Ukrainian shop pulls kids’ costumes of ultra-Orthodox Jews with sidelocks
Store in Lviv apologizes for marketing outfits using a name for Jews the local community considers a slur, says it had no intention to offend
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleCnaan Liphshiz was a Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel
JTA — A children’s costume designer in Ukraine pulled get-ups of ultra-Orthodox Jews from its online catalog that were marketed using what many believe to be a racial slur.
The costumes, featuring fake sidelocks, or payot, and jewelry, were pulled offline Monday by the Assol store in Lviv, which numbers a few hundred Jews in a population of about 720,000. The costumes — for boys and girls — had been sold for $15 and advertised using the word “zhyd.” In Russian, the word is a slur and is seen as such by leaders of Ukrainian Jewry, most of whom speak Russian at home.
However, some Ukrainians maintain that in the Ukrainian language, the word is neutral and no more offensive than the word for Jews in Russian, “evereiy.”
“We had no intention to offend members of the Jewish minority,” the shop wrote on its Facebook page, adding “We apologize sincerely.”
Четыре ателье во Львове предлагают детские костюмы "Ж_дивка"..????????????
Posted by Shimon Briman on Sunday, February 2, 2020
Shimon Briman, an Israeli journalist, posted on Facebook about the costume on Sunday, adding that he found it tasteless considering the bloody history of Jews in Ukraine and in Lviv specifically. The city was 30% Jewish before the Holocaust.
The boys’ costume featured a black hat with long sidelocks and a leopard-pattern synthetic fur collar.
Lviv has a popular albeit controversial restaurant where the waiters dress up like ultra-Orthodox Jews and patrons are expected to haggle over the check at the end of the meal.
The Times of Israel Community.