An interesting trip through three old jewish settlements of Central Ukraine - Berdichev, Vinnitsa, Uman. May be not entirely uplifting, but very fascinating.
We saw an abandoned, but still standing, jewish cemetery and several jewish mass graves of WWII era in the first, a site of the Nazi bunker in the second, and a famous Rabbi's tomb in the third.
In the Carmelite Monastery in Berdichev we met a woman who offered to help us get inside the church, which was closed for reconstruction, but instead she ended up offering her story, as one of only 300 jews still living in Berdichev, where once there were close to 40,000.
At the Tomb of Rabbi Nachman in Uman we saw how over-inthusiasm, greed and not reading one's contract (even in Ukraine) can distort a perfectly sane & saint place. When the site of the tomb became so popular that tens of thousand (mostly wealthy) jews from Israel and US were coming to the small town every year, somebody had to make three million dollars before allowing for the proper accommodations, like a larger synagogue, to be built. For now, the jolly Bratslav Hasidim are worshiping in something that reassembles a large tin can.
