“From Jerusalem to Uman—we land straight, and immediately prostrate ourselves on the Tziyun”

In these days, when Ukraine’s skies are closed due to the bombardments, it is worthwhile to return to those days after the fall of the Iron Curtain—when planes actually landed at the airport near Uman.

One of the stanzas in the song of longing that The Rav, Rabbi Berland, composed in those years—when the routes to Rebbe Nachman’s Tziyun in Uman were blocked—is the line: “From Jerusalem to Uman we land straight, and on the Tziyun we immediately prostrate ourselves.” The questioner will ask: Most people who fly to Uman land in Kyiv or in Odessa; some land elsewhere among the fourteen airports spread across the vast country of Ukraine (whose area is thirty times that of today’s Land of Israel). But in Uman? No flight lands in Uman!

Landing in Uman

In the city of Uman there was a large military base—one of the reasons the Russians refused to approve visas to Uman. For this purpose, an airport was built in Uman that served the military. While the Soviet Union still existed, there was of course nothing to discuss regarding using this airport. Even when visits to Uman began with permission from the Russian government, landing in Uman was still out of the question. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Ukrainians took control, a number of flights were indeed made that landed in Uman—about a fifteen-minute drive from the holy Tziyun.

The first trip on which we landed in Uman was on Shabbos Chanukah 5751 (1990), immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I organized a trip for Shabbos Chanukah, and many of the Breslov chassidim of that time registered—such as the chassid Rabbi Shmuel Chatzchik, the chassid Rabbi Mordechai (Shabtai) Horowitz, and others. The plan was to be in Uman for Shabbos Chanukah, and immediately on Motzaei Shabbos to travel back to the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Mordechai Horowitz—whose heart burned with the holy Tziyun of Rebbe Nachman—approached me and said: “If we’re already going, why return on Motzaei Shabbos? Let’s stay one more day by Rebbe Nachman and return on Sunday.” I answered him that it wasn’t up to me; the public wanted to return immediately on Motzaei Shabbos. One must remember: conditions were not conditions. We were talking about cold of minus fifteen degrees, and nothing was organized properly. Traveling to Uman required real mesirus nefesh, and every additional day was a difficulty of its own.

We left on a flight from Israel to Moscow. From there we were supposed to travel to Uman. We boarded the plane, but for some reason it did not take off. When people tried to understand why, they were told: “There is no fuel to travel”… We understood the hint, and we bribed the person in charge there with cigarettes and money—and then fuel “appeared.” A truck arrived and refueled the plane, and then the flight set out to Cherkasy, where the plane stopped without the passengers disembarking. We were informed that they needed to charge some battery in the plane, and then the plane took off again on its way to Uman.

When we landed at the airport in Uman, an unpleasant surprise awaited us: there was no way to get off the plane! There were no stairs or anything else that could be brought up to the aircraft so we could disembark. So we remained on the plane until they found a solution. The Ukrainians brought a fire truck and positioned its ladder against the plane so we could get down.

But this solution was far from satisfactory. The ladder they brought was about ten meters high, while the plane’s height was only a few meters. They were forced to place it at a long and dangerous angle, and the passengers climbed down one after another.

However, Rabbi Shmuel Chatzchik—who was in his final years—could not descend that way. He was very afraid he would fall, and he truly had reason to fear. We did not know what to do, until the chassid R’ Yonah Lebel (may he live) came to him and promised that he would stay right beside him, hold him, and nothing would happen. Because R’ Yonah was strongly built, baruch Hashem, Rabbi Shmuel was persuaded and finally agreed to get off the plane using the ladder.

In Uman, a large part of the travelers stayed in the home of the non-Jewish woman in whose yard the holy Tziyun was located—while the owners of the apartment even gave up their own beds in order to earn a few more dollars. There we also prepared cholent for Shabbos, and thus we merited to spend Shabbos by Rebbe Nachman on Shabbos Chanukah. It was an exceptionally special and uplifting Shabbos.

When Shabbos ended, we began organizing for the return trip. We boarded a bus on our way to the airport, and indeed we settled into our seats on the plane, waiting in the terrible freezing cold for the flight to begin—yet for some reason it was delayed.

We waited and waited, and nothing moved. What happened? The plane simply could not start. We heard the engine noise as the pilot tried to bring it to life, but aside from grating screeches, nothing happened. Finally, after many attempts, we were forced to get off the plane. The plane had died. It was a plane from the company “Aeroflot,” which was known to be problematic, and more than once planes of this company fell—taking their passengers with them to their deaths…

It took the Ukrainians a long time to bring another bus and return us to Uman.

We stayed one more day in Uman, and the next day we returned to the airport. There they brought a new plane from another company to return us to Israel. And then Rabbi Mordechai Horowitz said to me: “I told you—come back on Sunday!…”

When we were at the airport, they showed us the plane that had died. One of the policemen offered to sell it to us for a thousand dollars… Another policeman offered his rifle for sale for only fifty dollars, and another policeman stripped off his uniform and sold it for pennies to whoever agreed to buy it from him. Total anarchy reigned throughout Ukraine.

When you see the situation today, it is easy to imagine what it was like in those years…

A rare photo of the holy gaon and tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a on the stairway while boarding the plane toward Uman:

Taking off from Jerusalem to Uman

To many of us, this may sound like a dream: “Where is there an airport in Jerusalem?” people will ask. There is—there truly is! In Atarot, near Jerusalem, there is an airport, and once it even served travelers to Uman…

Rabbi Yitzchak Weitzhandler relates: “In my childhood, even before the Six-Day War, I would sometimes see a plane flying low while taking off or landing. I was always curious to understand what was happening there, until after the war the matter became known to us. Jordan’s King Hussein built himself a home in eastern Jerusalem, in ‘Al-Quds,’ as Jerusalem is called by the Arabs. And since it was not ‘fitting’ for him to travel by car all the way to his palace in Jordan, he built himself a private airport. After the war—when Hashem gave all of Jerusalem to the people of Israel—this airport, too, fell into Israel’s hands like ripe fruit.

“But the Arab residences in the surrounding area threatened the airport’s existence. The concern was that they would build a continuous stretch of houses, making the area unsafe for flights—because of the bloodthirsty neighbors around it. The airport manager held clearly right-wing views, and he tried to help as much as he could anyone who was willing to use the airport’s services. In this way he tried to preserve the place and hoped it would become an international airport.

“At that time I was part of the travel company ‘Derech Tzaddikim,’ which was established as a continuation of the work of The Rav, Rabbi Berland shlit"a, who had first founded the company ‘Masaos Tzaddikim’ for the trips to Uman. Eventually others took the reins, and Rabbi Berland shlit"a—before whose eyes stood the words of Chazal (Kiddushin 32a): ‘If it is possible for a mitzvah to be done by others, let it be done by others’—withdrew from involvement in the subject of flights to Uman, an involvement that robbed him of time and strength. The airport manager approached me to arrange flights to Uman from the airport in Atarot, promising us assistance with whatever we would need.”

“The Arabs, of course, did not sit idly by. In their eyes, it was a kind of takeover of their territory, and they tried to do everything they could to prevent the place from operating as an international airport. As part of their efforts, they announced that the Arab world would boycott any airline that landed planes at that airport.”

[As an aside, this is what ultimately happened: the Arabs built more and more houses, while on the other hand airlines did not land planes there, and thus the plan to turn the place into an international airport was shelved. Today the site serves only as a military airport].

“Toward Shabbos Chanukah 5752 (1991), we indeed organized a flight from Atarot straight to Uman. The plane was a Russian aircraft with ninety seats. But in practice, far more people arrived at the airport than the number of seats—and the plane’s crew did not get confused by that. They told us: Bring us one hundred dollars for each additional passenger, and put as many people on the plane as you want… And that is exactly what happened. People kept boarding, far beyond the ninety seats on the plane, until suddenly the pilot announced that we had exceeded the permitted weight, and if everyone remained on board, he would not be able to take off.

“To understand the problem that was created, I will explain a bit more. In order to take off and gain altitude, a plane must build up sufficient momentum. For this purpose, every airport has a runway. When it is a larger or heavier plane, it needs a longer run in order to lift off. The airport in Atarot, which was built originally for private use, did not have a runway long enough. And once the number of passengers exceeded the permitted weight, the plane could no longer take off from the runway available there.

“Now I—as the organizer of the group and the one responsible for the flight—had to remove one passenger. I turned to one of the last passengers who had boarded and asked him to get off. He, of course, refused. After already boarding a plane on his way to Rebbe Nachman, how could he get off? But there was no other choice, and he was forced to disembark. To this day he has not forgiven me for it…”

“We traveled until we reached Odessa. There, officials boarded the plane and checked our visas while we remained on the aircraft. When they finished checking the visas, the plane took off again on its way to Uman. There we landed and, with siyata d’Shmaya, we reached the Tziyun of Rebbe Nachman—Kodesh Kodashim.”

On the right: the airport in Uman; the airport in Atarot, Jerusalem:

The Great Swindle

How did the flights from Jerusalem stop? That already depends on another important factor that was behind that flight.

“The travel company ‘HaShtiach HaAdom’ (‘The Red Carpet’) was the one that carried out the flight. A swindler named David A. joined this company. He smelled an opportunity to make money, and he was the one who promised to obtain planes for us. He did in fact obtain the plane for Shabbos Chanukah, and he began discussing with us the possibility of obtaining planes for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah as well. Based on his words—and because we wanted to test his reliability again—we asked him to arrange a plane for the yahrtzeit of the holy Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk zy"a. He promised that he would obtain one, and on that basis we publicized a flight for the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Elimelech, and many people joined.

“In an attempt to buy our trust, David told us that he learned together with The Rav, Rabbi Berland shlit"a, in the yeshivah in ‘Kfar Chassidim.’ When I brought this to Rabbi Berland shlit"a, the Rav immediately understood who it was, and clarified for me that it was not David whom we knew, but rather his brother who had learned with Rabbi Berland shlit"a in the yeshivah.

“In a conversation held with the airline El Al, in which people tried to obtain flights from them at a fairer price, someone informed them that there was a possibility to fly not only via Ben-Gurion Airport. (El Al was the one that in practice controlled—some say it controls even today—Ben-Gurion Airport.) At El Al they claimed that there was no such thing, and that there had never been such a thing, as flights departing not via Ben-Gurion. When proof was presented to them of the flight that had taken place, they were extremely surprised and promised to look into the matter.

“After some time, El Al got back to our people and explained what had happened. Every plane has a flight code, through which it receives permission to pass through the countries it wishes to cross, as well as landing permissions. There are special codes for passenger flights, and there are codes intended for cargo. The one who arranged the flight for us used those planes to ship citrus fruit to Ukraine, and thus the planes had a cargo code rather than a passenger-airline code. That is why he succeeded in obtaining approval for the plane. He transported his ‘passengers’ as cargo rather than as passengers—which also explains how easily the crew allowed adding more people beyond the permitted number, up to the weight limit allowed for cargo—and in this way the plane received landing approvals.

“Of course, El Al made sure to close the ‘breach,’ from their perspective, that had been created. The flight to Lizhensk was canceled, and I was left with a loss of $50,000…”