Uman Rosh Hashana: revenge of the pagans?!

The annual pilgrimage to Uman raises powerful feelings and passionate arguments from advocates and critics alike. Further debate over the advisability of mass international travel during a pandemic has brought the debate into particularly strong focus for the coming Rosh Hashana.

In this eloquent podcast (linked at the end), Mordechai Ish-Yemini presents a biting theological critique of the legitimacy of praying at Rebbi Nachman’s grave. Ish-Yemini starts by listing several commonly-cited criticisms of the pilgrimage: 

*the appropriateness of leaving one’s family for the festival

*leaving Israel to worship at a holy site abroad

*the easy availability of drugs and prostitution nearby

*funding anti-semitic Ukrainians (with money that is sometimes collected as charity)

The podcast considers these arguments somewhat worthy, though not entirely compelling. Instead, Ish-Yemini focuses his attention on how Jewish tradition views acts of worship at graves. 

Judaism Reclaimed analyses, based on the writings of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, how worship at the Mikdash is distanced from any association with death, and performed “during daylight and in a state of sobriety…stark contrast to the atmosphere of darkness, mystery and fear which would typically prevail in pagan temples”. Ish-Yemini takes this much further, arguing that turning to the dead for information and guidance in acts of worship forms part of a widespread primitive practice which the Torah sought to outlaw with its prohibitions against necromancy and idolatrous rites. 

The Torah is obsessed with detailed laws which distance any person or object deemed impure by association with death from Mikdash worship. Religious acts of worship at a grave are also severely curtailed in the Talmud (Berachot 18a) – albeit for other reasons. 

A second line of criticism presented by Ish-Yemini examines the whole religious approach centred around being saved by a person, or promoting salvation through faith in a human being. This notion, he argues, more strongly resembles Christian doctrine than Judaism’s focus on each person’s individual connection to God through personal merit and performance of commandments.  

These sorts of ideologies offer a seductive simplicity. Judaism Reclaimed cites and develops Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s critique in Halakhic Man of the vacuous spirituality of the commonly perceived “religious man” which has been allowed to creep into Judaism. This popular ideology, according to R. Soloveitchik, contends that religion is a tranquil and enchanted stream of utopian simplicity into which embittered souls and troubled spirits can cast themselves as an escape from the rational doubts, contradictions and turbulence of reality. In a similar vein, Ish-Yemini attributes Uman’s growing popularity to the powerful human impulse to seek simple, magical solutions – such as propitious places, people and special words to utter – to complex, real world problems. These solutions are typified by the much-publicised promise that Rebbi Nachman will pull pilgrims from Gehinnom by their payot [sidelocks]. 

Does Ish-Yemini go too far? Judaism Reclaimed emphasises the need to respect the experiential side of Judaism alongside its intellectual dimension (see pp 4-5 in the sample here). Is this podcast correct in asserting that the pilgrimage and worship at Uman has swung too far in the opposite direction – allowing subjective spiritual pursuit to undermine the Torah’s core theological foundations?  

This group would welcome a well-argued response to Ish-Yemini’s claims in this podast.

First posted on Facebook 15 August 2021.