The last time I was in Uman was July-time, 2022.

It was about five months after the war in Ukraine had begun, and about a month ahead of the annual kibbutz for Rosh Hashana. One of the tour companies owned by chassidim of the Rav were the only people trying to go there still, at that point, (as an organised tour) – with the Rav’s blessing.

Long story short, after the whole drama of being in Uman for Rosh Hashana 2020, when I’d got detained at the airport illegally, I’ve been having passport issues at the border.

That’s never fun, but my passport issues in the Ukraine had got to the point of making it very hard to believe I’d ever be going back.

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And then…. I was sitting with my husband on our two day break up North, and I my heart started whispering to me you really need to go to Uman.

I was scared to go back, that’s the truth.

But, I also know that when you break your fears associated with the whole ‘trip to Uman’, you also break those fears in your actual real life back home, too.

And the last few months, I have been operating from a place of fallen fears, deep pessimism, and lack of emuna.

==

I did some hitbodedut on all this, and I came to the conclusion that the worst thing that happens, is that they don’t let me across the border, and I will go and spend Shabbos eating tuna with my husband, in Kishinev.

My husband had also missed his annual trip out to Uman for Rosh Hashana this year, when his flight got cancelled – twice! – because of ‘rockets from the houthis’, with the last ‘rockets from the houthis’ happening the day before Rosh Hashana literally as I was driving back home from dropping him at the airport.

So, we booked.

And I spent the last few weeks working on the notion that whatever God decides, that’s what is the best for me. Tuna in Kishineve, or cholent in Puskhina – it’s all in God’s hands.

==

Before the flight out, I asked my husband to pay a small pidyon to Shuvu, in the merit of getting across the border OK, and back safely.

I couldn’t do it myself, as I was going straight to the airport after a full day of school. In the meantime….

The night before the flight, the ‘rockets from [America]’ started up again, apparently, so at 4am, we were wide awake.

And the weather last week turned super-cold, windy and wet, in a dramatic and quite creepy way.

And I set out for Ben Gurion on Thursday after a day full of more sirens, and such crazy rain that I aqua-planed my way to the airport on some crazy route through the shtachim with hairpin bends that would be dangerous in full sunlight, with no ponds of water on the road.

The ‘overcoming fears’ lesson was already beginning.

==

Long story short, we got to Uman relatively easily, there were no problems any more with my passport, BH, and we settled into the hotel.

While the kosher hotels seemed to be packed for Shabbat – the rest of Uman was pretty dead. In fact, most of the Ukraine is pretty dead at the moment, except the big cities like Kiev.

I spent most of Friday in the Tziyon, feeling so grateful to be there, and just doing tikkun haklalis, and giving a pruta to tzekada, and doing some hitbodedut.

Very nice and chilled. Totally unlike my usual experiences of ‘Uman’.

Shabbat, we were still pretty knackered from all the travelling, so instead of doing what I usually do, and forcing us out for long walks to Gan Sofia etc – we just spent more time in the Tziyon, I started re-reading Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom, and we slept a bit – and talked.

Because things have been so crazy for so long, even finding the time to talk, in a relaxed way, has been pretty tricky.

==

Back in Jerusalem, the crazy weather and the sirens continued.

Meanwhile, the sun was shining in Uman, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and when the sirens in Uman went off – as they did at least three times – we all just ignored them.

What sort of crazy people come on holiday to a place with sirens, in the middle of a war?!

Go ask all the tourists to Israel.

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Motzash, after one of the nicest, calm and relaxed shabbats I’ve ever had, I was getting ready for bed around 12am, when my husband came back from the Tziyon with a strange smile on his face.

‘Eli’, our neighbor across the hall, had travelled up in the lift with him, and asked him if he wanted to join a small group he was arranging to go and visit Rav Natan, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev and the BESHT, on the way to getting back to the airport in Moldova.

The catch was – he was planning on leaving in 20 minutes, and we’d be travelling all night and day, to fit it all in.

One of us wasn’t so keen on the idea…. But I was still in the schwang of trying to go with God’s flow, wherever it takes you.

So I talked my husband into saying yes, (he’s a very good guy) – and we packed and went downstairs.

==

In the end, we finally left Uman around 3am, and we’d acquired another couple of ‘normal chareidim’ from Bet Shemesh, to join us in the meantime.

Eli and ‘Uri’ were the main organisers – really good people, smartly-dressed Sephardi-chareidim, who were not so much ‘Breslov’ as into visiting kivrei tzaddikim in general. Then, we had a pair of super-chassidic Breslovers, father-and-son, replete with the white socks and domed black kippahs.

Then, there was us – and this other husband and wife from Bet Shemesh.

The minibus had four ‘armchair’ super-comfortable seats, and then 4 ‘less comfortable’ seats at the back, with one sitting next to the driver.

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The chassidic son took the uncomfortable seat next to the driver – and kept it for the whole trip, without any complaints, even though it was pretty impossible to sleep in it.

I was very impressed with his middot.

Me and my husband sat at the back with the wife from Bet Shemesh next to us, while her husband dove into one of the armchairs – and then started snoring really loudly, any time he was asleep, for the rest of the trip.

Meanwhile, it was 3am, and the wife simply made one phone call to another to various members of her family, for the next hour and a half.

I was perplexed.

One of the things I’d been asking God to help me with in Uman was seeing my fellow Jew with a better ‘eye’ – and apparently, here was Rabbenu giving me an advanced test in the subject.

==

After a few hours, Eli, Uri and the chassidic father switched chairs with us, so we could also try to get some sleep.

Meanwhile, the Bet Shemesh couple also exchanged places – but the wife kept up a steady stream of complaints and ‘issues’ pretty much the whole journey, regardless of where she was sitting.

Every place we went, they disappeared off for a bit to make pot noodles and eat, which cumulatively slowed us down more and more. And meanwhile, Eli had miscalculated how long it was going to take us to get back through the Ukrainian border.

He thought it would take two hours.

In the end, it took four.

As we finally cleared the border, Waze said we’d get to Kishinev at 8pm – exactly the time the flight was meant to take off.

==

Let’s back-up a moment, and see what happened in the minibus, while we were stuck at the border and starting to understand that there was a very real possibility that we were going to miss the flight home.

As good students of the Rav, me and my husband pulled out our tikkun haklalis, said three TKs each, then paid a small pidyon in the merit of being able to get across the border, and to make the flight on time.

Then, I spent the next three hours sitting there clapping gently, to ‘sweeten the dinim’.

There were a lot of dinim to sweeten, in that border-crossing bought and paid for by ‘USAID’, which had its signs and self-congratulatory texts pasted up all over the place.

==

Meanwhile, the chassidic father and son were murmuring some tehillim, and also on the phone telling their families they may miss the flight, and not to worry, and trying to find another later flight back from Kishinev.

At the same time, Eli-the-fixer, was doing his best to see if we could walk through on foot, and get met by a different minivan on the Moldovan side of the border. (We couldn’t). Or, whether there was someone to pay, ahem, that could speed things up for us. (Apparently, surprisingly, there wasn’t.)

Then, having tried all the gashmi options, he announced that we just needed to pray and leave it to Hashem, as we’d done all we could in terms of our own histadlut.

We’re all baal-teshuvas, we’ve all done stuff we need to have a tikkun for, he announced. I warmed to him more and more.

==

Meanwhile, there was Uri, who was a quiet man who’d been discretely paying the dollars required in one place and another, without making a fuss, who came over to my husband towards the end of the interminable wait at the border to tell him that he’d been waiting to have children for 15+ years.

Whatever God decides, it’s for the very best. He told us. These tests aren’t easy, but I know that whatever God decides should happen, it’s for the very best.

I was so impressed with this man’s real, sincere and humble emuna, words failed me.

I am really praying that very soon after this trip to Uman, ‘Uri’ and his wife will finally merit to have a child of their own.

==

And then, there was the couple from Bet Shemesh.

Who spent the time berating the driver for not getting out of the car to go and pay some bribes to get us through the line (the driver had no idea what they were saying… the whole exercise was pointless.)

And spent time on their phones doing who knows what.

And, spent time telling Eli he should go and try this tactic, or that tactic, or some other tactic, to get us through on time.

Once it was clear to all of us that the only ‘tactic’ left to try was praying and asking God to help us – they doubled-down on the whinging about how it was all the ‘bad driver’s’ fault, and then the wife started haranguing her husband to find different tickets from Kishinev, as they were certainly going to miss the flight, now.

==

At one point, I got so irritated by all this I started arguing with them.

It’s not just ‘because of the driver’ that all this is happening, all this is from God! Jews are above nature, we don’t have to be bound by ‘derech hateva’!

My husband started pulling my sleeve and told me to stay out of it.

So I returned to clapping, and kept my mouth shut from that point on.

==

As soon as we crossed the border, our driver started driving like a crazy person on the goat track that passes for a main road, in that part of the world.

I was literally bouncing a foot up out of my seat, for half an hour, and even took the strange step of starting to look for the seat belt.

(I found the bit with the buckle, but I couldn’t find the bit where you click it in, so I just carried on praying instead.)

==

Suddenly, WAZE was saying we’d be at the airport by 7.20pm – possibly, still in time to make the flight.

By that point, I didn’t so much care either way. Of course, I’d prefer to not have to spend another 2,000 shekels and wait another 5 hours in the Kishinev airport – but whatever God decided. OK.

==

Our driver was such a bad driver.

After that first burst of formula one – ‘goat track edition’ – he went back to driving slowly, probably scared he might get a ticket.

Then, he pulled to the side of the road as we were approaching the airport, and demanded more money.

Long story short… We got to the airport at 7.30pm, and they’d already closed the check-in.

Uri and the couple from Bet Shemesh had a big suitcase, so they couldn’t board the plane.

Eli decided to stay back with Uri, to keep him company (those two were such good people…. Both of them.)

And that left us and the chassidic father and son, with hand-luggage only.

==

In any other airport, we probably would have been arrested (or shot….)

My husband jumped the whole queue waiting to go through security, while I ran after him trying to mumble apologies, caught between my ‘polite British’ upbringing and being a secret adherent of Shuvu Banim.

At the security stand, my husband forgot to take off his belt, and got yelled at for a whole minute until he understood what they wanted.

Then, we sprinted to gate 1 (there are only 2 gates in Kishinev….), where the last bus going to the plane had been delayed for five minutes as some chassid with crooked teeth was arguing with the flight attendant about having to pay for his extra hand-luggage.

Long story short – we literally got on bus just as the gates closed.

We made the flight home, BH.

==

No-one else on our minibus did.

‘Eli’ and ‘Uri’ were such good guys, they had such genuine emuna, and middot way better than ours.

The chassid and his son were also God-fearing Torah learners – the dad was literally learning most of the time when he wasn’t sleeping.

What it boiled down to, I really believe, was following the etzot of the Rav, doing the three Tikkun Haklalis, clapping to ‘sweeten the judgments’ – and the tiny pidyon of 80 shekels, to Shuvu Banim.

There is no other way to explain it.

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I am hoping that the reason the gates of Kishinev airport stayed closed for ‘Uri’, is because Hashem is going to use all this bizyonot and effort to open the gates of parenthood, to him and his wife, instead.

We can’t know God’s designs, but I’ve seen from my own life, how Rabbenu organises all these ‘tikkunim’ for a person on the way to and from Uman, in order to pay down the spiritual debts that are causing the person suffering in their ‘real life’ back home.

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As for me, I have returned home with a lot more optimism again, and a real lesson in how prayers and following the advice of the real Tzaddikim literally makes miracles for a person, and can take a person ‘above nature’.

I am feeling happier and calmer than I’ve been feeling for a very long time.

And the last thing I learned, is that I am so grateful I never went to live in Bet Shemesh.

😉