The book Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective contains papers from a historic conference on Ukrainian-Jewish relations that was held at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in October 1983. Ambitious in scope, the conference brought together a sizable group of eminent North American and Israeli scholars who addressed the highly complex history of relations between Jews and Ukrainians. The essays in this collection, which reflect the dynamic and often controversial nature of the conference, range in time from the seventh to the twentieth century and cover subjects in both Eastern Europe and Canada. The book also contains transcripts of two discussions: one on issues arising from the conference panels, the other concerning Ukrainian-Jewish relations in Canada.

The McMaster conference was the first major effort to address difficult problems of Ukrainian-Jewish relations in a broader academic context. The past quarter century has seen dramatic transformations in the geopolitics of both Ukraine and Israel, as well as an enormous expansion of research on Ukrainian-Jewish relations by scholars from many countries working in a variety of fields. Evidence of this expansion is contained in the select bibliography of book publications that has been added to this third edition. These new developments and research notwithstanding, the essays gathered in this book have retained their importance and relevance to contemporary readers, and some of them still represent the most authoritative discussions of their particular subjects.

Essays include:

1. Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe
2. Jewish Participation in the Settlement of Ukraine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
3. The Cossack Insurrections in Jewish-Ukrainian Relations
4. The Jewish Factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising
5. The Sion-Osnova Controversy
6. Jewish-Ukrainian Relations in Transcarpathia
7. The Dilemmas of Jewish National Autonomism
8. Jewish-Ukrainian Political Relations in Imperial Russia, 1900–1917
9. Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Interwar Period
10. The Jewish Theme in 19th and early 20th century Ukrainian Literature
11. Soviet Ukrainian Translations of Yiddish Literature
12. Jewish and Ukrainian Women
13. Jewish-Ukrainian Relations in Western Ukraine During the Holocaust
14. Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Canada

Contributors are noted Israeli and North American scholars including Omeljan Pritsak, Jaroslaw Pelenski, George Grabowicz, Frank E. Sysyn, John-Paul Himka, Alexander Baran, Jonathan Frankel, Israel Bartal, Moshe Mishkinsky, Mattityahu Minc, Zvi Gitelman, and many others.

This is one of the volumes on Ukraine and its neighbours published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Other volumes deal with Polish-Ukrainian relations (Poland and Ukraine: Past and Present), Russian-Ukrainian relations (Ukraine and Russia in their Historical Encounter and Culture, Nation and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter [1600–1945]), and German-Ukrainian relations (German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective).