הרב נחמן מברסלב

Rav Nachman of Breslov (Rosh Chodesh Nisan 5532/1772–18 Tishrei 5571/1810), founder of Breslov chassidut, was born in Medzhibuzh, the town of his great-grandfather the Baal Shem Tov. His mother Feiga was a daughter of Adil, the Baal Shem Tov’s daughter, and his father Rav Simcha was a son of Rav Nachman of Horodenka, a close talmid of the Baal Shem Tov, after whom the child was named. From his youth he gave himself to hitbodedut, to fasting, and to long hours of tefillah. At thirteen he married Sashia, daughter of R’ Ephraim, and moved to her father’s home in a village near Smila; on his wedding day he drew his first talmid, Shimon. From 5550/1790 he lived in Medvedevka, where a circle of chassidim gathered around him.

In 5558/1798 he set out for Eretz Yisrael, arriving by ship in Haifa on erev Rosh Hashanah 5559. He stayed about half a year in Teveria, where his presence brought peace between camps of chassidim, and he visited Tzfat and the ancient shul in Meron. Caught in Acco under Napoleon’s siege, he escaped aboard a Turkish warship and came home by way of Rhodes. The journey remade him: he asked that his Torah from before the visit no longer be cited, and he would say from then on that wherever he walks, he is walking to Eretz Yisrael.

In 5562/1802 the Rebbe settled in Breslov, where Rav Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov — Reb Noson — became his talmid and right hand, writing down all his formal Torah. The eight Breslov years were his most fruitful; his chassidim gathered to him for Rosh Hashanah, Shabbat Chanukah, and Shavuot. His teaching turns on closeness to Hashem: an hour each day of hitbodedut, speaking to Hashem in one’s own words as with a good friend, best of all in a field or forest; simchah as a great mitzvah at all times; simple faith; seeking out the good points in oneself and in others; and war against despair, which he taught has no existence in the world at all. Those years carried grief as well — his little son Shlomo Efraim was niftar in 5566/1806, and his wife Sashia was taken by tuberculosis in 5567/1807, the illness that soon afterward seized the Rebbe himself.

In 5570/1810, after fire destroyed his house in Breslov, he moved to Uman, where thousands of kedoshim of the massacre of 5528/1768 lay in a mass grave; he had told his talmidim that he wished to lie among them. There he told the deep tales printed afterward as Sippurei Maasiyot. He was niftar on 18 Tishrei, the fourth day of Sukkot, at thirty-eight, and was buried in the old cemetery of Uman. Before his passing he set two close talmidim as witnesses to his word: whoever comes to his kever, gives a prutah to tzedakah, and says the ten mizmorim of his Tikkun HaKlali, for him he would labor to help and to mend. Reb Noson brought his Torah to print — Likutei Moharan (first volume, Ostrog 5568/1808), Sefer HaMidot, and Sichot HaRan — and established the Rosh Hashanah kibbutz at the kever in Uman, a gathering kept up even in hiding under Soviet rule, and which in our day draws tens of thousands each year.