Organizers estimate that Uman was inundated with 7,000 believers from Israel, South Africa, the United States and Western Europe during Rosh Hashanah, but these boys found time for some nonreligious activities as well.

The Chosen City of Uman

For most of the year, Uman is a sleepy provincial city in western Ukraine, but as the Jewish New Year approaches, it comes alive with the spiritual fervor of thousands of Hasidic Jews paying homage at the grave of a rabbi who died 200 years ago. Genine Babakian witnesses the transformation of the city. Photographs by Jason Eskenazi, Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow

UMAN, Ukraine - The residents of this sleepy Ukrainian neighborhood may not be used to hearing round-the-clock religious chanting from the makeshift metal structure sandwiched among crumbling one-story houses and Soviet-era, high-rise flats, but this was not a typical day on Belinsky Street.

Under the plastic corrugated roofing set up to protect worshipers from the elements, thousands of Hasidic Jews were working themselves up into a pious frenzy at the grave of Rabbi ben Simhah Nachman - the tzaddik, or righteous man, who founded the Breslav Hasidic movement 200 years ago.

Uman was off-limits to foreigners - and to religious Jews in particular - during the Soviet era, but the travel ban was lifted in 1987. Since then, the number of Breslav Hasids who come here to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, has risen annually, and this year organizers estimate that the city of 100,000 was inundated with 7,000 believers from Israel, South Africa, the United States and Western Europe the weekend of Sept. 13-15.

Up and down Belinsky Street, men in dark suits and black hats burst into song and prayer as young boys chased their skullcaps against sudden gusts of wind. Israeli folk tunes blasted over the loudspeaker, and signs in Hebrew advertised everything from kosher meal tickets to the teachings of the Rabbi Nachman. Returning visitors greeted each other in Hebrew, English and French, happy to be reunited on the same continent once again.

Coming out of the kitchen set up in an abandoned barracks, Zohar Cohen, who came from Israel with his father, said, "This is a holy place, and it is very important to come here and cleanse your soul for the new year."

The vision of Jews praying openly on the same streets where their ancestors were decimated by pogroms and repressed by state-sponsored anti-Semitism remains startling.

"If you had told me 10 years ago this would happen, I would have said you were talking science fiction," said an Israeli Hasid making his 12th trip to Uman, who gave his name only as Nathan.

Nathan was one of a handful of believers who managed to catch a glimpse of the grave before it was officially permitted, but he was reluctant to talk about how he snuck in. Another visitor from England got to Uman via taxi by pretending he was deaf and dumb, but the KGB picked him up before he saw the grave and sent him back to Kiev.

Such persistence is legion among the believers. "One who managed even to pray for 10 minutes at the grave of Rabbi Nachman was considered to be a hero and a very lucky man," said Nathan.

Praying at the final resting spot of Rabbi Nachman, who founded Breslav Hasidicism 200 years ago.

On the streets of Uman, all the Hasids are men, from white-bearded grandfathers to boys ages 5 and 6 with long wisps of hair curling down from their ears according to Hasidic custom.

Just behind the rabbi's grave, an Israeli boy in a skullcap held out a wooden toy balalaika to two local children on a bicycle, and the three boys played together, oblivious to the voluminous chants from nearby worshipers. For their elders, however, interaction is more difficult.

As more and more religious Jews poured into the neighborhood, local residents hovered on the sidelines of the festivities, peeking out from behind corners with a curiosity that sometimes bordered on contempt. The vast differences of the two cultures occasionally led to conflict.

Hasidic men do not usually speak with strange women, let alone touch them, and women are not allowed to be near men when they are worshiping. A Ukrainian woman was Maced by one of the worshipers, locals said, seemingly for no reason. It may have been that she stepped too close to a spot off-limits to her gender, but the Macing caused considerable upset.

By the end of the week, however, tempers died down, and police bused in from neighboring towns to keep the peace had started to catch on to where women were allowed to step and not to step. They whispered words of warning to any female who was approaching taboo territory.

This type of conflict aside, the annual event also offers advantages for the locals. Those with entrepreneurial spirit find the pilgrimage to be profitable. Because of the drop in temperatures this year, for example, many incoming Hasidim scurried to purchase Russian fur hats at the nearby rynok. And those who happen to live close to the Nachman grave earn cash by renting out their apartments for the week, doubling up with relatives. Other temporary landlords who had nowhere else to go stayed behind to watch as these visitors took over their neighborhood.

"There are six children sleeping on my couch," said Tyotya Nina, an elderly woman in the neighborhood who rented out her two-room flat for the week while she set up an army cot in her apartment building's trash collecting room.

"It's cold down there, but I can't let these people live on the street. They are, after all, human beings - not dogs," said Tyotya Nina. "But why do they always have to have such bad weather for their holidays? It is the luck of the Jews."

Some of Uman's more enterprising residents take advantage of the influx of people to make money, for example by selling fur hats, a must in the cold fall.

BORN in 1772 in western Ukraine, Rabbi Nachman came from a long line of famous rabbis. His great-grandfather, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, founded the Hasidic movement in the middle of the 18th century, and Nachman, setting out for the town of Breslav, followed in his footsteps, continuing the Hasidic tradition of making Judaism more accessible to the uneducated masses through stories and parables. He shifted the emphasis from scholarly study of the Talmud to piety and prayer, delving into aspects of mysticism.

"The emphasis is not so much on scholarship but piety. It is not so much the letter of the law but the spirit of the law," said Samuel Heilman, a professor at City University of New York's Jewish Studies Center and author of "Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry."

Indeed, the entire Hasidic movement enjoyed great popularity among poor and uneducated Jews in Ukraine and Poland. Barred from owning land and devastated by pogroms, they found hope by following a leader who gave them guidelines in spiritual as well as daily matters. For them, this tzaddik was teacher, confessor and miracle worker wrapped into one.

Today, however, the Hasidim are outnumbered: Of the 14 million Jews in the world, Hasidim account for only about 100,000, Heilman said, and the most well-known branch is Chabad Lubavitch, which considered Rabbi Menachem Schneerson the messiah until his death in 1994.

While the foundation of their faith is identical, Hasidic Jews live by much stricter guidelines and are therefore more isolated from the rest of society than Reform, Conservative or even other Orthodox Jews. Relations between the various movements are sometimes hostile, even among the various Hasidic sects. Those who accept the teachings of one tzaddik are not likely to accept the variations in practice offered by another charismatic leader.

"In the Christian world, people killed each other because they crossed themselves with two fingers instead of three," said Heilman. "To an outsider, those [sorts of] distinctions might not amount to a hill of beans, but to a Hasid they might mean everything."

Often - as in Hasidic sects - the original tzaddik founded a spiritual dynasty, passing the title of grand rabbi down to his eldest son after his death. But in Rabbi Nachman's case, the title was never passed on to another leader. He was the first and the last tzaddik of the Breslav Hasidim, which explains why his followers are so drawn to Uman.

"You can't call yourself an authentic Breslav if you haven't made this pilgrimage," said Heilman. "The return to Uman is a kind of new life for these people, many of whom do not have roots in the Breslav Hasidim. This is an effort to establish roots and recreate Hasidic history for themselves."

Uman's Jewish roots, like most of Ukraine's, run deep. A Jewish community thrived here until 1788, when a Cossack garrison led by Ivan Gonta butchered nearly 20,000 Jews in one of the worst pogroms in Ukrainian history. By the end of the 19th century, the Jews had managed to strengthen their ranks, accounting for more than half the city's population.

But their numbers dwindled again in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution, when they were once again subject to pogroms and deportations. Those who did survive in Uman were exterminated by the Nazis during the German occupation in World War II. By the late 1960s, after the Soviet authorities had closed the town's last remaining synagogue, there were only 1,000 Jews left in Uman.

According to Nachman's followers, when the rabbi first came to Uman he expressed a desire to spend eternity with the victims of the pogrom, to help bring their souls closer to God. He was buried in 1811 in the city's Jewish cemetery, but for nearly half a century, after Stalin exiled most of Nachman's disciples to Siberia in the 1930s, his grave was neglected. This neglect nearly reached the point of destruction in 1979, when Soviet authorities were about to bulldoze the neighborhood to put up the apartment blocks that now surround Nachman's final resting place.

At the last minute, U.S. president Jimmy Carter intervened and asked the Soviets not to destroy the grave of Rabbi Nachman. Today the grave remains adjacent to a modest, one-story, yellow-tiled house that the Breslav Hasidim bought from the city this year for $170,000. The acquisition follows the Breslav community's creation of a synagogue on Belinsky Street, a few hundred meters from Nachman's grave.

IN EXCHANGE for these privileges, the Breslav Hasidim have had to funnel money into the local community. "When we first arrived, we donated some equipment to the local hospital and bought the mayor a fax machine. Now we pay for local services," Nathan said, referring to, among other things, beefed up security on Belinsky Street. "This is a multimillion-dollar event - we brought in five planes of food and equipment alone," said Nathan, adding that the Breslav community in Israel starts planning the Uman trip five months ahead. An advance team comes in early to prepare a kosher kitchen, one that meets the strictures of Jewish law, to set up the ritual bath and to arrange accommodations among the locals.

"It is advantageous for both sides," said Nathan. "They get money, and we get to do what we want."

Indeed, money often paves the way for the return of religious Judaism in Ukraine, where many famous rabbis are buried - but it is not always enough to dispel historic animosity toward Jews. Rabbi Berl Lazar, the chief rabbi of Moscow's Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim, said regional officials have been exceedingly helpful to Lubavitch groups returning to Ukraine. "They want visitors to come," he said. "They know they will eventually come and buy real estate." But Lazar says the welcome is a matter not just of money but of local pride. "If you walk into any of these villages and ask where the grave of the tzaddik is, they all know," he said. "For them it is an honor that someone came all the way from America just to see this. They feel important."

However, that does not mean the reaction among locals is exclusively positive. Lazar said there have been cases when local youths tried to threaten visitors and hit them up for protection money.

But in most cases, he said, these situations have been resolved with the help of the local mayor.

If there were any traces of resentment among locals in Uman, they disappeared with the setting sun. As the start of the evening service for the Jewish New Year grew near, even the locals started to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment. Many crept out from behind their lookout posts and moved closer to the worshipers.

Three men emerged from their mikvah, or ritual bath, and spontaneously erupted into prayer. Joining hands, they danced in a circle, singing, "Uman, Uman, Rosh Ha shanah," until a gust of wind interrupted the circle, sending them scurrying after their black fedoras.

"They were up all night singing outside my apartment," said Alex Shagonsky, a local resident. "I like their singing." He liked it so much that he joined in, the words bursting forth from his lips. "Uman, Uman, Rosh Hashanah," he sang.