“Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility, or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” – Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, 2021

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” – International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

“Antisemitism consists of anti-Jewish beliefs, attitudes, actions or systemic conditions. It includes negative beliefs and feelings about Jews, hostile behaviour directed against Jews (because they are Jews), and conditions that discriminate against Jews and significantly impede their ability to participate as equals in political, religious, cultural, economic, or social life.” – The Nexus Document

These definitions offer distinct frameworks for understanding antisemitism, but they converge on a basic principle: prejudice begins when Jews are targeted as Jews or when Jewish institutions are treated as inherently suspect because they are Jewish.

Having lived in Ukraine for most of this year, I have encountered problems particular to a society at war alongside prejudices common to many countries. Among them is occasional hostility toward Jews as Jews and the assignment of collective responsibility to Jewish communities for the conduct of individuals. Such rhetoric sometimes emerges within Ukraine; at other times, Russian propagandists seize on it for their own purposes. Social media amplifies both. The controversy surrounding Iryna Mudra, a former deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Rabbi Yonatan Benyamin Markovitch, the chief rabbi of Kyiv and head of Chabad-Lubavitch of Kyiv, offers a recent example. Both are Jewish.

Individual conduct and collective responsibility

Individuals remain individuals, even when they hold prominent titles or lead influential communities. Institutions carry obligations, and leaders may be judged for how they exercise authority. Rabbi Markovitch’s recent offer to act as a personal guarantor for Mudra in an anti-corruption case is therefore open to criticism. But criticism of that decision is not a license to attribute it to Jews collectively.

Mudra is among the suspects identified in a National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office operation encompassing the “Forrest Gump” and “Themis” cases. NABU lists 12 suspects in connection with the operation. On August 25, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered Mudra detained for 60 days while setting bail at UAH 20 million. NABU’s account also reiterated the constitutional presumption of innocence. Personal surety is an established, if sometimes controversial, mechanism in Ukrainian law.

Five facts matter here. Markovitch’s offer was lawful under Ukrainian criminal procedure. Mudra was one of 12 suspects, and Markovitch was one of three people who offered to serve as her guarantor. The offer did not amount to a judgment about her guilt or innocence. Its purpose was limited: to guarantee her compliance with procedural obligations, including appearing before investigators or the court when required. Finally, the judge determined that none of the three proposed guarantors was needed.

Those distinctions lead to the central issue. Antisemitism does not become legitimate political criticism simply because it attaches itself to a genuine political controversy.

Political criticism and the boundary of prejudice

Political disagreement is not merely permissible in a democracy; it is indispensable. Citizens have every right to scrutinize religious leaders, public officials, judicial decisions, and anti-corruption investigations. Antisemitic expression, however, remains indefensible, including when the controversy begins with the personal initiative of a religious leader.

This is not an attempt to adjudicate the merits of the corruption case. Ukraine’s political future belongs principally to its citizens. The issue here is the antisemitic rhetoric that accumulated around the case and the ease with which criticism of one person’s conduct became an indictment of an entire people.

For readers outside Ukraine, corruption scandals and the institutions created to combat them are politically sensitive and consequential features of contemporary Ukrainian public life. Yet the controversy involving Markovitch also raises a broader question: Where does criticism of individual moral agency end and collective blame begin? In some of the public commentary, that boundary was crossed almost immediately.

Recurring tropes and collective attribution

The documented reactions contain familiar antisemitic themes: collective guilt, ethnicization of political misconduct, accusations of divided loyalty, claims of Jewish control over the Ukrainian state, references to a “Jewish mafia,” depictions of Jews as foreign or nationally disloyal, stereotypes of greed and parasitism, and conspiracy theories about the survival of the Ukrainian nation.

What makes these claims antisemitic is straightforward. One rabbi’s decision is converted into a theory about Jews collectively. Two principles are therefore essential: an individual initiative must be distinguished from an institutional position, and antisemitism must be identified accurately if it is to be confronted effectively.

Rabbi Moshe Asman on individual responsibility

Speaking to RBC-Ukraine, Rabbi Moshe Asman, the Brodsky Synagogue-based chief rabbi of Ukraine, drew precisely that distinction: “Rabbi Markovich’s statement about his willingness to act as guarantor was his own initiative and does not represent the position of the Jewish community as a whole…I consider such mixing of roles erroneous and categorically do not support it…No action by an individual rabbi gives anyone the right to insult the Jewish people, spread antisemitic stereotypes, or blame an entire community. Replacing reasoned criticism with hatred based on nationality has nothing to do with justice…The law must be the same for everyone. Responsibility must be personal. Antisemitism cannot be justified in any way.”

Rabbinical authority and institutional pluralism

Asman was elected chief rabbi of Ukraine at a 2005 convention of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress. I found no public statements about the case from other prominent rabbinical leaders in Ukraine, including Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Rabbi Meir Stambler, and Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny.

Ukraine does not have a single centralized rabbinate led by one universally recognized chief rabbi. Its Jewish institutions are pluralistic, and their leaders represent different theological and organizational traditions. Markovitch’s personal decision cannot reasonably be treated as a position adopted by every Jewish leader, much less by every Jew in Ukraine.

The examples below document rhetoric that emerged around, or was later attached to, the Markovitch-Mudra controversy. They are not a representative sample of Ukrainian public opinion, nor do they establish that such views characterize Ukrainian society generally. They show how quickly a political dispute can be recast in ethnic and conspiratorial terms.

From political controversy to ethnic framing

As reported by PolitNavigator, Ukrainian political technologist Andriy Zolotaryov argued that Markovitch’s appearance could reinforce a perception that an “ethnic OPG,” or organized criminal group, had entrenched itself on Bankova. He warned that such ethnic framing could contribute to anti-Jewish pogroms. His remarks appear to present the ethnicization itself as dangerous and potentially conducive to violence.

Russian military blogger Yuri Kotenok went much further, describing Kyiv as captured by an “ethnic organized criminal group.” He portrayed Ukrainians as ruled by appointees rather than elected leaders, invoked the medieval Khazars, used an anti-Jewish epithet for President Volodymyr Zelensky, and caricatured Markovitch through references to sidelocks and Jewish speech. The passage assembles recognizable conspiracy tropes: Jewish collective control, foreignness, and Khazar mythology.

From individual action to a Jewish mafia narrative

One commenter on a Watchers.Media Facebook post wrote: “Jewish mafia! This is already the end, there is nowhere further to go! And against this background comes the statement that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are short $27 billion!”

Another claimed: “The Chief Rabbi of Kyiv’s support for Mudra is public support for the mafia by Kyiv’s Jewish community.” The logic moves from Markovitch’s individual act to the Kyiv Jewish community and then to collective support for “the mafia.”

The Minister’s Portfolio account on Telegram offered another example: “The Chabadniks are carving up 💸 Ukraine. Mindich, Zuckerman, Zelenskyy…Ukraine’s corruption mafia obviously has a particular ethnic affiliation.” Here again, alleged political wrongdoing becomes an ethnic characteristic.

Ethnic identity, political loyalty, and conspiracy

Another Facebook commenter invoked Hitler: “About the rabbi. And do not ask why one Austrian artist knew what to do in such cases…” An August 28 essay by Ihor Kahanets in Narodnyi Ohliadach distinguished political from ethnic Ukrainian identity. Kahanets described Zelensky, Markovitch, and Mudra as political Ukrainians but ethnic Jews, then questioned whether they could simultaneously be ethnic Ukrainians. The implication moves from identity to presumed political loyalty: Jewishness becomes evidence of governmental influence and mutual protection. A separate August 25 article placed Mudra within a purported transnational “parasitic” ruling stratum.

Social media amplification

Comments on Reddit offer further illustrations of how the case spread through social media, though, again, they are not representative of Ukrainian opinion: “Well, she [Mudra] certainly did not visit the synagogue empty-handed”; “Jews… that is what they are like…That is why they were driven out from everywhere”; “From the rabbi’s answer it became clear that he was the organizer of the crime”; and “So the attack was prepared from the synagogue?”

From inventories of identity to internal enemies

Pavlo Zhebrivskyi, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian and former head of the Donetsk regional military-civil administration, told Te News: “I have nothing against the Jewish people, because there are decent people among them.” He then catalogued Ukrainian leaders by Jewish identity and declared that, for such people, Ukrainians are “goyim, plebeians” and “enemies…much more fierce and bloody than the Muscovites, because they are internal enemies…the gravediggers of the Ukrainian nation.” He asserted that the country is run by an “organized criminal group, the mafia, non-Ukrainians in power, who rule the country during the war.” The insinuation is difficult to miss: Jewish Ukrainians are cast as non-Ukrainian by definition.

An older conspiratorial thread

The rhetoric did not originate with the Markovitch controversy. In 2019, Nikolai Voron alleged in CONT/Proza.ru that Jews “control the economy, the banking sector, transport, the legislative and information systems, and even shape ideology”; that “one of Ukraine’s ethnic minorities, the Jews, is in almost absolute power”; and that “Chabad chose Ukraine for a new Israel…to live here and become masters in Ukraine, to build a third Khazaria.” He also claimed that Jewish dominance of Ukraine’s business elite explained an alleged role in the 2014 Maidan uprising and that the United States had decided to transfer Ukraine “under the control of Israel.” The Markovitch affair supplied a new occasion for an old conspiracy theory.

The distinction between personal responsibility and collective blame

Across these examples, the recurring operation is not criticism of the decision to offer surety. As Asman stressed, that decision was Markovitch’s individual initiative. The antisemitic turn comes when criticism of one rabbi’s choice becomes an accusation against Jews as Jews, precisely the boundary identified by the Jerusalem Declaration, the IHRA definition, and the Nexus Document.

Individual Jewish identities and distinct Jewish institutions are collapsed into a single explanatory collective, then assigned responsibility for real or imagined wrongdoing. Substitute Christians, Muslims, Roma, Russians, Palestinians, Ukrainians, women, or any other population, and the principle remains the same: responsibility belongs to individuals, not entire communities.

One may support or condemn Markovitch’s offer. One may question his judgment, scrutinize his public role, or demand accountability from Mudra and every other suspect in the investigation. None of that requires treating Jewishness as evidence of conspiracy. Political criticism loses its legitimacy when it abandons individual responsibility for collective blame. Antisemitism should have no home in Ukraine, or anywhere else.