A Pilgrimage Interrupted for Most of a Century

Uman lies in central Ukraine, and for most of the twentieth century getting there was either dangerous or impossible. Travel was restricted through the Soviet period, the Jewish community of the town was destroyed in the Second World War, and the small number of Hasidim who reached the grave in those decades did so at real risk. The modern mass pilgrimage dates essentially from 1991.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the numbers went from a few hundred to tens of thousands within a decade, and a purpose built synagogue complex and accommodation grew up around the grave to handle them. That makes Uman one of the largest annual gatherings of diaspora Jews at a single site anywhere, and one of the youngest in its present form despite resting on a two hundred year old instruction. The gathering has continued through subsequent disruption, including the closure of borders during the coronavirus pandemic and the conditions created by the war in Ukraine, with the numbers rising and falling accordingly. The atlas records the pilgrimage as living and its scale as variable year to year, and treats the reported figures as estimates by organisers and local authorities rather than as counts.