Confessions of an Uman Addict

by Rivka Levy

 

Like all addictions, mine started in a pretty mundane way, around seven years ago. I’d been going through a very bad patch when one of my kids was being seriously bullied in school, and my husband thought it would be a great idea if he bought me a ticket to Rabbi Nachman’s grave, in Uman, to get away from it all for a few days.

 

Rabbi Nachman was a famous Chassidic master who lived at the beginning of the 19^th century. People go to his grave as he has a reputation for being a miracle-worker.

 

I wasn’t so thrilled about the idea, I have to say. I live in Israel, and travelling all over the world – especially to places that are full of vicious anti-Semites – was not exactly high on my priority list. But I was so stressed-out from the situation with my daughter, that even a trip to a Siberian gulag would have sounded like a vacation.

 

That first time, I went with a group in the middle of February – and I mostly hated it. There were two showers for 40 of us – both facing straight out onto the front door. I was in a room with three other people I’d never met before in my life. The weather was bitterly, freezing, cold and snow. And the Ukrainians….well, they lived up to their reputation for being anti-Semitic pigs.

 

As we were heading out of Uman, I thought to myself: “It was good to come. It’s even better to go home. And I’m never doing that again.”

 

A few weeks ago, I came back from my 9^th trip to Uman, so clearly something changed my mind. What happened to me? Why did I go from being lukewarm anti, to being so vehemently pro trips to Uman?

 

It’s like this: I got back from that first trip, and things in my life just started moving in an amazing way. We sold our house in two weeks, moved location in six weeks, and three months later (after the Summer holidays), my kids started a much better school. More importantly, my mental state improved tremendously, and all sorts of deep issues I’d experienced since childhood started to work their way out of the system, and get resolved.

 

Like my serious depressions…like my huge anxiety levels…like my (not so secret) hypochondriac fears that someone in my family was going to develop a serious illness (God forbid)…like my issues with anger, jealousy and arrogance – and probably a few hundred other things besides.

 

Every single time I’ve gone to Uman, I’ve come back with some fundamental progress in some area of my life. Sometimes, like that first time, it’s open miracle type stuff, where my external circumstances start changing around in amazing ways. Other times, I’ve come home feeling like I’ve been punched in the stomach, overwhelmed by the amount of inner work and insights that came down the pipe during my brief stay there.

 

On other occasions, I’ve made some good Hebrew-speaking friends (which for an English speaker living in Israel, is not always so easy). Still other times, I’ve come back with some profound consolation and comfort – like the time a couple of years ago when our business tanked and we lost our house as a result.

 

That time I went to Uman feeling so miserable and burnt-out and despairing about all the hardships I was going through, I seriously doubted that even Rebbe Nachman would be able to fix the problem, and restore some of my joie de vivre. Luckily, I was wrong. I came away from that trip reassured that the situation was going to turn around again soon, but also with some profound insights into why I’d had to go through everything I’d been going through. That somehow helped me come to terms with it all, and start to move on and rebuild my life.

 

If you ask me how many different ways going to Uman has helped me, I could probably reel off at least 20 major things without even breaking a sweat. It helped me be more real; it helped me act more like a mensch; it helped me be more honest about my own character flaws, and what I needed to work on; it helped me integrate into Israeli society; it helped me fix a whole bunch of problems; it helped me be a better parent, and a better wife, and a better Jew.

 

Most of all, it helped me uncover and accept and like the real me, that person inside all the labels, and all the status symbols and all the social conventions, who really wants to be good, and do good, but that often gets side-tracked by all the stress, pressure and confusion of modern life.

 

People ask me, "Why do you have to go all the way to the Ukraine, to that icy, anti-Semitic hell-hole, to do all that stuff? Why can’t you do all those things here, in the Holy Land?"

 

The short answer is, "I don’t know why." I don’t know why you can achieve things, spiritually-speaking, in Uman that you just can’t get to in Jerusalem, or Meron, or Hebron. But the truth is, that you can’t. There’s something miraculous about Rebbe Nachman’s grave in Uman, and there’s simply no way of really understanding it, and the power of transformation that exists there, unless you visit yourself.

 

So that’s why I came back from my 9^th trip glad to be home, as always, but already looking forward to the next time. Do I know what I’m going to find when I get there? Nope. Do I even know what to expect, now I’ve been so many times? Not really – as each time seems to be completely different, despite being so similar to previous occasions.

 

But I’m addicted to the hope and the energy and the achdut (Jewish unity) you get in Uman. I’m hooked on the power of actualized potential and transformation. And until and unless that changes, I intend to keep going back for more.

 

 

Rivka Levy is the author of 5 books on spirituality and holistic health, including her latest book: Talk to God and Fix Your Health. Visit her at: www.spiritualselfhelp.org