Despite The Financial Crisis, Breslov Hasidim Still Flock To Rabbi Nachman's Grave In Uman

"I have only one dollar left and I have to use it for eating and sleeping. The friend who gave it to me also gave me a blessing that I would have full board with this dollar, with God's help," he says. 

Despite financial troubles, Breslav Hasids still flocking to Uman
By Yair Ettinger • Haaretz

Yair Ben-Walid managed to keep up his good spirits, considering the situation ahead of him. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and the schedule board in the departure hall left no room for doubt - the  flight that was due to take him, his small son and his friend to Uman in the Ukraine would leave on time, in an hour. Father and son had already put their bags onto a cart, together with a beat-up guitar covered with stickers reading "Na Nah Nahma Nahman from Bratslav," but in order to get the two tickets he had booked in advance, he still had to find $600. 

"Guys, perhaps you can help us," he addressed passersby. "If not, the tickets stay here and so do we." 

This cheerful man who belongs to the Bratslav branch of Hasidism had arrived at the airport around noon from Beit Shemesh and succeeded in getting no less than $400 from wellwishers, most of them people also heading for Uman. But now, an hour before the flight, it seemed as if he had hit bottom, a place from which only Rabbi Nahman could pull him out, and even then with difficulty. 

Ben-Walid's friend, Moshe Levy, who had already paid for his ticket, egged on the passersby. "Help him, for Heaven's sake, Jews," he pleaded. 

The passengers on their charter flight to Chisinau had already disappeared inside the Duty Free shops but Ben-Walid and Levy weren't stressed. 

They took a break for a smoke and Levy calmed him down: "There is going to be a big miracle here." 

As happens every year, an exodus is leaving Israel for "the biggest gathering of Rosh Hashana," in Uman, Ukraine. There, at the end of Pushkina Street, one can find Rabbi Nahman's grave, which attracts tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims from Israel and the rest of the world - especially come the Jewish New Year, in keeping with the legacy of the great rabbi and teacher who died 199 years ago. 

For the past 20 years, this migration has taken place in a more or less orderly fashion and the numbers have been growing from year to year. This time, however, experts are saying the economic crisis has changed things up. 

One effect is the price of airline tickets, which have risen in past years. If some 20,000 travelers took off for Uman in past years, this year the number stands at about 16,000 or perhaps a mere 12,000, forcing the airlines to begin bringing the prices down in the past few days. A ticket that cost $1,200 two weeks ago is now being sold for $850, or even less. 

Travel agents say the effect can be felt. According to Yitzhak Moshe Gabbai, the director of Derekh Tsadikim, one of the largest ultra-Orthodox travel agencies, "So far it seems to have been going down although there has been a huge surge in interest in the past two days." 

Contrary to past years when an American Jew by the name of Moshe Singer donated thousands of free tickets, this year there have been no donations of the sort. But Gabbai says that at the beginning of the week, another Jewish philanthropist - who is remaining anonymous - bought 650 discounted tickets, all snapped up within two days. 

Gabbai says that "there is a chance we will reach 17,500 travelers from Israel which is the same as in all recent years." 

Like Ben-Walid, at least 10 other potential passengers could be seen Tuesday wandering about the airport requesting "charity for a trip to our rabbi," from other passengers. 

Ben-Walid himself has already gone to Uman 12 times and this is not the first time he has used his powers of persuasion to cover the cost. 

Tuesday people who did not want to beg at the airport began distributing pamphlets with words of Torah in return for money and one of them even sat down in the middle of the airport and played his guitar in the hope of earning a few shekels. Levy said he would have given them something but he himself was traveling with only one bag and one dollar in his pocket and did not know where he would sleep there or what he would eat. 

"I have only one dollar left and I have to use it for eating and sleeping. The friend who gave it to me also gave me a blessing that I would have full board with this dollar, with God's help," he says. 

A look at the hundreds of passengers, including those who had put together every agora to buy the expensive tickets, did not reveal any signs of depression. At one end of the line, a group of believers was practicing the most popular song heard on Pushkina Street - "Uman! Uman! Rosh Hashanah!" while at the other end, another group sang "How lucky we are, how goodly is our part." 

The two groups joined forces and began dancing together until a policeman came up to them and told them to calm down. "Are you happy? Good, but that's enough," he said. "There are tourists here." 

Our rabbi will help us 

Another cheerful group was led by the deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh, Meir Balaish, formerly of the Likud, who set up an independent secular faction and joined a coalition headed by Shas. 

"Where are you going?" the security guard asked. Balaish answered without hesitation: "To our rabbi." Wearing a skullcap and long fringes, Balaish said his strength was growing and that he now headed a group of 70 people. 

All this time, Ben-Walid was continuing his search for donations. He separated from Levy, who went to his flight. 

If Ben-Walid and son did not get enough money, the son would remain here and he had even arranged a ride home for him. The boy burst into tears at the news but the father remained unperturbed. 

"He has been longing for this trip for half a year already but let him cry to the Almighty, that is a real prayer. A person cries to God to save him and there is no better lesson than that," he explained. 

It was already 5:10 P.M. and their flight was about to leave, but Ben-Walid and the child had not yet even gone through security. 

At that very moment, Ben-Walid's expectations of a great miracle came half-true. An agent from the Kanfei Nesharim travel agency arrived with the news that he would give him and his son two one-way tickets to Chisinau and that they could get two tickets back if they paid in the Ukraine. 

In spite of everything, a small miracle. Ben-Walid was satisfied. He would have a week to collect the sum on Pushkina Street and in addition, "it will be easier there - our rabbi will help us." 

Comments

[paul]

Maybe this idiot should get a job, then he would be able to pay for his own tickets. Typical black hat types always trying to cry and beg. Disgusting!!!!!!!

[MalachHamovies]

One thing that judaism/chassidim (and all the other religions) was missing was not having a "woodstock/grateful dead" event.

Well going to Uman has turned into a "chassidic woodstock".

And that's one main reason (besides for R' Nachamans "promise" that he'll pull you out of your peyos from gehenom and that he can do incredibile stuff for your neshana if you come to him for rosh hashana) why it's so attractive for all of these men to go there.

A breslover fellow told me years ago that another chassid went over to one of the eldery breslover chassidim and asked him why do you guys follow a dead rebbe ? The elderly chassidm answerd him - Better to follow a dead rebbe who is alive then a living rebbe who is dead...

[MalachHamovies]

Typical black hat types always trying to cry and beg.

Paul,

Breslovers who have no money to go to uman, but still go after raising money are not typical black hat types. Trust me.

[Rob Wisler]

It's unbelievable that after Torah tells us the life of Moses, that he was a normal man with no "supernatural powers", that he made mistakes, that he stuttered, and that he died a normal death, that these "chassid'im" along with Lubavitch etc can make their "rebbe" into a supernatural being with greater powers than even Moses. What an idolatrous and evil "religion" these deluded ignoramouses follow!

[effie]

Pretty irresponsible to go to a foreign country with no money with your child in tow. If the dummy gave up cigarettes who could have come up with the airfare easily.

I wonder how much the locals make off these freeloaders. And, I'm surprised that they would allow him into another country without a return ticket.

[maven]

Mr Wisler: why "evil"? What horrible things did R. Nachman call for? If anything, frankly, he was pretty progressive in much of this thought. Or is this another reflexive post- Religious Jews= evil?

[harold]

An inspirational story; like a salmon swimming upstream to get to their spawning ground. However, better financial planning would have been in order - especially since they had 6 months to gather funds. However it is not in my place to ascertain their financial position.

I just love the Nachman N'Uman song. It is the ringer that I have assigned when my youngest daughter calls and is the one that she uses for all her ringtones. - No I am not a Breslover. It is just a loud lively tune and has personal meaning to me and my daughter.

[Rob Wisler]

Maven,
I don't know what Nachman of Breslov taught, my comment was simply directed towards the cultish devotion that these followers have towards their rebbes. To attribute super-human legendary powers to these men shows incredible disrespect for God's Ta'nach and the REAL sages of our people (Moses, the prophets etc). The Ta'nach ALWAYS presented these sages and their flaws in an honest and sober manner. These "pilgrameges" to either Schneerson's grave in Queens or Nachman of Breslov's grave in the Ukraine smacks of the fact that their followers worship these flawed men and not God and His Holy Torah.

The fact that men like the false-messiah Schneerson encouraged his followers to "believe in him" is inherently evil. As for Nachman of Breslov, I don't know enough about him to comment.

[ah-pee-chorus]

woodstock was filled with many 'breastlover' chassidim.

[ah-pee-chorus]

this guy should write a travel book. "ukraine on 15 cents a day".

[Ben]

Harold, do you know the origins of the most famous Breslover tune? It is a modern Romanian pop song with pretty indecent words. What is so spiritual about this tune that makes it proper to put a ring on your and your daughter's cells?

[A. Nuran]

Ben, you can make anything significant and spiritual with the right attitude. The sweaty business of passing on one's genes can be a transcendent soul-transforming experience. Digging ditches or sitting and staring at a wall can profound religious disciplines if they are done with the right intention and in the proper manner.

So can taking a trip to recite words next to a grave.

That said, Jews have a reputation for being hard-headed as well as soft-hearted. There's no sense in putting oneself at unnecessary risk on a long and possibly dangerous journey.

[Neo-Conservaguy]

How they can journey to the Ukraine to purchase food, shelter, and trinkets from the children of the people that gleefully turned Jews over to the Nazis or took care of business themselves will always puzzle me.

[Rob Wisler]

Remember that the Ukranians themselves went through a holocaust during the 1930's when Stalin purged the Kulaks (landed peasants). Millions died. Unfortunately and shamefully for our people, the majority of the aparchiks who ordered massacres and exiles to concentration camps of innocent Ukranians were Jewish.

A quote from Slezkine's opus "The Jewish Century":

Sometimes his juxtapositions between his descriptions of Jewish involvement in the horror of the early Soviet period and the life styles of the Jewish elite seem deliberately jarring. Lev Kopelev, a Jewish writer who witnessed and rationalized the Ukrainian famine in which millions died horrible deaths of starvation and disease as an “historical necessity” is quoted saying “You mustn’t give in to debilitating pity. We are the agents of historical necessity. We are fulfilling our revolutionary duty.”

And you wonder why the Ukranians were anti-Semitic and willing participants of persecuting and killing Jews under the Nazis? Remember that the Ukranian Holocaust and the other mass murders of the 20th and 21st centuries were JUST AS BAD OR WORSE than the Jewish one. Quit your self-centeredness and mourn those victims too.

[A. Nuran]

Why are so many Charedi ethnic costumes imitations of those worn by Jew-hating Slavic aristocrats? Why do Christians revere an instrument of torture? People are strange.

[alternative childcare]

Herr Wisler, again with this?

Shmarya, I think this Nazi needs to be banned. How many times will he post his hate piece before he is banned? It has been at least 4 times that he makes this statement.

[Frumish]

Nachman mainly had a psych problem with his own obssessive masturbation. Somehow his followers learn this only when they are adults. Why do grown men pray to nutcases with all kinda delusions? Oh wait thats what a prophet it. Ok now I understand. Moishe Rabbenu enjoyed listening to fire that could talk and that makes sense cuz the scroll says so.

[dr. dave]

Wisler is a revisionist liar. The Ukranian's died because of STALIN's agricultural policies

Kopelev was an athiest communist party member.

Now go to hell you antisemite!!!

[Ben]

Dr.Dave I agree with your opinion on Wisler, but in best tradition of the Jewish people I am willing to give him benefit of a doubt. It is most likely that he is an anti-Semitic SOB, but it is also possible that he is just an innocent person who happened to be born with extremely limited mental abilities. So who is Mr.Wisler- an evil SOB or an innocent idiot? Who knows.

[alternative childcare]

Ben: Wisler has posted this same thing multiple times, so even if he's a revisionist because he's mentally defective, he should be removed from access to this comments session.

[Shmarya]

Rob Wisler –

I>Remember that the Ukranian Holocaust and the other mass murders of the 20th and 21st centuries were JUST AS BAD OR WORSE than the Jewish one. Quit your self-centeredness and mourn those victims too.

I see people making a case for "just as bad," although I would be uncomfortable in this for several reasons.

But "worse"?

That's a very hard case to make, because it clearly is not true.

Dr. Dave –

Stalin's "agricultural policies" were meant to kill Ukrainians.

In general, Ukrainians in 1939 didn't need much urging to be antisemitic.

Part of that is their association of Jews with communism.

But an equal or larger part goes back to Jews serving as tax collectors for non-Jewish nobility, and as money-lenders because Christians were forbidden by Church law to lend money on interest.

And an even larger part goes back to Church teachings about Jews and the killing of Jesus.

[alternative childcare]

Shmarya, your response is insufficient. "The Jews" did not conspire with Stalin to kill Ukrainians, even if individual Jews were Communists (in the specific case of Kopelov, he actually became a famed anticommunist dissident), whereas Nazi policy was to kill Jews qua Jews. There's not even a semblance of an equation, other than for revisionists and haters like Wisler.

(Keeping historical perpective, who could blame educated individuals at the time for leaning leftward, after enduring the "benevolence" of the Czar, the Cossacks, and the previous millennium of European genocidal policy? )

Anyway, this is not a subject for debate, and you aren't likely to "convince" him. You should not be allowing revisionists and nazi sympathizers access to your comments site. He has posted this multiple times (at least 4 to my count), and it is certainly not relevant to a discussion of R. Nachman, no matter what one's opinions are on chassidism.

[effie]

Nachman mainly had a psych problem with his own obssessive masturbation. Somehow his followers learn this only when they are adults. Posted by: Frumish | September 16, 2009 at 03:43 PM

I just finished watching season one of Sons of Anarchy about an outlaw motorcycle club, much like the Breslovers.

In it, there is a character named Chuck Marstein, who has an identical problem as Nachman, i.e., obsessive masturabation. In the end, the Sons of Anarchy, used duck tape on him. Did they try duck tape on Nachman?

[harold]

What is so spiritual about this tune that makes it proper to put a ring on your and your daughter's cells?

Ben, don't read too much into this. You know in life one makes a connection with a song and an event. Sort of like a song that was playing when you proposed to your wife and ever since then the hearing of that song brings back that memory. It was the same thing with me. The song "Nachman N'Uman" was playing and sung at a very special time in my daughter and my life. Also it makes a hell of a ringtone.

[steve]

I just love the Nachman N'Uman song

The tune is very similar to the Club Med song "Hands Up".

[steve]

I take that back, it's actually a ripoff of a famous Roumanian song called "Numa Numa". It does however have a similar beat to "Hands Up".

[maven]

Effie: Frumish is being funny, no need to take his accusation as fact. That obsession doesn't appear in the academic biographies, in fact, as a youth he was apparently quite tortured with regards to spiritual practice (interestingly, though, later in life he sought out the company of educated "maskilim" types)
For the record, its "duct" tape they used.

[effie]

Yes, maven, and the Breslovers are really like an outlaw motorcycle gang. Stop being such a drip or I'll be forced to duck tape your hands so you can't use your computer.

[maven]

Effie: I was talking about R. Nachman, but as far as current Breslovers, there actually are rival biker gangs stirring up a lot of shuckling here, there are the "Na Na Davidsons" and the "Likutei MoHarley" and their dance offs can get ugly.

[steve]

A better theme song would be a takeoff of Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye" which would become "Na Nach Nachman M'Uman". Where's YL when you need him?

[Isa]

Someone who went through the 'camps' said this of his experience...

The Germans were not bad it was just because of hitler

However the Ukrainians [guards] were born bad

[A. Nuran]

Isa, in Romania and Ukraine the Nazis had to protect Jews from the locals so they could be disposed of on schedule and by the numbers. The brutes in those countries were all for slaughtering the Jews on their own.

[effie]

maven: I understood what you were referring to. Go cluck at someone else.

[maven]

effie, I guess you don't appreciate when someone is joking around. Personally, I liked my joke about the nachman bikers, I'll have to use it somewhere where it will be appreciated :(

[maven]

or did I just prove that i missed your joke? I suppose its all water off a duck's back...

[R]

So while he spent all his money (not money he earned by the way, money he schnorred) where was his wife with i assume all his other kids? Did she have food to eat?
I think it's disgusting they can beg for money and get thousands just for a trip to Uman. If you want to go, you earn it and spend it after you have made sure your family has enough to eat and clothes to wear. You do not go about acting like you need charity, as if your life depends on it and spend it on a ticket to Ukraine.
They talk about the poor people in Israel who have no food on their plates. Maybe they need to go to the airport and beg and say they need to get to Uman.

[Chayim]

I was in Uman 3 times. Its very eerie. First time there my life was saved as some maniac with a gun was aiming to kill me but instead killed his pregnant girlfriend and himself with the gun. On my return trip I got delayed in England overnight and that speared my life.Upon arrival to Brooklyn my answering machine was full of messages from press and police. I called them back to find out what they wanted and they told me how lucky I was.There is a very special energy in Uman on Rosh hashona.

[viagra online]

I'm very pessimistic about this financial crisis.