The annual pilgrimage brings both prayers and partying to Uman. Many have been undeterred by official pleas to stay away this year
“I come from a city near Ashdod – do you think we don’t know what it means to live in a war zone?” said one of the pilgrims, Ohad Ginzburg, 31. “We have air raid alarms too. I don’t take sides in this war. Ukraine says lies about Putin, and Putin says lies about Ukraine. It’s none of my business.”
The vast majority of pilgrims are men, often accompanied by their children, some as young as three years old. Chaya Sadon, 29, from a town near Tel Aviv, was one of the very few women. The arrival of thousands of Jewish pilgrims in Ukraine does not help the Kremlin’s propaganda, which has persistently claimed the need to “denazify” the country since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“It’s a problem,” says Alexander Khmara, a 34-year-old Ukrainian Jew and member of the Magen Ukraine, a community group that coordinated with regional police to patrol the streets. “We’ve set up a checkpoint at the entrance of the main road. We are here to check every individual coming in and out. And to monitor that there are no individuals among the visitors with the intention of provoking the crowd and then saying: ‘See, the Ukrainians are Nazis.
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