Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
Every autumn, the small Ukrainian city of Uman swells, transformed by the arrival of tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews. They come from Israel, from the United Kingdom, from the United States, from all corners of the globe, drawn to the grave of a spiritual master, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It is a vibrant, sometimes chaotic, spectacle of faith. Yet this annual pilgrimage, for all its intensity, is merely the most visible tremor from a profound spiritual upheaval that began in these same lands nearly three hundred years ago.
Hasidism, a mystical revival movement that reshaped Judaism, was not imported to Ukraine; it grew from its very soil. Born in the 18th century, it offered a new, fervent path to the divine that challenged the established religious order. Its geography is etched across the landscape of western and central Ukraine, in towns like Medzhybizh, Sadahora, and Belz. Although the Holocaust tore the heart out of these communities, the memory remained. Now, in a sovereign Ukraine, some of these old centres are stirring back to life, reminders of a spiritual cartography that was never entirely erased.
The Spark in the Carpathians
The story of Hasidism begins with one man: Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov, the “Master of the Good Name.” Active in the regions of Podolia and the Carpathian Mountains from roughly 1700 to 1760, he was a figure of immense charisma and mystique. In his youth, he immersed himself in the study of both the Talmud and the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah. He was known as a healer, a maker of amulets, and a man who spent long periods in solitary contemplation in the woods. Legend places him in deep meditation in the Carpathian wilderness, finding communion with God not in a crowded study hall, but in the raw, untamed beauty of nature.
The Baal Shem Tov’s innovation was not a new set of laws, but a radical shift in spiritual emphasis. He taught that the goal of a religious life was devekut, a constant, cleaving attachment to God. But unlike the asceticism that often marked the path of mystics, he proposed something revolutionary: this divine connection could be found in the most mundane aspects of existence. Work, food, and marital relations, he argued, could be as potent a form of prayer as any liturgical text, provided they were undertaken with the right intention. This democratic approach to divinity was electrifying. It suggested that a person’s scholarly brilliance or lineage was less important than the sincerity of their heart.
He eventually settled in the Podolian town of Medzhybizh, where a community gathered around him, drawn to his accessible spirituality. Today, his grave there is a place of pilgrimage, as is a spot in the Cheremosh River near Vyzhnytsia, held by tradition to be his mikvah, or ritual bath. The stories of his life are woven into the folklore of the region, including tales of his encounters with the legendary Ukrainian rebel leader, Oleksa Dovbush – a testament to a shared landscape that produced intertwined mythologies.
The Court of the Tsaddik
After the Baal Shem Tov’s death, his disciples, such as Dov Ber of Mezeritch, organised his teachings into a full-fledged movement. From its heartlands in Podolia and Volhynia, Hasidism spread with astonishing speed across Galicia, Central Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. Its appeal was broad, attracting Jewish men from all walks of life who had felt excluded from the rigidly hierarchical and scholarly Judaism of the time.
The engine of this expansion was the court of the tsaddik, or “righteous one.” The tsaddik was more than just a scholar; he was seen as a living conduit to the divine, an intermediary whose guidance was sought on all matters, spiritual and material. These leaders established dynasties, passing their mantles to their sons, and their courts became the organisational centres of Hasidic life. The Chernobyl, Belz, and Ruzhyn dynasties are among the most famous to have emerged from Ukrainian lands.
These courts varied enormously. Some were modest, while others were palatial. The 19th-century court of Reb Dovid Twersky in Talne, for instance, was a sprawling complex with residences for the tsaddik and his family, guesthouses for pilgrims, a synagogue, kitchens, and other buildings. His court was famed for its cantors and musicians. The tsaddik of Ruzhyn, in a display that mirrored the local Polish nobility, travelled in a carriage drawn by four horses, and his residence in Sadahora was a veritable palace. This adoption of aristocratic trappings was also reflected in their dress: the high fur hats (shtreimels), white stockings, and ornate coats were reminiscent of 18th-century Polish noble attire.
Life at the court revolved around the great holidays, when pilgrims would flock to be with their leader. A central event was the tish, a communal meal where followers would eat at the tsaddik’s table, listening to his teachings. The act of eating became a spiritual practice. Pilgrims would seek private counsel or leave written petitions, known as kvitlach, along with a donation that sustained the court. In a sense, the tsaddik’s court functioned like a gravitational body, its immense spiritual mass pulling in followers and creating a self-sustaining ecosystem of faith and community. It wasn’t only Jews who sought the tsaddiks’ help; local Christians would also come for blessings or advice, leaving behind prayer notes in Ukrainian.
A Culture of Ecstatic Faith
Hasidism created a distinct and expressive culture. Central to its practice were nigunim – soul-stirring, wordless melodies sung collectively. These chants were a form of prayer, a way to bypass the intellect and connect directly with the emotions. Remarkably, the melodies often absorbed elements from the surrounding Ukrainian folklore. One well-known Hasidic song, for instance, pairs a mournful Ukrainian folk lyric – “I started drinking on Friday, I pawned my calf” – with a devout Hebrew text, transforming a lament of earthly troubles into a parable about spiritual longing. These songs are still sung today by Hasidim who may no longer know a word of Ukrainian, a ghostly echo of a shared soundscape.
Dance, too, was a form of communal prayer, an expression of joy and unity. This vibrant culture fascinated even secular Jewish intellectuals in the early 20th century. The philosopher Martin Buber, who grew up in Lviv, saw in Hasidism a model for integrating the spiritual and the everyday that he believed modern society desperately needed. He published a collection of Rabbi Nachman’s tales in 1906, introducing them to a wider European audience.
This embrace of emotion and mysticism did not go unchallenged. The maskilim, proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment, fiercely criticised the movement. They accused the tsaddiks of exploiting their followers for financial gain and dismissed Hasidic beliefs as irrational superstition. Yet the movement thrived, adeptly using modern tools to its advantage. By the 19th century, Hasidic leaders were publishing books and pamphlets and using the telegraph to communicate. In Galicia, they even helped form an Orthodox political party in Lviv, engaging directly with the civic life of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Great Unravelling
The 20th century brought a series of catastrophic blows. The First World War displaced entire communities, forcing tsaddiks and their followers to flee their ancestral towns for the relative safety of large cities like Vienna, Kyiv, or Odesa. This fundamentally altered the structure of Hasidic life, untethering it from the small towns where it had been born.
But it was the Holocaust that truly annihilated this world. The systematic murder of European Jewry by the Nazis and their collaborators devastated the Jewish communities of Ukraine. Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, whose appearance often made them more visible, were particularly vulnerable. Entire dynasties were wiped out. Of the vast and influential Twersky dynasty of Chernobyl, which once had over thirty branches, most of its leaders were murdered. A few managed to escape. Followers of the Belzer Rebbe, for instance, orchestrated a dramatic rescue, smuggling him first into Soviet territory, then to Hungary, and finally to Palestine.
Those who had emigrated before the war established new communities in the United States, Israel, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. These new centres often carried the names of the lost Ukrainian and Polish towns, creating a phantom geography of memory. In Jerusalem, a grand synagogue bears the name of Belz. In New York State, the town of New Square is named for Skvyra, a Hasidic centre in the Kyiv region. For decades, during the Soviet era, the iron curtain cut off these diaspora communities from the graves of their spiritual founders. The sacred sites of Ukraine were unreachable.
The Return to Uman
With the reforms of Perestroika in the late 1980s and the subsequent independence of Ukraine, the journey home became possible once more. While pilgrims began returning to several sites, Uman emerged as the largest and most renowned centre.
Rabbi Nachman, the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, chose to be buried in Uman for a specific, poignant reason. He died of tuberculosis in 1810, and in his final months, he moved to the city because it was the site of a horrific massacre of Jews in 1768. He wished to be buried among the martyrs, to help their souls find peace. This act of spiritual solidarity has imbued his gravesite with a profound sanctity for his followers.
The annual pilgrimage, which started with just a few hundred attendees in the early 1990s, has grown into a massive phenomenon, with tens of thousands making the journey each year. It continues even now, a defiant assertion of faith in a country at war. Of course, the sheer scale of the event brings challenges, and the relationship between the pilgrims and the local Ukrainian population is not always simple.
Yet, the return of the Hasidim is a powerful testament to the enduring bond between a people, a faith, and a land. It speaks to a history that is deeper and more complex than the tragedies that so often define it. The songs, the stories, and the sacred places remain, threads of a spiritual tapestry woven into the very fabric of Ukraine. It is a quiet kingdom, largely unseen, but its heart is beating once more.
