Digging Up My Jewish Roots in My Grandfather’s Ukrainian Village

My grandfather told me his hometown no longer existed. But I found it—and finally came to appreciate my own heritage.

By David Kalis for Tablet Magazine

Before I left for a tour of the Soviet Union in 1991, I asked my grandfather about the Ukrainian village where he grew up. There’s no use trying to find it, he told me confidently in his deep bellow, it no longer exists.

Yet two years later, I was there, standing inside the dilapidated synagogue in Shepetovka. I stood face-to-face with four elderly men wearing loose-fitting suit coats, slacks, fedoras, and button-down shirts. The lines on their drooping faces were pronounced, their movements tentative, and their eyes curious. Realizing that these men might have had a shared experience with my grandfather, or could have known his family, I asked eagerly if they knew if I had any relatives still in the area.

“Young man, the synagogue you stand in today used to be filled with many worshipping Jews,” one of them told me. “It was a beautiful place with new scrolls, ornate walls, stained glass, and prayer books. You see what has happened? Today, we are a very small community. We once had 40,000 Jews in the region. Now we have maybe 500. There was a long history here, and now it is gone.”

He paused and I looked down, saddened and ashamed at my ignorance. What I had learned of the Holocaust in school was their reality. They had lived through more than I could comprehend. While I had taken my Judaism for granted, these men had struggled to exist as Jews. I took my backpack off and placed it gently on a wooden chair beside me. Suddenly, an unfamiliar feeling of pride, belonging, and Jewish identity overcame me. I was 23, but this was the first time I had ever felt such a connection to my religion.

I had come to Shepetovka hoping to find out more about my grandfather’s life. Instead, I discovered more about my own.

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