Uman - Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year)

Every Rosh Hashana, (the Jewish new Year) there is a major pilgrimage by tens of thousands of Hasidim (devout orthodox Jews) from around the world to the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, located on the site of the Jewish cemetery in the small town of Uman in the Ukraine. Rebbe Nachman spent the last five months of his life in Uman, and specifically requested to be buried here. As believed by his followers, before his death he solemnly promised to intercede on behalf of anyone who would come to pray on his grave on the Jewish new Year, "be he the worst of sinners”. The pilgrimage dates back to 1811, shortly after the Rebbe's death and attracted hundreds of Hasidim from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. Annual pilgrimages continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 sealed the border between Russia and Poland. A handful of Soviet Hasidim continued to make the pilgrimage clandestinely; some were discovered by the KGB and exiled to Siberia, where they died. Pilgrimages ceased during World War II and resumed on a drastically smaller scale in 1948. From the 1960s until the fall of Communism in 1989, several hundred American and Israeli Hasidim made their way to Uman, both legally and illegally, to pray at the grave of Rebbe Nachman. In 1988, the Soviets allowed 250 devotees to visit the Rebbe's grave for Rosh Hashana; the following year, over 1,000 Hasidim gathered in Uman. The numbers steadily increasing year by year. In 2014, attendance reached 35,000 devotees.