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Heart and Soul: Journey to Ashkenaz

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05/10/2018 GMT

Journey to Ashkenaz

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Journey to Ashkenaz

Jewish life today in what was its heartland in western Ukraine, before the Holocaust

Jewish life today in what was its heartland in western Ukraine, before the Holocaust.

One hundred years ago, most of the world’s Ashkenazic Jews lived in what is today western Ukraine. The Holocaust and then Stalinism wiped that world out. Presenter Michael Goldfarb’s family traces its roots to this land. He goes on a journey to the heart of Ashkenaz to find traces of their life.
 
He goes on pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Nachman in Uman with 40,000 ultra-religious Jews from around the world. He also explains the two ways of being a Jew - religious and secular - that grew in this blood soaked land. In Odessa, on the Black Sea, where the secular side of his family came from, he finds a city whose Jewish community is being rebuilt on religious lines. In Lviv, and the surrounding countryside, he visits the village where his grandmother was a girl. And where no single Jew lives today.

(Photo: Golden Rose Synagogue, Lviv, Ukraine. Credit: Getty Images)

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