Isaac Babel’s Empty Chair: What a Threatened Statue Says about the Future of Jewish Life in Ukraine — and Why Tarbut Matters

When the New York Times surveyed bomb-scarred Odesa on 5 May 2025, its reporters found more than rubble: they recorded a population terrified that, once the war is over, someone else will own the city’s story. That dread now crystallises around one bronze figure on Rishelievska Street—the seated monument to Jewish author Isaac Babel. In December 2024 the statue was placed on a regional “de-colonisation” demolition list alongside busts of Lenin and Pushkin, because Babel wrote in Russian and once wore a Red-Army uniform.

 Babel: the Jewish voice of Odesa

 Born in the Moldavanka district in 1894, Babel turned the port’s Yiddish slang and criminal patois into world literature through Odesa Tales and Red Cavalry. He was executed in 1940 in Stalin’s jails for the “crime” of rootless cosmopolitanism, yet his fiction survived to define Odesa’s reputation as a multilingual, irreverent, defiantly Jewish city. When expatriates raised funds for his statue—dedicated in 2011 by the World Club of Odesa Citizens—locals joked that their most celebrated storyteller had finally “come home to sit a while.”

 A symbol stripped away

 The threatened removal of Babel’s bronze chair signals a danger even artillery cannot inflict: voluntary cultural amnesia. If Odesa can recast its one Jewish literary giant as an “imperial oppressor,” how safe are the synagogues, Hebrew street names or family archives that still dot the historic centre—already listed by UNESCO as a World-Heritage site in danger after repeated missile strikes?

 Echoes from Chișinău

 Across the Dniester, modern-day Chișinău (Kishinev) knows what happens when minorities are blamed for turmoil. In April 1903 a three-day pogrom left at least 40 Jews dead and hundreds injured, shocking the world and triggering waves of emigration.   The lesson etched into Moldovan and Ukrainian Jewish memory is stark: no matter who wins a conflict, Jews risk being cast as scapegoats if national narratives harden into single-voice myths.

 Cultural erasure equals civic decline

 UNESCO counts more than 340 damaged cultural sites nationwide; Odesa alone has lost entire streetscapes.   Yet intangible heritage vanishes faster still. Should Jewish schools close and congregations disperse, the very cosmopolitanism that once made Odesa and Chișinău gateways between East and West will fade—dragging tourism, investment and innovation down with it.

Tarbut: the quiet safeguard

Against this backdrop, the Moldova-based organisation Tarbut has become an essential guardian of Jewish continuity. Rooted in the historic Tarbut educational network of pre-war Eastern Europe, the modern initiative positions itself as a cultural lifeline linking Moldova and wartime Ukraine. Community leaders and politicians on both sides of the border openly praise Tarbut for maintaining and re-establishing Jewish life, safeguarding heritage, and keeping Jewish identity visible at a moment when visibility itself is an act of resistance.

Tarbut’s work is discreet by necessity—the fewer operational details published, the safer its volunteers and beneficiaries remain—but its impact is evident: synagogues still open their doors, holiday gatherings still draw crowds, and Jewish history is still being taught rather than erased. In the words of one Moldovan MP, Tarbut “holds the cultural bridge no bomb has yet managed to destroy.”

Why Babel’s chair—and Tarbut—must stay

The greatest threat to Jewish life in Ukraine is not merely physical destruction; it is the possibility of being blamed, whichever army triumphs. If Isaac Babel’s statue can be dismissed as alien, so can living Jewish neighbours. Remove the monument and the city risks exchanging one imposed silence for another, proving that the pen Stalin feared can still be silenced—this time by those who claim to fight tyranny.

Supporting Tarbut, preserving Babel’s statue, and defending pluralistic memory are therefore not acts of nostalgia; they are strategic investments in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. Cosmopolitan port cities thrive on diversity. Strip away the Jewish layer and Odesa and Chișinău will lose more than a minority population—they will lose the creative, commercial and international energy that made them flourish for two centuries.

 

In the battle for Ukraine’s future, bronze and parchment matter as much as bricks and mortar. As long as Tarbut keeps the culture alive and Babel keeps his seat in Odesa, the conversation that built these cities remains open—and so does the door to renewal.