Prayers in Uman: Rabbi Nachman is said to have promised to pull a man out of Hell by his sidelocks if he should come to his grave and repent at New Year (Credit: AFP/Getty images)
The Rabbi would sit cross-legged in the hovels of the Jews and throw greasy morsels and bones from his food to them before reciting the psalms of their ancestors. While he rocked back and forth, they would scuffle for these holy scraps. The Jews were rapt to his hypnotic words, whispering that maybe, just maybe, Rabbi Nachman was their Messiah.
His beard was long and red like his sidelocks, which he curled meticulously. His disciples copied everything they could about their Rebbe, whom they called a tzaddik — a holy man.
They did this because nobody had seen so many of the swirling dead who invisibly surround us as he had, because nobody had been to the land of Israel, as he had, because nobody, in all Ukraine, told stories in mesmerising Yiddish as he did.
Rabbi Nachman died in 1810. "Everything the Messiah can do for Israel . . . I can do too," he sobbed, "only the Messiah can achieve it." His Hasids, or pious ones, wailed as his eyes glazed over. The tzaddik had seemed poised to make a great revelation to the Jews. Hasids on horseback had galloped through Ukraine, shouting to the villagers that a wonder was about to be revealed.
Then a curse descended. Nachman's children began to die. His lungs filled with disease and water. "You see a great tree of wisdom but my roots are in Hell," he shouted at his scribe. He burnt the mystical scrolls he worked on. He grew weaker. Barely able to walk, Nachman trekked with devoted Hasids to the village of Uman to die. He was 38.
In death the Rabbi was a tragic figure. Blinking out of a broken body, he saw his minions dancing around him. Nachman believed he had the soul of the Messiah. But he had achieved for his people — both socially and politically — precisely nothing.
He left behind obsessive writings about the dangers of masturbation, but also fables so enchanting when read in lilting Yiddish they can even induce a state of trance. He left the cryptic, frightening idea that we live in the universe of an "absent God". Nachman's writings are so fresh, yet so obscure. Read in a certain light, it would seem the Rabbi died knowing that the innermost secret of the mystical Kabbalah was that there is no God at all — he is merely what they call a "social construct", that God must constantly be created through chanted confessions and ecstatic prayer.
Post your comment
- Beirut: Hariri — An Assassination Too Far
- New York: A ‘Post-racial’ American vs an Old Coot
- Pristina: Kosovo's Liberal Islam
- Oslo: Courage and Cowardice in Scandinavia
- ONLINE ONLY: Washington, D.C.: It's Not Rocket Science!
- La Hague: Recycling the French Model
- Jerusalem: No Via Media for Anglicans
- ONLINE ONLY: Beirut: Blood Holiday
- Rome: Arrivederci Roma
- Darfur: Panic at the Palace
- ONLINE ONLY: Letter from Bamian
- Caucasus: Diary, August-September, 2008
- ONLINE ONLY: South-East Asia: The Demons of Ignorance
- New York: Diary
- Ypres: Never Say Never Again
- New York: A Cousin in the White House
- Caracas: Chávez's Secret Fan Club
- Prague: Diary
- Park City, Utah: Movie that Pulls Aside the Veil
- Beirut: Blood on the Streets
- India: Tariq Ali's Plan for Pakistan
- Berlin and Cologne: A Tale of Two German Cities
- Mumbai: On the 'Slumdog' Trail
- Budapest: Screwed Left, Right and Centre
- Paris: Mayhem in the Marais
- Stanford, CA: Intellectual Life Under Obama
- Colombia: A Nation Reborn
- Paris: Prisoner of the Barbarians
- United States: The Path to Rome via San Francisco
- ONLINE ONLY: Black Russian
- South Africa: The ANC'S Health Lesson for Obama
- Lisieux, France: Relics of Thérèse
- Germany: Heidegger - Being, Time and Place
- Moscow: Putin's Empire Strikes Out
- Connecticut: My Battle Against Google
- Montana: Home From Home on the Range
- Siberia: In Search of the Gulag
- Rio's Heart of Darkness
- Mogadishu: Armageddon on Steroids
- Havana: The Castros Will Not Be Absolved
- Kaliningrad: Russia's Outpost in Europe's Heart
- Bishkek: Bloodsoaked Revolution
- Bishkek: Downfall of a Dictator
- Oslo: Signing OFF on Human Rights
- Bajaur: A Talk with the Taliban
- Bahrain: Women Drivers Welcome Here
- Tajikistan: In Search of the Yeti
- ONLINE Only: Ankara's Proxy
- Johannesburg: Hard Pressed
- Istanbul: Press Freedom Alla Turca
- Xinjiang: Taming China's Wild West
- The Lesson of Oz
- The Surge is Working — So Far
- A Tale of Love, Bulls and Goats
- Old-order Collapse
- Egypt's New Dawn Chorus
- From Carthage to Kasserine
- After Gaddafi: A New Libya Emerges
- To the Polo Saddle Born
- The Settlements: Life Between the Lines
- Exposed: Carnita's Cover Story
- "At last, I feel proud to be Libyan"
- Books Do Furnish a Little Freedom
- Fat Chance for Christie—This Time
- Easy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown
- Putin's Chinese Whispers
- Cain Isn't Able and Newt Defies Gravity
- The Ten Years' War against the Taliban
- We The People Say: Get Out of The Way
- Wanted: A New Ronald Reagan
- Time to Crunch the Numbers
- Who's Really Supreme?
- From Art as Life to Blood and Soil
- Talking Tactics
- The Wagner Family Soap Opera Rolls On
- Winning the Veepstakes
- Romney Takes a Risk with Ryan
- Window Brothels Get the Red Light
- Can Romney Spring an October surprise?
- Canada's Crusader for Conservatism
- No-Go Areas on the Campaign Trail
- Republicans Must Avoid Civil War
- Norway's Problem with Anti-Semitism
- Turks, Arabs and Jews: The Middle East in Crisis
- Nations United in Hypocrisy
- Siberia: Shamans, Spies and the Secret Police
- Barracked by Obama's Oratory
- Women Come Last in Syrian Refugee Camps
- The Dawn of Obamageddon
- Americans Know Her True Worth. Do We?
- Hapless Hollande’s French Farce Flops
- Save the NYPD So It Can Save the City
- Obama's Secrets Start Unravelling
- Syria Isn't Bosnia: Don't Arm the Rebels
- Who Can Stop Hilary in 2016?
- Teaching China's Anglophiles
- On Pilgrimage with the Hasids
- From Eastern Europe to the East End
- True Grits
- The Rise and Rise of Marine Le Pen
- Cold Comfort On Global Warming
- Hunting the Lynx with the Old Believers
- High-tech Israelis Aim For The Moon
- The Russians Are Coming
- The Turbulent Minister is Right
- Bad Times for Good Samaritans
- This Expat Paradise is a Woman’s Nightmare
- Two Generations Lost to Communism
- Strangers in their own Holy Land
- The Isles are Full of Big Noises
- The Kurds: Israel's not so Improbable Allies
- Islam and Innocence: Canada’s Predicament
- The Fifth Republic’s Darkest Days?
- Let's Make Putin's London Cronies Sweat
- The Global Politics Of Netanyahu's Victory
- A Grim Prospect For South Africa's Jews
- No End In Sight To The Exodus From Libya
- Undeterred, Erdogan Usurps Ataturk's Legacy
- Gaza Withdrawal Symptoms
- Red Flags Flying Over Parliament Square
- Mutinous Talk In The Highlands
- Our Principles Are All We Have
- Why The Swedes Have Had Enough
- Canada's First Nations Come Last
- Islam and the French Republic
- Unconventional Convention
- The Dying Days Of Zuma's South Africa
- Capitalist rebirth of Hoxha's hellhole
- Cyril Ramaphosa's poisoned chalice
- Trump's big gamble on North Korea
- Catalan myths must now confront reality
- Is South Africa about to fall apart?
- Refugees are big business for the UN
- Saving Europeans isn't the Italians' job
- Enter the Professor, Putin's Balkan stooge
- The Merkel era ends in angst and anger
- Midterm madness — or Trump's last stand?
- City where history is still being made
- I'm Not Antisemitic, But...
- The ELM, Dispatches and Awlaki
- A Larger Than Life Predator