JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Ukrainian nationalists destroyed a tent city erected by Hasidic Jews in Uman, ahead of the annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage. “On Shabbat, when they knew we wouldn’t be able to respond or activate the communication device, they simply knocked down the fence, pushed the light poles and security cameras and caused damage estimated at half a…
The grave of a daughter of the Breslover movement’s founder, Rabbi Nachman, was set on fire and daubed with a swastika. The 1831 grave in the central-Ukraine city of Kremenchuk was set ablaze sometime after the completion last month of its renovation by the Oholei Tzadikim association, which works to restore Jewish burial sites throughout…
A Dutch municipality ordered the eviction of 270 Jews from a camping site that is overcrowded with followers of the fugitive rabbi Eliezer Berland. The order was issued Friday by the island municipality of Texel in the country’s north in connection with the arrival of 300 Orthodox Jews from the Breslov Hassidic sect ahead of…
The Jewish community of Uman paid the city approximately $15,000 in fines for erecting an unlicensed tent city for holiday pilgrims. The payment is part of a compromise reached last week between city officials, the Rabbi Nachman International Charitable Foundation and quality-of-government activists who lobbied to have the tent city dismantled, Rabbi Shimon Buskila of…
A Ukrainian health official warned that Jewish pilgrims converging in Uman may bring with them the Ebola virus and other epidemics. Larissa Kachanova, who heads the local branch of the Ukrainian government’s Sanitary and Epidemiological Management Center, issued the warning Thursday ahead of the arrival of approximately 30,000 Jews expected to spend Rosh Hashana in…
Thousands of Jewish pilgrims have begun leaving Uman, Ukraine, where their week-long stay resulted in a fire, power shortages, a sewage flood and several arrests. One of the incidents involved three Israeli police officers who were sent to Uman to help police the estimated 26,000 Jewish pilgrims who congregate every year, ahead of the Jewish…
A Ukrainian ultranationalist movement is organizing a march in Uman against the presence of Jewish pilgrims there, Ukrainian media reported. “The Hasidim colonize Uman, with help from authorities,” Yuri Botnar of the Svoboda party was quoted as telling the news site timeua.com on Monday. Botnar, the local representative of Svoboda in Uman, said he was…
The recent placing of a crucifix near the Uman grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was an act of “clear provocation,” Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, chief rabbi of Ukraine, said. “Ukraine is not a Jewish country and Ukrainian Jews respect Christian symbols like crosses,” Bleich told the Jewish Ukrainian news site Еvreiskiy.kiev.ua. “However, the cross raised…
