Thousands of Jewish pilgrims have begun leaving Uman, Ukraine, where their week-long stay resulted in a fire, power shortages, a sewage flood and several arrests.
One of the incidents involved three Israeli police officers who were sent to Uman to help police the estimated 26,000 Jewish pilgrims who congregate every year, ahead of the Jewish New Year, near the grave site of Rabbi Nachman, founder of the Breslov hasidic movement.
According to Israel’s Channel 10, the officers were sent back to answer for the incident on orders from Israel Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino. The fight reportedly happened last week while the three officers were off duty. One of the officers sustained minor injuries in a scuffle with locals, the report said.
In a separate incident, pilgrims from Israel started a fire inside their rented apartment after they had an indoor barbecue, according to Alexander Gorobech, a firefighter who was stationed in Uman as part of a special deployment. Gorobech told the Ukrainian ICTV television station that the men who lit the fire were handed over to the Israeli police detachment stationed at Uman for the High Holidays.
A different apartment block on Pushkin Street lost power for nearly one day, due to an overload in consumption by Jewish pilgrims, according to Segodnya.ua.
Another incident registered last week began with the arrest of a Jewish visitor after Ukrainian police spotted him smoking marijuana at the entrance to a shop, according to a statement by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Several of his friends confronted the police officers but the encounter did not turn violent, according to the news website Unian.net.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/183565/hasidic-pilgrimage-far-from-trouble-free-for-bresl/#ixzz2eQjbbdCH
