LAST MINUTE TRIP TO UMAN FOR ROSH HASHANAH!

good morning from the lounge one of the lounges at istanbul airport in turkey i've been here all night on a stopover i came from morocco and i'm heading to ukraine to uman for rosh hashanah for those of you are not familiar rosh hashanah is the jewish new year and some hasidic people have a custom to go to uman which is in ukraine as i mentioned to the grave of a very great rabbi rabbi nachman of breslau who was buried there this tradition has been going on for over 200 years now at this point in time about 50 000 jews come from all over the world to be by rebbi nachman's gravesite for rosh hashanah it's a very serious holiday it's but it's also a great time and it's sort of like a acidic festival if you can explain it anyway so as you can see there's a group of jewish men praying at the gate because they're all going to a man first hashana i should have known i should have known they were going to do that and i could have joined them i guess i wasn't thinking i would have gotten to the gate earlier i could have prayed with them anyhow okay let's get on the flight rosh hashanah is tonight um that means it's very late to be traveling most people would have traveled two three four days ago to avoid the last minute rush but my schedule didn't allow for that so here i am just a couple hours before the holiday starts getting on a plane hopefully everything will go smoothly wish me luck hello boys hello and we are in ukraine finally last time i was here was two years ago couldn't come for rosh hashanah last year because the government closed down the entire country three weeks before rosh hashanah specifically so that our group shouldn't come it was a whole crazy story some people managed to get in but only 3 000 people were there last year for rosh hashanah once again usually it's around fifty fifty thousand so this year we'll see what it looks like but there's supposed to be a lot of people [Music] lines massive lines it's never been like this but this whole system you have to put in an app on your phone and you have to put in your phone number and you get a text message and the system crashed and it wasn't sending text messages to us phone numbers so everyone here is calling their friends around the world trying to get a phone number from a different country to send a text message to for verification so i sent mine to israel other other people are sending to europe it's complicated but eventually hopefully we'll get in here i've been here close to an hour waiting hopefully we'll be in soon okay so thank god thank god i got into the country it's a big deal because last year i wasn't able to come this is going to be the 10th year the 10th year that i'm coming to one for rosh hashanah it would have been 10 years consecutively last year but last year once again i was not able to come because of covert it's good to be back i must say also the the ukrainian border guards were very very kind and there were people who were having trouble getting the text message verification on their phones and the border guards literally escorted them out of the airport to a shop where they can buy a local sim card so that the verification number would work and then they escort them back into the airport where they had to go through passport control after verifying their phone numbers but they have been very accommodating that's very nice anyhow we're getting into the car over here we have a three hour drive to uman and the holiday starts in about eight hours okay so just arrived in uma it's pretty pretty crazy here um you're probably gonna see things you've never seen in your life it's a very colorful group of people and anything can happen so just uh watch out for it the police block off the street for most cars so i have like five ten minutes of walking that i have to do down the main street over here and um we wanna attract as i said a lot of interesting people a lot of artist types a lot of very colorful people there's a lot of noise a lot of dancing and a lot of singing a lot of dancing never a dull moment at the same time we are going to be celebrating rosh hashanah which is a jewish new year day of judgment and it's also a very serious time and it's interesting to see how this works out together the seriousness of rosh hashanah along with the joy of rosh hashanah all in one place it's the happiest rosh hashanah you'll ever see anywhere else which is why i like to come here okay so i'm now in the apartment where we're staying um my father is here some of two of my brothers are here well i only have two brothers so they're both here and um i also have a sister which is not here anyway oh my god b hello please leave thank you okay not yet anyhow this is a little tiny balcony or porch whatever you want to call it it's closed in with windows and this is where i sleep there are beds here too but i like to have some privacy so i just put down a mattress on the floor right there this is where i stand leave the windows open it's freezing cold at night just the way i like it anyway i'm the kind of person who needs a little bit of personal space so and this apartment is very small there's ten people in it you need to understand that in uman i think the town usually has about 50 or 60 or maybe 70 000 residents and then for rosh hashanah all these see them move into town and the population of the town literally doubles overnight just for like a couple days and then everyone leaves again the sewer systems fail every year there's blackouts it's very hard for the town to absorb everything at once you know and like just shocks all infrastructure so anyhow there's also a lack of housing space which is why a lot of people are crammed into small apartments but it's for a short period of time and you know we're volunteering to do this not like everyone's forcing us to come so this is what we do because you know i do it personally because it's very important to me and this is definitely one of the spiritual highlights of my year probably the spiritual highlight of my year so yeah um another thing to keep in mind is that it gets very very crazy outside as i mentioned you saw a little bit of the markets and the people the music it's very easy to get distracted um so i try very hard to when i come here to like zone in focus on what's important spiritual growth and working on myself to become a better person obviously i get a little bit distracted every year also like i go outside and you know i meet friends and go out to eat there's a lot of pop-up restaurants that are not open all year but they're open now for rosh hashanah so it's impossible to you know pretty much almost impossible to just focus on learning studying torah and praying the whole day you gotta go out and give your give your physical side a little bit of attention too but for the most part i try to focus and stay on the streets because i came here for spiritual growth so that's what i want to focus on this is the view from my room so this is the town of uman only a couple years ago only the old soviet buildings existed all this new construction is a very recent last five ten years this place really has exploded with growth and people are buying properties here they're building hotels and restaurants and stores and whatnot so it's interesting to see this place develop every year get a little bit larger um anyway i have to pray i didn't dive in shockers yeah i didn't do the morning prayers yet it's already afternoon but i was traveling all day so it was uh pretty difficult to get that done so i'm gonna do it now then i'm gonna run out take care of some errands and before you know it it's rosh hashanah and no filming so i'm in the staircase of one of these old soviet buildings this is where we're staying very primitive but it works anyhow i am going out now to the streets to get some to run some errands i have to get the kettle which is a white robe which the jewish men here will wear on rosh hashanah i have to get a white kippah and a scarf because it's a little bit cold it's a little secret i was in such a rush to come to uma that i got on a plane without any clothing i sent my boy effie you know him from the steak video and i put he bought me socks and underwear and a bunch of other stuff what's up okay good so which one is mine this one small one you know i have clothing okay so the mattress is going down linen on top of that and schlemmy has himself a bed simple like that by the way it's supposed to go down to four degrees celsius i don't even know where that isn't fahrenheit but it's going to be cold really cold i'm going to enjoy it because my wife doesn't let me turn on the ac all year round so finally i get to have some cold weather okay so things are quieting down in the streets and um the holiday is starting the umptive starting rosh hashanah is starting in about less than an hour see a lot of people already dressed in white they're ready to go i'm headed to the mikvah which is a ritual bath that many hasidic men go to every single day and the ones who don't go every day many of them go on fridays before shabbos and if they don't go on fridays before chavez and they go before a holiday such as rosh hashanah and some people do all of them they go every day and they go before shabbat so that's where i'm headed now and then uh we're gonna shut all the technology down for 48 hours and focus on rocking in the new year okay guys rosh hashanah starting in a minute or two wanted to wish you all a happy healthy sweet new year and um that's it we'll see you in 48 hours be well