Uman (Ukrainian: Умань, IPA: [ˈumɐnʲ]) is a city in Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. It is located to the east of Vinnytsia. Situated in the east of the historical region of Podolia, the city rests on the banks of the Umanka River.
For more than a century (1726–1832), it was owned by the Potocki family of Polish magnates. It grew considerably with the railroad's arrival in the late 19th century.
Uman eventually became an industrial center specializing in scientific instruments, with some industries in engineering, food, and building materials.
Among Ukrainians, Uman is known for the Haydamak rebellions in Taras Shevchenko's longest of poems, Haidamaky ("The Haidamaks", 1843).
During the Second World War in 1941, the Battle of Uman occurred near the town, where the German army encircled Soviet positions. The Germans deported the entire Jewish community, murdering around 17,000 Jews,[17] and destroyed the Jewish cemetery, the burial place of the victims of the 1768 uprising, as well as Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.
After the war, a Breslov Chasid managed to locate the Rebbe's grave and preserved it when the Soviets turned the entire area into a housing project.
Since the 1990s, there has been a small but growing Jewish population in Uman, concentrated around Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's tomb on Pushkina Street.
Tens of thousands of Hasidim and others from around the world make a major pilgrimage to Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's burial site, located on the former site of the Jewish cemetery in a rebuilt synagogue, every Rosh Hashana.
Rebbe Nachman Me'Uman spent the last five months of his life in Uman [19] and specifically requested to be buried there. As taught by the Breslov Hasidim, before his death, he solemnly promised to intercede on behalf of anyone who would come to pray on his grave on Rosh Hashana, "be he the worst of sinners"; thus, a pilgrimage to this grave is thought to provide the best chance of getting unscathed through the stern judgment which, according to the Jewish faith, God passes everybody on Yom Kippur.
The Rosh Hashana pilgrimage dates back to 1811, when the Rebbe's foremost disciple, Rab Nassan of Breslov, organized the first pilgrimage after the Rebbe's death.
The annual pilgrimage attracted hundreds of Chasidic Jews from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 sealed the border between Russia and Poland. A handful of Soviet Hasidic Jews continued to make the pilgrimage clandestinely; some were discovered by the KGB and exiled to Siberia, where they died.
The pilgrimage ceased during World War II and resumed on a drastically smaller scale in 1948. In 1988, the Soviets allowed 250 men to visit the Rebbe's grave for Rosh Hashana. In 1989, over 1,000 Hasidic Jews gathered in Uman for Rosh Hashana.
In 1990, 2,000 attended. In 2008, attendance reached 25,000 men and boys. [22] In 2018, over 30,000 Jews made the Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to Uman.
In the mid-2010s, Israelis from many sectors of Israel's Ultra-Orthodox community, including many Mizrahi Jewish rabbis, made the pilgrimage. The event brings together a wide variety of Orthodox society, from Yemenite yeshiva students to former Israeli prison inmates and American hippies.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the number of pilgrims coming to Uman for the Jewish New Year was approximately 10,000, or about one-third of the number in 2021.
The annual pilgrimage is regarded as Uman's primary economic industry.