Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Bloody Pig’s Head Carved With Swastika Dumped at Ukraine Pilgrimage Synagogue

– Unknown individuals broke into a synagogue in the Ukrainian city of Uman, sprayed red paint on the walls and left behind a pig’s head with a swastika carved into its forehead.

The attack occurred on Tuesday night, DS News reported. The synagogue is part of the Ohel complex, built near the gravesite of the Breslover movement’s founder, Rabbi Nachman.

Since the fall of communism, Uman has seen the arrival of thousands of pilgrims on the Jewish New Year who come to visit the gravesite of the 18th-century luminary.

The pilgrimage often has created friction between the predominantly Israeli new arrivals and locals, many of whom resent the cordoning off by police of neighborhoods for the pilgrims.

Brawls between locals and pilgrims are common. In recent years, incidents that occurred at Uman included the placing of broken glass on the bank of a river where pilgrims take ritual baths; the erection of crosses near that place and protests where nationalists shouted “Hasids out of Uman.”

The Forward is free to read but not free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make your Passover gift today!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.