Pilgrimage to Uman
Almost 200 years after Rebbe Nachman’s death, his followers flock to a once-closed Soviet town to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
by Nadine Epstein
I’m on a bus to Uman, the provincial Ukrainian town where the Breslover Rebbe Nachman chose to be buried. I am the only passenger not transfixed by the blaring Ukrainian sitcom flitting across the television screen in the front. Rather I am plastered against the window, compulsively humming tunes from Fiddler on the Roof, soaking in the fields, the chestnut trees and villages mile after mile. Ukraine, the birthplace of my four grandparents, is a land I have often imagined. We’re racing along a new highway through the south central part of the country, traversing the cradle of Hasidism, the movement that sprang forth in various garbs to take back Judaism from overly cerebral rabbis...
