The Jewish people of Ukraine have a long and often painful history. Jewish presence along the Black Sea coast predates the first century. However, in the thirteenth century, Jewish people began migrating east from western Europe. Hasidism, a mystical form of Judaism, emerged in Ukraine in the 1700s. Ukraine’s Jewish community has faced brutal antisemitism, including the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648, a series of pogroms in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the Holocaust.
During the 1920s, Chosen People Ministries (then called the American Board of Missions to the Jews) had outreaches in Kiev and Odessa. The communist regime made open ministry impossible for decades. Chosen People Ministries helped found the first Messianic congregation in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Since 2015, the ministry has built and supported a network of almost twenty Messianic congregations—providing training, organizing conferences, and giving financial aid when needed. Since February 2022, a large part of our ministry in the region has focused on helping Ukrainian refugees, especially those in the Messianic community. Our relief work has focused on western Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and Israel. We have been providing housing, food, clothing, medicine, and spiritual support.