A lecture in Lviv about the Jewish world in the life and work of Ivan Franko became an occasion to take a broader look at one of the complex topics of Ukrainian-Jewish history. Franko lived in Galicia, where Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles not only coexisted but also influenced each other daily — through cities, markets, literature, politics, religion, poverty, conflicts, and memory.
A lecture in Lviv as an occasion to talk about more
On June 13, 2026, in Lviv – a cultural and educational meeting-lecture “The Jewish World in the Work and Life of Ivan Franko“.
It is organized by the Jewish Religious Community of Progressive Judaism “Teiva“. The venue is the Honorary Consulate of the State of Israel in the Western region of Ukraine, Lviv, Hazova Street, 36/3. The speaker is Bohdan Tykholoz — a well-known Franko scholar, literary critic, and director of the Franko House, the Lviv National Literary-Memorial Museum of Ivan Franko.
But the meeting itself is important here not only as a cultural poster.
It provides a good reason to return to a topic that is often either smoothed over or simplified: Ivan Franko and the Jewish World of Galicia.
For the Ukrainian reader, Ivan Franko is one of the main classics of national culture. For many Israelis, his name may be almost unfamiliar. Meanwhile, through Franko, one can see not only Ukrainian literature but also a whole layer of shared Ukrainian-Jewish history.
He was called “Kamenyar” (Ukr.) (Stonecutter — a worker who cuts stones) — in the image of a person who breaks a rock and opens the road ahead. In Ukrainian culture, this image became a symbol of labor, struggle, perseverance, and the movement towards freedom.
This is the history of Lviv, Drohobych, Boryslav, Nahuievychi, Galician towns and villages.
This is the history of a region where Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles lived side by side for centuries. Not in a simple postcard about “friendship of peoples,” but in real life — with mutual influence, trade, poverty, competition, religious distance, political disputes, stereotypes, and cultural exchange.
Such a conversation is important for the section “History and Facts“. Not a festive legend. Not an accusatory slogan. But an attempt to understand how everything was actually arranged.
Fact one: Franko did not grow up in a mono-national world
Ivan Franko was born in 1856 in the village of Nahuievychi, near Drohobych. This was Galicia — then part of the Austrian, and later Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Today it is Western Ukraine.
But to understand Franko, it is important to remember: Galicia of his time was not homogeneous. In towns and villages, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Austrian officials, craftsmen, peasants, traders, priests, rabbis, teachers, lawyers, journalists, and political activists lived side by side.
Drohobych, where Franko studied, was not just a Ukrainian city.
It was a city with a strong Jewish presence, with trade, crafts, religious life, urban poverty, and social contrasts. Lviv, where Franko worked, wrote, argued, and died, was an even more complex space — Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, Austrian, multilingual, and politically tense.
Therefore, when we talk about the “Jewish world” in Franko’s life, it is not a separate side topic.
Jewish life was part of the environment in which he was formed.
He saw it in cities, markets, schools, everyday life, politics, in conversations about money, poverty, labor, justice, and the future of the peoples of Galicia.
And this immediately changes the approach to the topic.
Franko did not “add Jews” to his texts for color. He wrote about a world where Jews were a real and noticeable part of society.
Why this is important for Israel
For the Israeli audience, such a topic may sound especially close.
Many families in Israel have roots in Eastern European cities. For some, Lviv, Drohobych, Boryslav, Sambir, Stryi, Kolomyia, or Ternopil are not just names on a map, but places of family memory.
Sometimes this memory is associated with pre-war Jewish life.
Sometimes — with the Holocaust.
Sometimes — with Soviet times, emigration, repatriation, and a break with the past.
Franko helps to see an earlier layer of this history. Before the catastrophes of the 20th century. Before the Soviet erasure of memory. Before today’s war of Russia against Ukraine.
He shows Galicia as a space where Ukrainian and Jewish histories were intertwined long before the emergence of modern states of Ukraine and Israel.
Fact two: Jewish characters in Franko’s works are a mirror of Galician society
Jewish characters in Franko’s works do not appear by chance.
They are connected with the social issues that concerned the writer: poverty, money, exploitation, power, labor, dependence, city, trade, education, national awakening, and justice.
Boryslav is especially important.
In the second half of the 19th century, Boryslav became one of the centers of oil production in Galicia. It was a world of sharp social contrasts. Workers, entrepreneurs, small intermediaries, landless people, people without protection, people with hope to get rich quickly, and people who had only their labor to sell came here.
Franko saw Boryslav as a symbol of the new capitalist order.
And in this world, Jewish characters often occupy the roles of traders, tenants, intermediaries, entrepreneurs, small dealers, city dwellers. But to read this only as a “depiction of Jews” would be a mistake.
Franko describes not an isolated Jewish community.
He describes a system of relationships.
Who owns the money.
Who works.
Who depends.
Who bargains.
Who survives.
Who takes advantage of another’s weakness.
Who remains a prisoner of their own position.
In such a picture, Jewish images become part of a broader social critique. But it is here that the complexity arises, which cannot be bypassed.
Stereotypes of the era: an uncomfortable but necessary part of the conversation
Franko was a great writer and thinker.
But he was not a person outside his time.
In his texts, one can find sympathy for the poor, interest in human fate, attention to social injustice. But one can also find sharp formulations, stereotypical images, generalizations that today sound heavy and require critical reading.
This is an important point.
If we write that Franko simply “loved the Jewish world,” it would be untrue.
If we write that Franko was only a bearer of anti-Jewish stereotypes, it would also be untrue.
His position is more complex.
He lived in a society where national movements fought for a place under the sun. Ukrainians of Galicia sought cultural and political rights. The Polish elite maintained influence. Jewish communities sought different paths — from traditional religious life to assimilation, socialist ideas, and Zionism.
In this environment, conflicts easily arose.
Economic.
Religious.
Everyday.
Political.
National.
Franko did not stand above all this as a cold observer. He was a participant in the disputes of his era. Therefore, his Jewish theme cannot be sterile.
NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers it important to talk about this without embellishments. Ukrainian-Jewish history does not become weaker from an honest conversation. On the contrary, it becomes more mature when it retains both light and shadow.
Fact three: Franko turned to the Jewish biblical tradition as a language of the people’s destiny
There is another level that is especially important for the Israeli reader.
This is the poem “Moses”.
For Ukrainian culture, “Moses” by Ivan Franko is one of the key texts. But it is not a work about the Jewish community of Galicia in the everyday sense. Here Franko reaches another level — biblical, symbolic, national.
Moses in Franko’s work is not just a hero of ancient history.
It is the image of a leader who leads the people through the desert.
The people are tired.
The people doubt.
The people do not always understand their prophet.
The people want results but are not always ready for the cost of the journey.
For Franko, this plot became a way to talk about the Ukrainian fate. About a people who have language, culture, memory, inner strength, but do not yet have their own state. About a people who need to go through a long desert of historical expectation.
Here the Jewish biblical image turns into a Ukrainian political and spiritual language.
For Israelis, this may be especially interesting.
The Ukrainian classic turns to the image of Moses not as a foreign decorative plot, but as a universal symbol of the people’s path, responsibility, freedom, and faith in the future.
Franko and Zionism: why the Ukrainian classic looked closely at the Jewish national movement
A separate topic, important for the Israeli reader, is Ivan Franko’s attitude towards Zionism.
At the end of the 19th century, Jewish politics in Europe was changing. The old question “how should Jews live among other peoples” no longer had one answer. Some chose assimilation. Others remained in the traditional religious environment. Some joined the socialist movement. And part of the Jewish intellectuals and activists increasingly spoke about national revival and the right of the Jewish people to their own political future.
Franko observed this not as a random newspaper reader.
He lived in Galicia, where the Jewish community was a noticeable part of society, economy, urban culture, and political life. Therefore, Zionism for him was not a distant theory, but one of the answers to the real problems of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe.
Researchers directly note: Franko’s attitude towards Jews was ambiguous, from sympathy and interest to harsh assessments and stereotypes, but after the fall of Soviet censorship, texts became more known in which his benevolent attitude towards Jews and Zionism is visible.
For Franko, Zionism was important primarily as an expression of national self-awareness.
He himself belonged to the Ukrainian movement, which sought cultural, social, and political rights for Ukrainians of Galicia. Therefore, he could perceive the Jewish national movement not as a strangeness, but as a parallel historical process: a people facing discrimination and pressure seeks a language of self-organization, dignity, and future.
In 1893, Franko was in Vienna and, according to researchers, met with Theodor Herzl — one of the main future ideologists of political Zionism. Later, Franko wrote a preface to the Lviv publication of Herzl’s work “The Jewish State”. At the same time, it is important not to simplify: Franko did not accept the idea of a Jewish state unconditionally and considered it difficult to implement, but he recognized the need for Jewish solidarity in the face of anti-Semitism.
This is a very important facet.
Franko could sharply criticize wealthy Jewish entrepreneurs, especially in texts about Boryslav and oil capitalism. But this criticism did not cancel the other: he saw the right of Jews to national self-organization and understood that anti-Semitism is a real threat, not an invented problem.
In this sense, Franko differed from many contemporaries.
In the Ukrainian, Polish, and pan-European environment of the late 19th century, anti-Semitic sentiments were strong. The Jewish population was often turned into a convenient object of accusations — for the poverty of peasants, for economic crises, for political failures, for fear of modernization. Against this background, Franko’s very readiness to discuss the Jewish question not only in the language of accusation but also in the language of rights, solidarity, and national future was important.
But again — without embellishment.
Franko was not a modern liberal author of the 21st century. In his legacy, there are texts and formulations that today require critical reading. Researchers therefore speak of the complexity of his attitude towards Jews: it combined support for Jewish emancipation, interest in Zionism, social criticism of Jewish capital, and stereotypes of the era.
For an article in the “History and Facts” section, this is especially valuable.
Franko shows that Ukrainian-Jewish history is not divided into black and white. There were conflicts in it, but there were also points of understanding. There was social criticism, but there was also the defense of the right of Jews to participate in public life. There were stereotypes, but there was also interest in the Jewish national movement.
Zionism in this history is also important because it connects Franko with a topic understandable to today’s Israel: the right of a people not to dissolve, not to disappear, not to be an eternal object of foreign policy, but to speak of itself as a subject of history.
It is here that Franko unexpectedly becomes interesting not only to the Ukrainian but also to the Israeli reader.
He looked at the Jewish question from Galicia — a region where Ukrainians themselves fought for voice, language, and recognition. Therefore, the Jewish aspiration for self-organization could not be an empty sound for him. It entered the same great historical conversation about peoples without full political power, about the rights of minorities, about the future of Eastern Europe, and about how to maintain dignity in a world of empires and national conflicts.
Fact four: Lviv in this topic is not just a place on the poster
Lviv in the history of Franko and the Jewish world is not a backdrop.
It is one of the main characters.
Here Franko lived, worked, wrote, argued, and died. Here Ukrainian political and literary thought was formed. Here, until World War II, there was a powerful Jewish life—religious, cultural, educational, commercial, political.
Lviv was a city of several memories.
Ukrainian.
Jewish.
Polish.
Austrian.
Later—Soviet.
And each of these memories left a mark, but not always preserved equally.
After the Holocaust, Jewish life in Lviv was almost destroyed. After Soviet rule, much was renamed, erased, silenced, or reduced to official formulations. After the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, a complex process of memory return began—not always quick, not always complete, but important.
Therefore, a lecture on Franko’s Jewish world in Lviv sounds different than it would in any other city.
In Lviv, this topic is literally underfoot.
In the streets.
In the houses.
In the archives.
In the museum collections.
In family stories.
In the vanished synagogues.
In Ukrainian texts.
In Jewish memory.
In the modern dialogue between Ukraine and Israel.
And if such a meeting takes place at the Honorary Consulate of the State of Israel in the Western region of Ukraine, it adds another meaning. It is not only about the past but also about today’s readiness to speak about shared history in the language of respect and accuracy.
Who is Ivan Franko: an explanation for the Israeli reader
Many Israelis may know the name Taras Shevchenko, but not always understand who Ivan Franko is.
And without this, it is difficult to understand why a lecture on his Jewish world is important at all.
Ivan Franko is one of the main Ukrainian writers, thinkers, and public figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For Ukrainian culture, he stands alongside Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.
If Shevchenko became a symbol of the Ukrainian national awakening of the 19th century, then Franko became a figure of another type—an intellectual of European scale, who combined literature, science, politics, journalism, translation, social criticism, and work with folk culture.
He was not only a poet.
Franko was a prose writer, playwright, translator, literary critic, publicist, scientist, political activist, folklore researcher, and a person of immense intellectual energy.
He wrote about poverty, labor, love, humiliation, dignity, social injustice, national awakening, human weakness, and the responsibility of the intelligentsia to the people.
Ivan Franko (August 27, 1856, Nahuievychi, Drohobych County, Sambir District, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austrian Empire – May 28, 1916, Lviv, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary) was an outstanding Ukrainian poet, publicist, translator, scientist, public and political figure. Doctor of Philosophy (1893), habilitated doctor (1895), full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (1899), honorary doctor of Kharkiv University (1906). Member of the “Prosvita” Society.
During his more than 40-year creative activity, Franko worked extremely productively as an original writer (poet, prose writer, playwright) and translator, literary critic and publicist, multifaceted scientist—literary, linguistic, translation, and art critic, ethnologist and folklorist, historian. His creative legacy is estimated to include several thousand works totaling more than 100 volumes. In total, during his lifetime, more than 220 editions were published as separate books and brochures, including more than 60 collections of his original and translated works of various genres. He was one of the first professional Ukrainian writers, meaning he earned a living through literary work.
Franko wrote primarily in Ukrainian—more precisely, in the literary Ukrainian of his time with a strong Galician linguistic layer.
But he was a multilingual author and intellectual.
He also wrote and published:
- in Polish—especially in the press and publicism;
- in German—for the Austrian and European scientific and publicistic space;
- used and knew Russian, Old Church Slavonic, Latin, Greek, translated from various languages;
- worked with texts in Hebrew/Jewish biblical tradition through biblical plots, primarily in the poem “Moses”, but wrote the poem itself in Ukrainian.
But the scale of Franko is best seen through his works.
One of the early and very important works is “Boa constrictor”, written in 1878. It is prose about Boryslav, oil capital, greed, dependence, and a world where money gradually begins to govern human relationships. For the theme of Galicia, this is especially important: Boryslav in Franko’s work becomes not just a city, but a symbol of new harsh capitalism.
In 1881–1882, Franko wrote the social novel “Boryslav Laughs”. In it, he showed the hard life of workers and the emergence of worker protest in oil Boryslav. It is not a novel “about industry” in the dry sense, but a text about people whom the new economy grinds between poverty, exploitation, and hope for justice.
In 1883, the historical novel “Zakhar Berkut” appeared. Its action is connected with the 13th century and the resistance of the Carpathian community to the Mongol invasion. For Ukrainian culture, this is one of the important texts about freedom, communal solidarity, dignity, and the ability of the people to defend their land. Through the past, Franko spoke about the present: that the people can withstand if they have internal organization, memory, and will.
In 1893, the drama “Stolen Happiness” was written. This is another side of Franko—not only a social thinker but also a subtle psychologist. At the center of the play is personal tragedy, ruined love, the pressure of circumstances, and the question of whether a person can preserve themselves when life is already broken by others’ decisions.
In 1895, Franko wrote the novel “The Foundations of Society”, where he again addressed the theme of social morality, power, money, and hypocrisy. He was interested not only in poverty as a fact but in how society is structured, where some people gain power, and others become dependent.
In 1896, the poetic cycle “Withered Leaves” was published. It is lyrics about love, pain, loneliness, internal fracture, and human vulnerability. This text is important because it shows that Franko was not only a “stonecutter”, not only a public fighter, but also an author of very personal, dramatic, emotional poetry.
In 1900, the novel “Crossroads” appeared. The very title is well-suited to the conversation about Franko and Galicia. It is a work about provincial society, politics, law, corruption, national work, personal choices, and the complex paths that people and entire communities take.
In 1905, Franko wrote the poem “Moses”—one of the key texts of Ukrainian literature. In it, the biblical image of Moses becomes the language of conversation about the fate of the people, leadership, doubts, desert, freedom, and the path to the future. For Ukrainians, it was not just a retelling of the biblical plot, but a reflection on their own national path.
That is why Franko is especially interesting for the Israeli reader.
He addressed the Jewish biblical tradition not as a distant folklore, but as a universal language of history. Through Moses, Franko spoke about a people seeking a path, tiring, doubting, arguing with the prophet, but still facing the question of freedom.
There is also another well-known work, important for understanding Franko’s image—the poem “The Stonecutters”, written in 1878. It is with this that his image of the Stonecutter is associated. In Ukrainian culture, The Stonecutter is a person who breaks the rock and paves the way forward. This image became a symbol of labor, perseverance, resistance, and movement towards freedom.
Therefore, Franko in Ukraine is not just the author of several school texts.
He is one of those who helped Ukrainian culture transition from a folkloric and romantic tradition to a modern intellectual nation. He wrote about peasants and workers, about the city and industry, about love and politics, about the past and the future, about the people and the individual, about weakness and dignity.
His place in Ukrainian literature is special.
Taras Shevchenko gave Ukrainians a powerful poetic and national voice. Lesya Ukrainka brought Ukrainian literature to the level of European philosophical drama and intellectual poetry. Ivan Franko stood between them and alongside them as a universal figure: writer, scientist, publicist, critic, translator, political thinker, and builder of modern Ukrainian culture.
Franko was born and formed in Galicia, where Ukrainian history constantly intersected with Jewish, Polish, Austrian, and pan-European. Therefore, his texts help to understand not only Ukraine but also the Eastern European world from which millions of Jewish families emerged.
Through Franko, one can see the map of Galicia not as a dry historical region, but as a living space.
Nahuievychi—the birthplace.
Drohobych—the city of youth.
Boryslav—a symbol of oil capitalism and social pain.
Lviv—the center of culture, politics, journalism, and memory.
And alongside this—Jewish communities, markets, religious life, poverty, wealth, socialism, Zionism, stereotypes, fears, dialogue, and conflicts.
There is also another important fact that helps to understand the scale of memory about Franko.
In Ukraine, there is a city named after him—Ivano-Frankivsk. Historically, this city was called Stanislaviv, later Stanislav. In 1962, it was renamed Ivano-Frankivsk in honor of Ivan Franko. This happened in Soviet times, for the 300th anniversary of the city, but the logic of renaming was connected with the fact that Franko was perceived as one of the largest figures of Ukrainian culture and as a symbol of Galicia.
Why his name?
Because Franko is not a local author of one region. He became a national symbol. His name is associated with Western Ukraine, Lviv, Galicia, the Ukrainian language, literature, enlightenment, social thought, and the idea of cultural dignity. Therefore, the city of Ivano-Frankivsk on the map of Ukraine is not just an administrative name, but a sign of the place Franko occupies in Ukrainian memory.
For the Israeli reader, this can be explained simply: Franko for Ukraine is not only a writer but one of the people through whom Ukrainians learned to speak about themselves as a modern nation.
Therefore, the conversation about Franko and the Jewish world is not a narrow literary topic.
It is a way to understand how Ukrainian culture saw Jewish life.
How Jewish presence shaped Galicia.
How the biblical Moses became one of the images of the Ukrainian national path.
How national movements of the late 19th century sought the language of the future.
And why today, after all the catastrophes of the 20th century and against the backdrop of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is important to talk about this without false sweetness and without destructive simplification.
Franko does not give us a convenient legend.
He gives complex material.
That is why he is important.
The history of Ukrainians and Jews in Galicia was not only a history of neighborhood but also a history of tension. Not only a history of pain but also a history of influence. Not only a history of rupture but also a history of shared cultural fabric.
The lecture in Lviv was just an occasion to reopen this topic.
And the topic itself is much broader than one meeting.
It is about the fact that Ukraine and the Jewish world have a long shared history—with cities, names, texts, conflicts, biblical images, and memory that cannot be given to either propaganda or oblivion.
Therefore, the conversation about Franko today is important not only for philologists.
It is important for everyone who wants to understand why Ukrainian-Jewish history is not an appendix to the great European history, but one of its central lines.