Jimmy Carter was eulogized on January 9 at his state funeral in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, in a hymn-laden, scripture-laced service recalling a lifetime of good deeds and spirituality. Overlooked in the tributes to the 39th US president and born-again evangelical Baptist – who died on December 29 at age 100 – was his critical role in 1979 in preventing the demolition of the mausoleum of Hassidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) in Uman, Soviet Ukraine.
Nachman chose to buried in Uman’s Jewish cemetery – the site of a mass grave of the victims of the 1768 pogrom – after his home burned down in Breslov in 1810. The great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (c.1700-1760), who founded the Hassidic movement that swept across Eastern Europe, Nachman promised blessings for those who recited Psalms at his graveside. Since his followers never appointed a new rebbe, they became known as the “dead Hassidim.” Many became attracted by the movement’s outreach through music and Nachman’s enigmatic parables, which influenced Czech Jewish writer Franz Kafka.
Notwithstanding the Russo-Ukraine war, which has forced pilgrims to fly to Moldova to reach Ukraine, the shrine, 211 km. south of Kyiv, continues to attract tens of thousands annually, especially during the two-day Rosh Hashanah festival in September. During the Soviet era, however, the modest grave behind the Iron Curtain was infrequently visited and was in danger of being demolished. Local authorities planned to raze the ramshackle neighborhood built atop the historic cemetery in order to erect nine-story apartment blocks.
News of the urban renewal project reached Rabbi Michael Dorfman (1913-2006), a Ukrainian-born leader of the Breslov community in Jerusalem. An Uman resident named Mrs. Zubeida, who lived near the holy site, didn’t want to lose her home with its garden and chickens. Dorfman immediately set off to the United States to coordinate a campaign of diplomatic pressure on Soviet authorities.
He met with major figures in the ultra-Orthodox community, such as Joel Teitelbaum, the Grand Rebbe of the Satmar Rebbe, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Dorfman also conferred with Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America. Sherer arranged a meeting with US State Department officials. While sympathetic, the diplomats were unable to intervene.
Together with Rabbi Nasan Maimon, Dorfman then passed a letter to Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was at the helm of the international Chabad-Lubavitch Hassidic movement based in Brooklyn. The Rebbe directed him: “Contact Rabbi Pinchas Teitz. He, with God’s help, will assist you."
Three years earlier, when Carter was a little-known Georgia congressman campaigning to become US president, Schneerson had instructed Teitz to make contact with him. Teitz, who led the Lubavitch community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, organized a well-attended event in the former peanut farmer’s honor. The rally contributed to Carter’s narrowly won election. Carter thanked Teitz from the White House. The letter, also signed by Carter’s White House counsel and Jewish affairs adviser Robert Lipschutz, invited him to contact the Oval Office should he ever need assistance.
In May 1979, some 10 days after Teitz had met Carter in Washington, the president was scheduled to meet in Vienna with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev to sign the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Utilizing his contacts, Dorfman recruited Aryeh Kaplan, a physicist who had switched careers to become a Breslover rabbi. Dorfman, who had translated and annotated Rebbe Nachman’s mystical works, prepared a memo on the significance of the holy site. The report made its way to Carter through his Jewish affairs adviser.
Two days later, he received a response from Lipschutz: “Everything is arranged. President Carter will speak with the Russians at the conference, and the matter will be settled. Do not worry.”
A few days after the Carter–Brezhnev tête-à-tête, Soviet ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin stated, “The Kremlin has decided to honor the plan as originally scheduled, except for Bialynski Street. That yard will remain untouched.”■