In Israel, the day carries a peculiar resonance. Elderly veterans wearing Soviet medals stand in streets filled with Hebrew signs. Old wartime songs emerge again near Mediterranean cafés, Russian grocery shops, municipal ceremonies, and parks where grandchildren speak Hebrew while grandparents still murmur in Russian or Ukrainian. The State of Israel itself officially recognizes the date – something that would once have seemed unimaginable: a Jewish state integrating the Soviet victory over Nazism into its own commemorative landscape.

Yet this recognition is not artificial. Entire fragments of Jewish life survived because the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany. Soviet Jewish memory cannot simply erase this fact. Even those who suffered later under Soviet oppression knew that without that victory, entire worlds would have disappeared forever.

But memory does not remain unchanged.

What once carried the reality of liberation slowly became something more ambiguous: nostalgia, ritualized suffering, imperial longing, inherited grief transformed into permanent identity. One sometimes has the impression that Победа\Pobeda no longer signifies only victory, but the endless emotional reenactment of victory.

And after the invasion of Ukraine, the fracture deepened still further.

For many former Soviet olim in Israel, Ukraine was never “abroad.” Kyiv, Odessa, Berdichev, Uman, Transnistria, Kharkiv, Babi Yar – these belong to internal Jewish geography. Families who considered themselves culturally Russian often carried Ukrainian Jewish roots embedded somewhere in language, recipes, songs, cemetery names, or childhood memories.

Thus many found themselves internally divided: between inherited gratitude toward the Soviet victory, and horror before the return of large-scale destruction.

Perhaps this is why the old songs sound different today. Here is the poem I wrote in Yiddish for this year special 81st anniversary of the two Victory dates.

בײַ מכפּלה װיפֿיל זוז־רענדלעך?ל״ג בעמר ברענט נאָך אין דער לוּפֿטאון די אַלטע לידער פֿון פּאָבעדעקלינגען איבערחזרנדיק בײַ סטאַנציעס אין סיביר

At Machpelah – how many little zuz-coins?Lag Ba’Omer still burns in the air,and the old songs of Pobeda – victory –keep echoing near stations in Siberia.

אױך אין דער קירגיזישער דיכטוּנג און װערטער פֿון אַבראַשאַ ־װאוּ חלומות און קור האָבן אַמאָל געכאַפּט די מענטשן ־״נצח״ מײנט ניט בלױז זיגןנאָר אַ חילוק און מער פֿון אײַביקײט

Also in Kyrgyz poetry and the words of Abrasha –where dreams and cold once seized human beings –“Netzakh” does not mean victory alone,but something different, something beyond eternity.

Already in these opening lines, the atmosphere shifts away from simple commemoration. Victory becomes metaphysical, almost unstable. The Hebrew word נצח\netzakh carries within it both triumph and endurance, but also continuity beyond historical conquest. The poem quietly suggests that civilizations often confuse these meanings.

One may conquer territories and still lose eternity.

This ambiguity is perhaps what defines the contemporary post-Soviet atmosphere around May 9. The medals remain real. The sacrifice remains real. But the emotional machinery surrounding them has grown heavier, almost liturgical. Military parades, songs, ribbons, eternal flames, processions carrying portraits of the dead – all these increasingly resemble the rituals of a civilization attempting to preserve itself through memory alone.

And yet another layer persists........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)