Introduction to Jewish presence in modern Odessa

When the Russians captured the Black Sea coast from a weakening Ottoman Empire in 1789, Yenu-Duniya was but a small fortress overlooking a natural harbor.

In 1784 Catherine II founded a new town on the site. Named Odessa the following year for the ancient Greek city of Odessos, it soon became destination of Italian, Greek and Jewish immigrants.

In the 19th century Odessa became the most important port of the Russian Empire for the exportation of cereals.

Jews flowed to the city and from 17,000 Jews (21.7% of the population) in 1855 they grew to 139,984 (34.65% of the population) in 1897 making of Odessa the most important Jewish community in the Soviet Union and the third in the world after Warsaw and New York.

The city early on embraced the form of a modern and Western-leaning metropolis with a flowrishing commerce, intellectual and cultural life.

Just after World War I Odessa had a Jewish population of approximately 250,000, which accounted for 50 percent of the city’s inhabitants. The Jews were a thriving and vibrant community; there were 60 synagogues and Jewish thinkers and businesses flourished.

Odessa was home of men such as Isaac Babel, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Ahad Ha'am, Moses Leib Lilienblum, Mendel Mokher Seforim, Abraham Goldfaden, Jacob P. Adler, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Meier Dizengoff and Leo Pinsker among others.

By 1939, however, the Jewish population had dwindled to about 180,000, about a third of the city's and had retroceded to the 4th position in the world rank behind the Jewish populations of Warsaw, New York and Tel Aviv.

Many fled the city before its siege and surrender to the Axis powers in 1941, but around 100,000 (according to the USHMM estimates) were killed by the Romanian and German troops during the occupation on the city. Other sources estimate the number to 115,000.
In 1942 only 703 Jews still lived in Odessa.

After the war, Jews came back to the city but the Soviet government banned all religious activities and all communal or cultural life disappeared. According to the 1959 census, they were 106,700.

From 1968 several Jewish families were allowed to immigrate to Israel, following the increased demand for exit permits of Soviet Jews in the wake of the Six-Day War (1967). The 1989 census recorded 69,100 Jews in Odessa and in the 1990s most Jews emigrated.

In 2012 the Jews only amount 30,000 (a small 3% of the population). However, after the fall of the Soviet Union there was a renaissance of Jewish life. The Jewish community is today very active with three functioning Synagogues (one opened in 2012), a cultural center, a museum, an orphanage and several other institutions.