 The latter, coupled with successive waves of "aliyah", has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.The history of the Jews in Ukraine goes back over a thousand years.Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century) and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions such as Hasidism.