The Tombs of the Righteous and Cosmic Energy in Ukraine

Zatorska, Magdalena

doi:0071-1861

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Title: The Tombs of the Righteous and Cosmic Energy in Ukraine

Abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Uman (Ukraine), an important Hasidic pilgrimage centre built around the tomb of the Jewish righteous rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, I explore the notion of energy employed by Uman’s non-Hasidic and non-Jewish inhabitants to describe the pilgrimages and their impact on the town. I argue that for some of the Uman residents energy, as a part of a wider set of ontological convictions, explains the agency of human and other-than-human actors, as well as the animacy of the world they inhabit. In this contribution, I show how the notion of energy reflects the local and supralocal contexts, in particular the struggles for national identity and sovereignty and is employed in the process of co-creating the Hasidic pilgrimage to Uman by the pilgrimage’s “others”.

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