Visiting Reb Nachman's Grave in Uman

First published in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

This is the story of how over a decade ago, my teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi sent me to the grave of Reb Nachman of Breslov in Uman to ask a question of Reb Nachman's soul. Now, visiting dead rebbes was not the sort of work I had in mind at that phase of my life. Although I was already past the "fabrente" feminist phase of my development, I was very busy with creating vehicles for women's inclusion in Jewish leadership and researching herstory.

Reb Zalman seemed to me to be very much about bringing the mystical side of hassidism to liberal Jews. The angel on one shoulder told me his request was: "New age nonsense. Say no." and the other said: "He's the most incredible teacher you've ever had, how could it hurt to do what he asks?"

When one's teacher, who gives so selflessly and constantly, asks such a small favor, and I was going to the Ukraine to teach for Project Kesher anyway, how could one say no? At the time I was working with Reb Zalman to prepare several of his manuscripts for publication. One, "Torah of the Void", was his exquisite rendition by Reb Zalman of a work by Reb Nachman. With his encouragement, I tucked a copy of the manuscript into my suitcase for study on the long plane-ride to Kiev, and casually inquired: "Is there any special preparation for visiting a rebbe's grave?"

This is the essence of what I recall his response to be. "Since you ask, actually yes," he replied. "There are ten psalms selected by Reb Nachman for petitioners at his grave. Nachman was broygus  (Yiddish for angry) with the soul-damage being done by the severe attitude of Reb Israel Salanter's Mussar movement toward sexual aveyrot (miss-steps, slips, errors.) He created this recipe of ten psalms combined with pilgrimage to his grave as a ritual for freeing one from the torment of their het (sin, error). It seems to work for other concerns as well. One also goes to mikveh (ritual bath or river or ocean for a consciousness dip with a blessing) before visiting  the grave and takes off one's shoes before approaching it."

Reb Zalman later told me he sent me on this mission in part because of his earlier experiences in ChaBaD where rebbes send acolytes on missions that would influence their spiritual development.

*****************

In the Ukraine, however, there was the problem of going to a mikveh, the ice being several feet deep in the rivers and lakes. Truth to be told I'd never even been to a traditional mikveh before. Word of mouth spread among the women seminar participants and rumor came forth of a actual mikveh being maintained by a Hassidic rabbi in the town of Berdichev.

So off we ventured in search of the mikveh. I will admit that I did not expect my orthodox colleagues to be receptive to me as a woman rabbi. To my astonishment, this rabbi was most welcoming. He gave me a tour of his modern, stunningly tiled mikveh and offered its regular use as a professional courtesy. We were soon to learn that hot water, at that time, was difficult to come by in such regions on a regular basis and that the mikveh and its baths afforded a steady source of income for the shul beside it.

Our pilgrimage was about to unfold. A translator, driver and car (with no fewer than four retreaded tires in the trunk and on the roof) were secured. We set out the next day to Uman, the site of Reb Nachman's grave.

It was to be at least a four hour drive, conditions permitting. I began to study the ten psalms of Reb Nachman's Tikkun, balancing a tiny Hebrew dictionary and the text, whispering out loud to myself. My translator, Ukrainian Orthodox and not Jewish, asked what I was doing. A brilliant, loving, and classically Ukrainian beauty- - blond hair, blue eyes, red cheeks--she listened avidly as I told her about the history of Reb Nachman's tikkun and she gasped:  "I must do it too, as I have much to do of his thing you teach: t'shu--ah." (teshuvah)

Our intent was translated to the driver, who immediately indicated his shared culpability in an all-too human life and suddenly confessed his carefully hidden Jewishness. He asked for a traslation of the psalms, so my translator turned my English my halting interpretation of the Hebrew into Russian so that we could all be in this together. Then, each of them began confessing their sexual aveirot (errors, sins) in a profusion of Ukrainian, Russsian, Yiddish, and English.

We continued doing the tikkun while driving on the treacherous icy pot-holed roadways; each of us alternating bursting into tears and prayer and sometimes laughter.

*******************

Now a particularly wonderful thing had happened the week before. Our Project Kesher mother-daughter teaching retreat was being held at a sanatorium in Nemirov. Also sharing this curious site, composed of dormitory and hospital-like buildings surrounding a spring with water reputed to have healing qualities, were several hundred children who had been damaged almost a decade before at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melt-down. Sanatorium rules forbade us to go near them. The sanatorium staff had taken down all the mirrors in public areas because of the children's often horrendous appearance (open oozing sores, etc.)

For the closing day of our retreat, I had brought bags of colored feathers for craft projects (light weight, easy to transport). But when I went to get them, they were gone! I wandered the grounds, figuring that just like in one of the traditional Jewish tales, if the feather bags were opened, a trail of feathers would lead me to the full supply.

In the dining room, I found my feathers. The girls from my class had them and were sprinkling them gaily into the hair of the children from Chernobyl who had gathered for dinner. Horrified, the staff were watching as the girls opened the mirrors of their powder compacts and showed the children their festive reflections. Our girls told the children to "look at how beautiful you are" and the children's smiles were radiant, for the first time that week they laughed and clowned. Even so, the staff turned on me in insistent Russian to make the girls stop. One of our girls saw me and ran out, returning with our translator.

The translator explained: "These girls", they say:  "Look, Reb Goldie! We made our first mitzvah. This is our way of thanking you for teaching us about how the midwives rebelled against Pharaoh. So we have rebelled against the pharaoh of the sanatorium." And I burst into tears of joy.

**********************

Why did I tell you this story? Because once in Uman we couldn't seem to find the grave of Reb Nachman! I'd read stories in the NY Times with photos of the huge numbers of hassidim who camped there at High Holiday time on prayerful pilgrimage. It seemed winter was not their season. Locals sent us to potential locations here and there, but to no avail.

Finally, as the even greater late afternoon chill was setting in, the silhouette of a Hassid appeared on the horizon with a similar, smaller form beside him. Hastening forward, I asked in Yiddish if he would show us the way to the grave of Reb Nachman. He and his teenage son were beautiful to behold - both with amazing, bright red flowing beards and hair, gentle  warm eyes. He answered in Russian: "Are you the gentsheneh raveen?" Which in Russian means--"Are you the woman rabbi?" I responded that I was only a pintele yid (little spark of a Jew) on a pilgrimage, and would he please help me. "We have heard of the great healing you did with the children of Chernobyl." he said. "Please let me escort you."

Of course, I'd done nothing, it was children performing a mitzvah. Somehow this moment clarified for me the potential origins of stories of magical healing that attended the lives of the early rebbes.

He didn't care to take in my protestations of innocence as we trailed him and his son to Reb Nachman's grave. He brought us to an secular Ukrainian woman's apartment where the grave was said to be around back. We gave her the fee he indicated was proper, vehemently refusing anything for himself.

She wished us well, and around the back we found an outdoor sort of prayer space, with curtained mechitzah  He pulled the curtain aside, telling us he would stand guard outside the gate and to stay as long as we would want. A coffin-like box covered in royal blue velvet was attached to the back of her house. The graveyard having been destroyed to hold the housing development, this was the approximation of location of the his grave the Hassidim had decided upon.

We realized it would have been dangerous to remove our shoes in the acute cold. I leaned forward to touch the velvet [see picture] and fell into a state of consciousness characterized by feeling among the stars in the heavens, a comfortable falling into blackness and light - perhaps induced by my  studies of the Reb Zalman's Reb Nachman manuscript "Torah of the Void." The prayer of my heart was simply Reb Zalman's request. The answer did arise.

After what I am told was a very lengthy period of time, during which those with me borrowed blankets from the woman in the house to cover us up, I heard a voice of a young man asking, "Nu, nothing  for yourself?" (Later I learned that Reb Nachman died young.)

This was a wrenching phase of my life following divorce and several interim relationships. An acute loneliness rose up in my heart and recalling Reb Zalman's impending late-life marriage to a wonderful woman, I said to the young man, who I took to be Reb Nachman, "Like you I feel called, but the price feels too high. I need a life companion with whom I can sustain a relationship, can you help me?"

The voice then asked, "How about some details?" And an precise description list poured out from me like a prayer. It was only a few weeks after returning to America that the wonderful man to whom I am now married emerged from the fabric of life, identical to my list. Perhaps all because Reb Zalman send me on shlichut. Thank you Reb Zalman!