Kyiv Diary: ‘Today Is a Good Day. We Have Netflix and Eggs’
Helen* moved to Ukraine from the United States ten years ago. The move was supposed to be temporary—her husband, a venture capitalist, had invested in Ukrainian start-ups—but the couple ended up staying. “It was quite challenging in the beginning, but over time, the country has grown on me,” Helen tells me over Zoom on March 13. Helen was actually born in Ukraine but moved to the United States in 1988 because of the antisemitism at the time. But being a Jew in Ukraine is different now Helen says. “It's cool to be Jewish now. My gentile students go around with Magen David necklaces and are trying to learn Hebrew.”
Wearing a George Washington University sweatshirt and chugging from a New York Public Library water bottle, Helen explains why she and her husband have decided to...