On Friday Leonid Kuchma greeted Ukraine’s Jews on Rosh Hashanah, the 5763rd New Year, and the coming autumnal feasts. The greeting says that Ukraine heartily greets its Jewish community deeply involved in the spiritual, cultural, and religious revival of all local ethnic entities as well as its major contribution to the strengthening of Ukrainian independence, Interfax-Ukraine quotes the General Department of Informational Policies at the Presidential Administration as saying. Mr. Kuchma wished the Ukrainian Jews peace, joy, harmony, happiness, and prosperity. Followers of Hasidism, one of the branches of Judaism, make traditional pilgrimages to the Ukrainian city of Uman, Cherkasy oblast. Jews from Ukraine and other states arrive in this city to take part in the Rosh Hashanah festivities. Ukraine annually receives five to six thousand pilgrims. Hasidism is a religious mystical Judaic trend that emerged in the first half of the eighteenth century among the Jewish population of Volyn, Podillia, and Galicia. This movement was launched in opposition to official Judaism, particularly the Rabbinate. Hasidism features extreme mysticism, religious exaltation, and veneration of the zaddikim (the righteous or prophets). The Breslau (Wroclaw) movement was launched by Breslau-born Rabbi Nachman (1772-1810). Nachman ended his life’s journey in Uman. The Hasids could visit Zaddik Nachman’s grave in Uman until October 1917. In 1920 the then government decided to raze the cemetery and build apartment houses on that territory. So one of the rich Kyiv Jews bought the land plot with Nachman’s grave and had a small house built there. Mass pilgrimages to Nachman’s grave came to an end in the thirties, only to resume in 1988.
