How Jimmy Carter Saved A Jewish Mausoleum In Ukraine
(ANALYSIS) President Jimmy Carter, who died at age 100, was eulogized last Thursday at his state funeral in Washington, D.C. in a Scripture-filled service recalling a lifetime of good deeds and spirituality. Overlooked in all the tributes to the 39th U.S. president and born again evangelical Baptist was Carter’s critical role in 1979 from preventing the demolition of the mausoleum of Chassidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in Uman, then part of the 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, now in Ukraine, in 1810.
While today the pilgrimage shrine some 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of Kiev attracts tens of thousands each year, especially during the two-day Rosh Hashana festival in September. During the Soviet era, the modest grave behind the Iron Curtain was little visited and in danger of being demolished. Local authorities planned to raze the neighborhood built atop the historic cemetery in order to erect nine-story apartment blocks.
News of the urban renewal project reached Rabbi Michael Dorfman, a leader of the Breslov community. a branch of Hasidic Judaism, in Jerusalem, from a local resident who didn’t want to lose her home. Dorfman immediately embarked on an urgent trip to the United States to coordinate a campaign of diplomatic pressure on Soviet authorities.
Meeting with major figures in the Ultra-Orthodox world, Dorfman met with Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America. Sherer arranged a meeting with U.S. 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 chassidic movement based in New York City.
The rebbe directed him: “Contact Rabbi Pinchas Teitz. He, with God’s help, will assist you.”
Several years earlier, when Carter was a little-known candidate for U.S. president, Schneerson had instructed Teitz to make contact with the commander in chief. Teitz, who led the Lubavitch community in Elizabeth, N.J., organized a well-attended event in the former peanut farmer’s honor. The rally contributed to Carter’s narrow electoral win. Carter thanked Teitz from the White House.
The lette — also signed by Carter’s White House Counsel and Jewish affairs advisor Robert Lipschutz — invited him to contact the Oval Office any time he needed assistance.
That moment would soon come.
In May 1979 — some 10 days after the Teitz met Carter in Washington — Carter was scheduled to meet with Soviet Premier Brezhnev in Vienna to sign the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Utilizing his contacts, Dorfman recruited Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, an American academic who had translated and annotated Nachman’s work, to prepare a memo on the significance of the Breslov holy site.
The letter eventually made its way to Carter through his Jewish affairs advisor. Two days later, a response from Lipschutz arrived: “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, the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin stated that the Kremlin had “decided to honor the plan as originally scheduled, except for Bialynski Street. That yard will remain untouched.”
And it remains so to this day.
Gil Zohar was born in Toronto and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.