IN CONVERSATION
WITH EZRA
Ezra Pastor is a 23-year-old Ukrainian Karaite artist, painter, and clothing designer. With quiet determination, he’s working to ensure that the voice of the Karaites —one of Ukraine’s Indigenous communities—resonates with renewed strength. He delves into the forgotten folds of Crimean Karaites' history and tradition through his work that traces the emotional contours of memory.
25 April, 2025
Ezra
Tozhsamist: You belong to the second-largest Indigenous group in Ukraine. Could you tell us—who are the Crimean Karaites?
Ezra: According to the last census in 2001, fewer than 2,000 Crimean Karaites were living in Ukraine. But numbers don’t always tell the truth. During the Soviet era, aggressive assimilation policies pushed many Karaim families into silence. People concealed their heritage, registering under other ethnicities just to survive. My own family wasn’t an exception. And if it hadn’t been for a twist of fate, I might never have known that I wasn’t only Ukrainian, but also Karaite.
First, it’s important to clear up a common confusion. Many people assume that Crimean Karaites and Crimean Tatars share the same roots. That’s not quite right. One of the key distinctions lies in religion. Karaites (also known as Karaims) formed around a distinct spiritual tradition—Karaimism—which is often misunderstood as a branch of Judaism. But it’s not. Karaimism challenges the notion of a single, authoritative interpretation of the Tanakh—the sacred text Christians know as the Old Testament. In our tradition, each person reads and interprets the Torah for themselves. There are no intermediaries, no universal dogma. Every Karaim is encouraged to sit with the ancient words and let them speak to their own understanding.
While Jews gather in synagogues and Christians in churches, Karaims come together in kenesas. These are our places of worship—spiritually akin to synagogues but with more architectural freedom. One of the few remaining on mainland Ukraine is tucked into the heart of Kyiv, just near the Zoloti Vorota metro station—it’s 7A Yaroslaviv Val Street. But to most locals, it’s known simply as the Actor’s House.
As for where the Crimean Karaims come from, there’s no definitive answer. Some sources trace our ancestry to the Khazars, a nomadic people who settled on the Crimean peninsula centuries ago. It’s not confirmed, but it’s one of the main theories we have. What we do know is that Karaites have likely lived in Crimea for close to a thousand years. And for much of that time, we’ve learned to adapt—to preserve what we can, quietly, between the lines.
Tucked away on Yaroslaviv Val Street, just steps from the Golden Gate, stands one of Kyiv’s most striking architectural gems: the Karaim Kenasa, built in 1902. Designed by the renowned architect Vladyslav Horodetskyi, it merges Moorish motifs with the grandeur of European classicism. Its construction was made possible through the patronage of Solomon Kogen, a prominent tobacco magnate and philanthropist.
T: How do you feel connected to your roots? What have you discovered about Karaites through your journey?
E: I was fourteen when I first learned I had Karaite heritage. It came up casually—almost by accident—during a conversation with my mother. Her grandfather, she told me, had been Karaim.
The story of my family is, sadly, not unusual for Karaites. We had once lived well. My ancestors were prosperous, settled in Crimea. Life was steady until the Soviet Revolution came. And then, as many can already imagine, everything changed. When the revolutionaries arrived in Crimea, wealth became a punishment. My great-grandfather was a child then, around 8-10 years old. We don’t know the full story, but what we do know is enough. Most of his family was killed, likely in front of him. He never spoke about it. Given what we see of Russian violence today, it’s not hard to guess what he witnessed. Only two survived: he and his older brother, who was fourteen at the time. The brother was sent to a labor camp. My great-grandfather was thrown onto the first train out, which dropped him in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast. That’s how his new life began.
His silence was not unique—it was a survival tactic. What happened to him happened to so many families in the Crimean Peninsula. It’s a common story wherever Russia plants its flag: identity erased by force.
In Horlivka, he buried everything connected to his Karaite origin. He even avoided speaking about it to his children. All that remained was his name—Luka Ochan. ‘Ochan’ is a distinctly Karaite surname. It comes from the Crimean Tatar 'uchan', meaning ‘flying.’ It was given to families with nomadic backgrounds, and in a way, it suits us. In our line, no one has ever died in the same place they were born. We’ve always been in motion.
Luka eventually met a Ukrainian woman, married her, and they had six children—three boys and three girls. All were given conventional Soviet names with no hint of their Karaite roots, and none of them knew where they truly came from. They found out purely by chance. One evening, my grandmother and her older brother happened to catch their parents reading letters and quietly slipping them back under the tablecloth. Curious, they lifted the cloth and uncovered a stack of old letters—from their uncle, their father’s brother, the one who had been sent to a labor camp. That’s how they learned the truth. But they were told to keep it a secret and never speak about it again.
For decades, every Soviet passport in our family had just one word under ‘nationality’: Ukrainian. That was the story we lived. Until me. I’m the first in my family to try to revive this identity, because I’ve felt the pain of it being stolen.
Great-grandfather Luka Ochan
T: Given that your grandfather’s identity was so violently erased, how were you able to begin restoring it? What, in your view, helps preserve or revive identity?
E: For me, the most powerful starting point is a deep, internal awareness. A kind of recognition within someone who, by history, by blood, was meant to carry an identity, but lost it somewhere along the way.
What drives me is a quiet, persistent sense of injustice. I carry this—not just for my family, but for all Karaim people as a whole, because what was done to us is erasure and theft.
And yet, I have to admit—today’s world offers something my grandfather’s generation never had: the internet.
Without it, I would know so little. Without it, I wouldn’t have found the scattered fragments, the stories, the faces, the prayers. The internet is a global archive that can help people like me find their way back home.
T: The journey of reclaiming identity often calls for both inner work and outer action. What did that process look like for you?
E: It began when I was eighteen, studying at a university in Slovakia.
I found myself drawn more and more to Ukrainian culture, seeking a deeper understanding of where I came from. But in that process, something inside me paused and said, ‘Wait. You’re not only Ukrainian. You’re Karaite, too.’ That realization hit like a quiet storm. I began to ask who the Karaim people are and what it means to carry this name. The more I searched, the more it hurt. I saw how few of us remain. How little is known. How often is our story left out of the larger narrative? It felt unfair and wrong. And strangely enough, a song sparked something in me—Jamala’s ‘1944.’ It stirred something ancestral. It made me wonder what our world could have been without the horrors carried in by the Russian Empire.
That’s when I began to study—Crimea, its histories, its silences, and the fractured thread of my own people. But I didn’t want to do it quietly. Reading in secret wasn’t enough. I wanted to speak. I wanted to share. I wanted people to know we exist—and more than that, I wanted Karaite voices to speak for themselves. Most of all, I want the Karaim people to live freely on the land that’s home to us. To contribute to it. To grow it. We’ve always been a cultural force—artists, thinkers, builders. We’ve always brought something new.
The process of claiming this part of myself wasn’t simple. For a long time, I felt I didn’t have the right to say ‘we’ when speaking about Karaite. I’m only part Karaim, after all. The rest of me is a mix—Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish… maybe even Turkish. But then I realized—so many Karaims today come from mixed backgrounds. That’s our reality. And that made it easier to stand up and say: This is mine.
Ezra
T: Can you tell us a bit about Karaite traditions—everyday life, customs, food?
E: In daily life, Karaite aren’t all that different from the Crimean Tatars. We’ve shared the same land, the same towns and villages—naturally, we’ve absorbed pieces of each other’s ways. Take coffee, for example. Our traditions are nearly identical, except that Karaims were allowed to smoke during the ritual. That one small detail always stood out to me.
Another thing we share is closeness with extended family—what some might call distant cousins, we simply called brothers and sisters. I grew up side-by-side with my Karaim cousins, just a few blocks away. We were always together. And if a week went by without visiting each other, something had to be wrong—someone was upset, or had left town. There was no other explanation for the absence.
Where we differ more is in our spiritual life. One of our most meaningful holidays is Tymbyl Khydzhy—something like Easter in its importance. In the week leading up to it, we don’t eat regular bread. Instead, we make tymblyl—simple flatbreads of water and flour. But what makes them special is the care: before baking, we decorate each one with symmetrical patterns by hand. These aren’t just breads. They’re offerings.
Like all Crimean peoples, coffee holds a sacred place in Karaim culture. It’s not about how you make it—it’s about when and why you drink it.
We have something called ‘holiday coffee’—coffee shared in honor of a meaningful event. I remember when Nariman Dzhelyal, deputy head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, was released from Russian captivity in late July. I cried. We all did. That moment felt like a holiday. When I wrote to my Crimean Tatar friends, they all said the same thing: ‘Tomorrow, we must drink holiday coffee.’
There’s a traditional way to serve it—the Nogai style. Coffee arrives in a small cezve (a small, long-handled coffee pot traditionally used for brewing Turkish-style coffee) with a delicate cup, always accompanied by a bowl of sweets. There’s a café in Kyiv, Musafir, that still serves it this way. And yes, traditionally, Karaite would drink their coffee while smoking. Our religion is non-dogmatic—it never banned tobacco. It was about presence. About being together. About recognizing the sacred in the ordinary.
T: And what about the language?
E: The Karaite language is almost identical to Crimean Tatar. There are just a few differences in core vocabulary. For instance, where Crimean Tatars say ‘ana’ for ‘mother,’ Karaims say ‘nene.’ Their ‘olsun’ becomes our ‘bolsun.’ Until the early 20th century, written Karaim used alivbet—a version of the Hebrew alphabet. It connected us to an older, sacred rhythm of text and faith.
During the Great Reforms, Seraya Shapshal, an influential Karaim leader, decided to convert the Karaim script to Cyrillic. This was a forced compromise shaped by Soviet pressure. At the time, Moscow was rolling out a unifying policy across its territories, demanding that all Turkic languages under its control abandon their native scripts and adopt Cyrillic. Karaite was no exception. The communist regime deformed their language, too. In 1938, after purging the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, the Soviets began promoting a narrative of backwardness, labeling the Indigenous people of Crimea as uneducated. Their language was also rewritten in Cyrillic.
Right now, I’m studying Crimean Tatar. Karaim has become too fragile—its speakers are too few. So I’ve chosen to invest in the future of the Crimean Tatar. But still, out of curiosity, whenever I learn a new word in Crimean Tatar, I check to see how it might sound in Karaim—if I can find it. It’s a quiet way of keeping the echo alive.
The Kenasa in Halych by Tadeusz Kowalski, 1926
Around the year 1246, eighty Karaim families made their way from Crimea to the town of Halych. The first Kenasa they built stood until a citywide fire consumed it in 1830. In its place, under the guidance of Gazzan Abraham, the community erected a new sanctuary in stone but in 1986, the building was destroyed by the Soviet government.
T: You present yourself as an artist. I know you've released several clothing collections—some focused on Ukrainian history, others on Karaim heritage. Is this your way of expressing civic consciousness, or something else entirely?
E: I call myself a normcore designer. Normcore—it’s that understated style where the basics matter most. And I think it’s the perfect niche for activism. T-shirts, hoodies—these are clothes people wear every day. So I thought, why not use this space to say something that matters?
I talk about Ukrainian dissidents, artists—especially the shistdesyatnyky, the cultural revivalists of the 1960s. This is our history. It’s what we grow from, what strengthens us as a nation. I try to keep a balance. After a drop dedicated to Ukrainian history, I usually follow with something focused on Karaim heritage. One example is my collection titled ‘MILLET! VATAN! QIRIM!’ That’s the Crimean Tatar equivalent of ‘Glory to Ukraine!’. It translates to ‘People. Homeland. Crimea.’ These are the values that hold the deepest meaning for Crimeans.
For my next drop, I’m torn between two themes—one will either be dedicated to the Slovo Building in Kharkiv, a home to many Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1930s, or to Georgiy Gongadze, the journalist whose assassination marked a turning point in Ukraine’s modern political history. What I want every artist to understand is this: no artist can be apolitical. No human being who steps outside their home can be apolitical. Politics is everything around us. If someone says they’re not interested in politics, I ask them, ‘What are you interested in then? Cartoons? Dinosaurs? Please, grow up.’ Because politics isn’t just government. It’s us.
Ezra in his self-designed t-shirt
T: How do I feel about the idea of the United States recognizing occupied Crimea as part of Russia?
E: I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but if Russia is allowed to walk away from this genocidal war with Crimea in its pocket, it will mark a point of no return. A collapse of the world order we thought we had built together, after the ruins of the Second World War, with all the treaties, institutions, and fragile promises of peace. If that happens, it will be as if we’ve rewound time to an era when a handful of men in power could redraw the map with no regard for the lives that inhabit it. Hundreds of thousands will continue to wake up with the same ache: the feeling of not knowing when, or if, home will ever return.
And it won’t just be about Crimea anymore. Anyone, anywhere, will have to live with the knowledge that a foreign army can walk into your town, murder, destroy, and erase, and the highest form of justice they’ll face might be a polite warning—a slap on the wrist. We’ve woken up in a city where the police have fallen asleep. And those still awake are shaking hands with the criminals.
I hope with all my heart that one day I will return to Crimea. I’ll live there quietly, without fear, and my safety won’t feel like a fragile dream. But right now, I see no reason to believe in any of those things. Not yet.
T: One last question—what does the feeling of ‘home’ mean to you?
E: Home is the place where you stand barefoot on the earth, and it feels like the ground is holding you in return. I had that feeling in Crimea, the last time I visited. And I hope—it wasn’t the last. It was 2013, the Artek summer camp. I stepped outside the dormitory at seven in the morning. Behind me, the sea. In front of me, a small hillside is scattered with cypress trees, fig branches, and thick laurel bushes. A breeze passed over the hill, collecting all those scents into itself, and it moved through me like a current. I felt it fill my lungs, fill every part of me.
For me, home is when you stand on the earth and feel like a phone placed on a wireless charger. You just… connect. That’s what Crimea feels like to me.
Crimean Karaites
Karaites in Lutsk
Seraya Shapshal (1873–1961)
Born in Crimea, modern Ukraine.
A scholar, diplomat, and reformer, Shapshal reshaped Karaite identity in the 20th century, turning from Hebraic roots toward a Turkic origin myth.
Picture by ------------
Abraham Firkovich (1786–1874)
A collector, traveler, and self-taught scholar, Firkovich roamed from Crimea to the Caucasus in search of ancient manuscripts and hidden histories.
By Alice Zhuravel and Oksana Grushanska