Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine)

This article was published elsewhere before Rosh Hashana, but it was edited so drastically that I decided to post the original here to include the introductory information about the Soviet Jewry movement.

​With cooler weather and the holiday of Sukkot approaching (beginning on Sunday evening, October 9), the recipes are even more appropriate.  Consider incorporating some Ukrainian Jewish dishes into your family celebration, in solidarity with Jews who are spending this Rosh Hashana in the middle of a war or worrying about their family who are.

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Remember the Soviet Jewry movement of the 1970s and 1980s? Organized Jewish communities around the world worked tirelessly to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate from the brutal Communist regime that punished them for even trying. We protested and lobbied for years, until finally in the late 1980s, when the Soviet system began to crumble, Jews were given visas, first in a trickle, and eventually in a flood that brought more than a million and a half Soviet Jews to Israel, the US, and later, Germany.
 
This effort, known as Operation Exodus, brought 1.1 million immigrants to Israel, which at that time had a population of only 4.6 million – an increase equivalent to almost a quarter of the population. Another half million came to the US. I’m sure many of you remember the arrival of the “Russian” Jews to your town. Cities all over the country, rose to the challenge of welcoming them. My husband and I helped in Washington DC and even “adopted” a Russian family to help with their transition.
 
But the thing is, most of these Jews weren’t Russian at all; they were Ukrainian. While the rest of the world viewed the Soviet Union as a monolith, it was, in fact, a collection of occupied republics and countries that stretched from Eastern Europe to the Baltic to central Asia. If you add up the populations of all those countries, including Russia itself, Ukraine was home to more than a third of Jews in the area.
 
Before Operation Exodus, Jews made up 1-2% of the Ukrainian population, a similar percentage to the number of Jews in the US today. Before the current war began, that number was estimated to be somewhere between 46,000 and 200,000, depending on who you count and whom you ask. And if you watch the news at all, you know that Ukraine’s president, Volodmyer Zelensky, is Jewish. (Can you even imagine the US electing a Jewish president?)

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The first mention of Jews in what is now Ukraine is more than 1,000 years ago. Like everywhere, there were periods of intense antisemitism. But Ukrainian Jews also experienced periods of acceptance and created a flourishing culture there. Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, commonly known as the Baal Shem Tov and founder of the Hasidic movement, was born and lived his entire life in Ukraine. In the period after WWI, Yiddish was declared a state language, along with Russian and Ukrainian. Yiddish even appeared on Ukrainian currency at that time!

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Ukraine is also home to prepared dishes that have become synonymous with traditional Ashkenazi food. Borscht, babka, stuffed cabbage, kasha varnishkes (buckwheat with noodles), varenyky (pierogies), latkes, and a Levine family favorite, kotleti(n) – a sort of small meatloaf that’s fried in a pan with onions - all have their roots in Ukraine.
 
So, let’s put together a cohesive menu using some of these Ukrainian dishes. I’m going to offer two menus – one meat and one dairy. Following my rule of thumb, which I’ve discussed before, each menu only has one time-consuming dish. The meat meal includes stuffed cabbage and the dairy meal includes varenyky, two kinds, savory and sweet for dessert.
 
Sweet and sour is a favorite flavor profile in Ukraine, as well as Poland, and the Baltic countries. Generally, the Poles like their dishes sweeter; the Ukrainians favor a slightly more acidic version. Borscht and Stuffed Cabbage both fall into this category. And both can be made with meat or without.

Borscht
Ukrainian borscht was originally made from a bitter root vegetable known as cow parsnip and was a staple for poor peasants, Jewish and not. Beets were added and eventually replaced the cow parsnip entirely, in the mid-nineteenth century when they became a popular crop all over Europe.

​Non-Jewish neighbors made their soup with pork stock and often included small bits of ham or pork for flavor; they topped their soup with sour cream. When Jews adapted the recipes, they developed two versions – one meat and one dairy. The meat version can include only beets, meat, and sometimes potatoes, or it can be much thicker and heartier with beans, grains, and other vegetables added too. The dairy version tended to be thinner; when Ukrainians came to America, it is this dairy version that became most popular and is now available in jars at the supermarket.

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Menu One - Meat
First course is borscht from the jar, without the sour cream.

Ukrainians, especially the Jews who lived mostly inland from the Black Sea, did not eat a lot of fish, except for small amounts of freshwater species such as carp and pike that were fished from the Dnieper River. But I have a loaf of homemade gefilte fish in my freezer, so I will serve that.
 
For the main course, this menu offers the time-consuming meat Stuffed Cabbage, Kasha Varnishkes with plenty of slowly fried caramelized onions, and sweet carrot coins, an element I’m adding to incorporate a fresh vegetable and add color to the plate.
 
If you make your own challah, set aside some of the dough for an apple nut babka. If not, there is still time to order delicious babka from bakeries in New York or Cleveland.

​Click here for the recipe.

I mentioned that varenyky are time-consuming to make. It’s not a difficult recipe, but it’s a multi-step process that takes quite a while. In April, my husband, son, and I volunteered to help make thousands of them for a fundraiser sponsored by the local Cincinnati and Dayton Ukrainian communities. It was a powerful experience, working in a church kitchen, packed with Ukrainian women covered in flour, who sang Ukrainian songs in between checking their phones for news from family back home

Menu Two - Dairy
This menu begins with the dairy version of borscht. Doctor up a jar of borscht with chopped scallions, extra shredded beets (that come already cooked and peeled), and sour cream.
 
This menu includes two variations of the time-consuming varenyky, so make the main course a simple fish dish of your choice. As I wrote a couple of months ago, we American Jews love salmon, so a simple baked salmon with an apricot mustard glaze or dill sauce makes an easy, but elegant main course. Add any side vegetable of your choice or a beautiful fresh green salad with ripe fall tomatoes.
  
The savory varenykey are stuffed with a mashed potato mixture and served with caramelized onions and sour cream. The sweet version is stuffed with a mixture made from dried fruit. Both versions are rolled, stuffed, boiled, then fried until golden brown.

​Click here for the recipe.