, a Greek-Catholic major archbishop, and an imam all sitting together was certainly striking. Taking up the sensitive fact that many Ukrainians, including Sheptytsky, initially welcomed the German army in 1941, he provided some historical context for that short-lived reaction.

Patriarch Sviatoslav pointed out the contemporary significance of Sheptytsky’s readiness “to go beyond human calculation, and embrace sacrificial love – a love that respects all life – from conception to natural death.” Criticizing today’s “moral escapism” and stressing the continuing importance of moral absolutes, Patriarch Sviatoslav cited his predecessor’s belief that every human being has a right to be loved – and that such compassionate love is only possible through devotion to God (pp. 26-28).

Mr. Temerty, noting that more than half of North American Jewry can trace its roots to present-day Ukraine, quoted a Hebrew University course description stating that “There is no Jewish history without Ukraine, and there is no Ukrainian history without Jews” (p. 34). If Ukraine wants to join Europe, he argued, it must also join international efforts to memorialize its Jewish dead and to introduce Holocaust education in its schools (pp. 37-38).

For today’s young Ukrainians, in fact, Andrey Sheptytsky is an excellent historical role model. Not only was he a true hero in wartime, serving the cause of life rather than death, but in peacetime he employed firm but charitable diplomacy towards the Poles, the Latin-rite Catholics, and that most difficult to please constituency, the Ukrainians. Let us hope that the commemorative statue planned for St. George Square in Lviv gives him his due.

Today, with the return of anti-Semitism to Europe, the value of an institution dedicated to Sheptytsky’s ideals and actions should be evident. With our support, UJE and MASIECS can help to ensure that when people think of Ukraine, they think not of pogroms, but of righteous Gentiles who saved Jews.

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