Trip
to Uman 2003 Rosh Hashanah
Julian Ungar-Sargon MD
My trip was motivated by a number of factors. The
romance of travel, the exotic nature of Sofia park and
her possible relationship with Reb Nachman and my
learning of his work Lekutei Moharan since pesach this
year when Yehuda Leib my friend had placed "samech
daled" the 64th maamar of the Rebbe under my face
early in spring. This Torah seemed to resolve for me
the whole issue of the Tzimtzum what I call the
incarnation theory of the divine and the controversy
between the Alter Rebbe of Lubavitch and Reb Chayim of
Volozyn. Suddenly right before my eyes was a Torah that
demanded we hold the paradox of divine immanence and
transcendence, that our lives are in fact a constant
struggle between the two, and that the avodah, the
worship was to hold all paradox in tension.
My foray into the world of chassidut, prompted by
reading "lemaan achai veraiyai" a likut of Reb Shlomo
Carlebach's teachings printed a year after his death,
found me attracted to Izbitz-Radzyn and the world of
Polish Chassidut of Kotzk-Lublin. The demand there was
for the notion of birur, that self-analysis required
to know one's place in time and psycho-spiritual state
and refine the spirit. However I was constantly
frustrated by the dissonance between the brilliance of
the Rebbe's Torah, the insight and analysis of the
human soul, whether The Izbitser, the Radzyner, the
Beis Yaakov, or of late, Reb Zadok; and the absence of
a manual as to get there, how to do this avodah.
Whereas I had been studying Chabad literature (with
my friend Yitzchak Chakiris) on a weekly basis and
found it to be intellectually brilliant but very
heady, in Polish chassidut I found the heart of
chassidut with its demand on a broken heart as a
prerequisite for avodah. But after that it left me a
little in the cold, where were the steps to take, the
Rebbe did not expound. The trickle-down theory of
spirituality where fixing the head would eventually
inflame the heart, was turned around in "Chagat"
chassidut and the Kotzker's demand to fix the heart
first was paramount.
Yet the yesod and its addictions remained to be
addressed. I remember when I first came to Brooklyn to
do my "shomer shabbes" internship at Maimonides
Hospital in 1974 I met the group around Reb Gedaliah
Fleer who expounded Breslov chassidut and I spent many
a Shabbat at his home, but not very connected to the
chassidut itself. It was more a social group for me,
although I loved his Torah.
That had been my last contact with Breslov until this
Yehuda Leib shoved Lekutei Moharan in my face!
suddenly aware of the Rebbe's demand for fixing the
yesod and Tikkun Habris, he was telling me "do not
fool yourself regarding your spirituality!!! do not
think you can fix the brain (Chabad) or even the heart
(chagat) until you have fixed the yesod! ("Nahi"
Chassidut I call it...netzach, hod and yesod).
So I began to learn his Torah and that his chassidut
was unlike all others. It was NOT a club, there was NO
specific dress, times to meet, nusach of t'fillah,
rather he made only three demands:
1. learn daily, shulchan aruch
ugh! behavioral Judaism I had run from all those
years! "come back" he demanded! you need the 4 ells of
halacha!
2. Hitbodedut: meditation and direct conversation with
God: another difficult avodas for me: to actually
talk to God as a father, as if He really existed!!!!
crickey!
3. Come to visit the Rebbe once a year on Rosh
Hashana.
Well since learning this stuff weird things were
happening to me...I came back to the daf yomi! after
so many years of resentment (I do not distinguish
whether the resentment was directed to in-laws or the
daf itself!) here I was up at 5:00 a.m. trotting off
to shul to "do the daf" (actually the "killer-daf"
kodshim to be precise! what a place to join the
cycle!)
and Hitbodedut was beginning as well. Lekutyei
Halachot was amazing since it attempts to resolve the
divide between Halacha and the Rebbe’s Torah (nistar).
Then a group called "Simply Sfat" showed up in Chicago
and their music was so energized and different from
the usual shlock rock we hear these days. They came
from Sfat and invited me there on my next trip to
Israel.
So on my trip this summer I drag my parents up to the
Holy city at dawn to pray with the Breslovers on Rosh
Chodesh Elul in the Trisk shul in Sfat. We then have an
audience with Reb Koenig the son of Reb Gedaliah
Koenig who had written the sefer "Chayei nefesh" a
treatise that claimed there was no difference between
the spirituality of Reb Chayim Volozyn and Chassidut.
All he had to tell me beside giving a bracha and
inscribing his father's book for me, was "are you
going to Uman". the first time I had been challenged
with this question which I answered instinctively
"yes".
I had not planned it, I had not discussed it with my
family but it seemed as if whatever questions I had
about my life, the questions I could not discuss in
the presence of my parents and his own ill health that
morning, were answered in those few moments, "go to
Uman" was his implied demand.
So I make my plans and tell my folks and get on the
plane and land in Munich erev Rosh hashana.
I am incensed that there is 10 hour layover. What kind
of planning and travel agency is this! I call the
agency but get little response. Here I am in Munich.
stuck.
I hire a car and start to drive. I see Dachau on the
map and rather than go downtown I drive on the
autobahn for about 20 minutes and arrive in this neat
town with fotoshops and restaurants, cafe houses and
beer halls. Then suddenly a looming presence, barbed
wire heralding the entrance to another world, a
sinister reminder, a presence in this normality, of
another darker reality.
I walked through the entrance to the Dachau
concentration camp, the way Uncle Emil must have done
as a frightened young man in 1938, forever wounded by
his experience here. Peering through his window on
Cornwall Avenue in Finchley some 50 years later I
could never understand his paranoia. Dad even took him
to the local police station once to convince him that
the police were not looking for him, that he had
nothing to fear, to no avail.
I went straight to the archive hall and looked up his
name on the computer records. Fisher or Fischer, Emil,
born around 1910, deported from Vienna to Dachau
around 1938. 7 names appeared. None of them fit his
description. I leave frustrated.
walk to the memorials, a huge cross stands down the
central road, the Catholic monument to a suffering
Jesus. To its left the Protestant monument and to the
right the Jewish memorial.
Jesus, here in Dachau. a Carmelite nunnery behind it,
I wander in and cannot bear the incense and nuns
floating around it.
I go to the Jewish memorial a dark quartz stone
quarried into the ground a fitting darkness designed
by an Israeli sculptor.
I put on tallis and t'fillin there davening for memory
and Jewish history and the erasure of Jewish identity
even here in their darkest place and hour. 60 years
later all we have is the erasure of memory. I wander
to the video presentation hall where a BBC
documentary barely mentions Jews. "Man's inhumanity
to man; Jews and other victims, homosexuals gypsies
Communists Poles and priests. Not to belittle their
heroism and victim hood, I do not play the victim
stakes game. But the majority of victims were Jews and
the documentary seemed to downplay the ethnic
character of the victim rather playing its own
hermeneutic of humanity. In that Jews once again lose
identity and the victim is robbed after the grave, of
his and her identity.
I leave the hall to wander around the darkest area, a
beautifully wooded grove that could have been a
Buddhist meditation wood but was rather the site of
the worst crimes. A shooting gallery where humans
were shot along with a ravine of blood. Then the gas
chamber and the crematorium. So clean and sanitary
now, museum like. I stood in the gas chamber
remembering the stories of the clutching nails on the
walls with blood staining the white pasted walls from
the nails attempting to climb above other humans to
stay with the oxygen that was slowly rising as the gas
came up.
Beyond belief, I just could not absorb the immensity
of this small chamber and the numbers that passed
through here in their last breathing moments of life.
Too much to even comprehend.
I leave Dachau glad I came because Providence would
have me come here , before Rosh hashana (a usual
custom to visit the cemetery on this day) and also
prior to going to Uman. I travel downtown and go to
the Jewish community center where I meet the Chief
Rabbi and we exchange blessings for the New Year and
talk of YU where he graduated and pleasantries. I pass
quickly the famous town center with its glockenspiels
where Hitler held his early rallies. It is a beautiful
day and the town is bustling.
On to Kiev where I disembark into another dark world
of ex-communism. The Breslovers arriving fill the hall
and the taxi-drivers argue like in Ben Gurion but here
once is wary of the mafia groups and the absence of
alternatives.
We get stopped twice along the way to bribe local
Police who seem to know that 17000 visas have been
issued and lots of cash is coming their way.
Arriving in Uman in the dark night with little outside
lighting on the streets I do not know where to find
Rabbi Cramer who was to have found me accommodations.
One of the men of the Sfat group find me (Eliyahu the
guitarist) and (like in Sfat) goes out of his way to
show me to my quarters.
I try to sleep that night but others snore in the
room. They get up during the night for s'lichot etc.
Next day I try to get to the Tzion (the grave) but it
is too crowded. Everywhere hundreds of Israelis are
pouring through the town, bringing suitcases and
hustling and bustling like a small town in Northern
Israel.
That night all quitetens down as we go to shul for the
services.
I eat with the mostly American-Israeli group in a tent
in the courtyard of Chaim Kramer's house. He asks me
to tell them what brought me to Breslov. I give over
the Torah of Reb Akiva Eiger and the lapsed Kohen
Gadol and the Melech and their respective sacrifices
(Talmud Zevachim).
Next day I am suffering from severe constipation, I
had not slept since leaving Chicago wed and Thursday
night and was quite disoriented from all the hustle
and bustle. I simply could not squeeze my way back to
shul. I was upset that my towel had mysteriously
gotten lost when I was in the mikveh and I had to
basically dry off in my clothes.
I began to walk around the Jewish quarter wandering
into town. I saw Sofia park and so much wanted to
enter but there was an entrance fee so I could not
fulfill one of my goals in going to Uman, to experience
that place.
I met a David Seidenberg whose thesis I had already read before
meeting him, on eco-theology! we talked and he was
accepting it was a healing walk together. We
Breslovers jumping into the local reservoir but I was
worried by stories that the Nazis had, in 1941, taken
all the Jews out of Uman and had them drowned while
the local Ukrainians looked on and prevented them for
surfacing. I was worried that this had been the place.
Later an old Ukrainian told me that they were taken
further up stream about ten minutes outside of town,
and that there is a memorial there marking the site. I
was unable to do Tashlich in a ravine where Jews might
have died.
Later I meet a bunch of Satmar Chassidim. What are
they doing here!! Men like Nota Weiss an amazing Yid
with a heart the size of Europe and Asher Wieder a Yid
with a wry sense of humor. It seems that the Satmarer
Rebbe held Reb Nachman in high esteem and they do
learn Lekutei Moharan. These guys had their own
shteibl and I davened there at night. They invited me
for a meal. I joined them in the garden eating and
singing. They saved my soul.
Next day i rose at 3 am and made it to the Tzion. By
now I was at my lowest point. Wandering aimlessly and
not feeling much in my hunger, constipation and
sleeplessness.
Having met Rabbi Tauber, a Breslover who is the dayan
in L.A., who suffered greatly in his own personal
life, who told me to go to the grave and do a
hisbodedut. I went at 3 am and poured out my heart,
not actually praying to the Rebbe but more showing up
and speaking to him as if he were alive and I was in a
yechidus. "I have come to you and want to daven for my
family my friends, my patients and my enemies"
I said the tikkun and went back to bed.
Next morning I actually went to shul finally! Along
with 7000 men I davened musaf. It was truly amazing.
when quiet one could hear a pin drop like by the
shofar. the baal musaf had a sweetness. the shofar was
so shrill it pierced my heart. they brought in a
sephardi to do a "truah gedola" which sounded like a
baby crying. But most of all i was introduced into the
practice of clapping "as if" we were at a coronation!
It was cathartic for me. Actually clapping and
applauding the KING of KINGS!
That afternoon I had a taste of fresh cooked fish from
the Satmar group and davened mincha with them. I also
met some Breslovers from Monsey including the
songwriter or archivist for Reb Shlomo who lives in
Modiin. I later bought some CD's from him.
I left that night with Rabbi Tauber and we spoke the
whole way to Kiev and on the plane to Munich where we
parted company.
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As I try to make sense of this trip, three things come
to mind.
1. The suffering physically, with exhaustion, some
fear, frustration, food issues and constipation are
all part of the pilgrim's suffering which is expected
in other traditions. Like crawling on one's knees
around the mountain of Lasha before entering the
shrine. I had certainly felt that there "menious" as
the Rebbe had predicted for all hose wishing to come.
2.The glorious davening, the shofar and the clapping
will stay with me and inspire throughout the year
ahead. It was truly divine when men come together to
worship. Going to the Tzion was like none other, for
the Rebbe had made a commitment to those who would
come and I had arrived, joining the band of the few
who had made it. Maybe I too maybe called Al Haj
before MY name now!
3. The trip was for me to be entitled "From Dachau to
Uman: the erasure and celebration of Jewish memory"
since the moment Yom Tov was out there was an explosion
of dancing on the streets of Uman. And, after all, the
Rebbe had chosen it precisely because of the Jewish
martyrs there. So here we were celebrating Jewish
memory 200 years after his death and after their
martyrdom, otherwise this would have been confined to
the dustbin of Jewish history and a possible PhD
thesis. The Rebbe somehow foresaw the evil to befall
Europe and in his own way demands his Chassidim come
on the Holy Days to this site where he lies buries
along with those Jewish martyrs from the Gonta
massacre in a celebration of Jewish memory, maybe he
even knew of the Nazis who would repeat the same dance
of death in Uman. Maybe he saw that all of Europe
would one day drip with Jewish blood and that the
Yidden of Eretz Yisrael, Yemenites, sefardim, drug
addicts, university professors would all one day
leave the Holy Land to come to this sacred spot equal
in holiness to the kedusha of Eretz Yisrael, to dance
and fix the death and blood and evil and the silence
of Dachau.
So I returned home and completed the chodesh and the
yomim tovim a journey which began with Rosh Chodesh
Elul in Sfat and ended Hoshana rabba.
Who knows the future. I feel I have been on a roller
coaster ride. May Hashem grant refuah to all my
patients and a healing to my family and self.
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