Other holy sites

Berdychev

In the 19th century, Berdychiv was the largest Jewish community in Ukraine and one of the largest in Europe—more than 50,000 Jews lived there.

Today, Hasidim from all over the world make pilgrimages to the graves of Rabbis Levi-Yitzhak Ben Meir of Berdychiv and Lieber Eliezer.

The Jewish cemetery, where Levi Yitzhak was buried in 1809, is located at 72 Zhytomyrska Street, north of the city in the direction of Zhytomyr. It is the only one of the city’s three Jewish cemeteries that has survived. About 5,000 tombstones remain here.

In 1991, a new mausoleum was erected over Levi Yitzhak’s grave with funds from Israeli philanthropist Nahman Elbaum.

Sadhora

Sadgora is now a neighborhood of Chernivtsi, but it was once the nearby Jewish town of Sadagura.
In Sadgora, Hasidim attend a synagogue built in 1842. It was, along with the adjacent complex, the property of Tzadik Israel Friedman—the spiritual father of the Sadgora Hasidim, who settled in Sadagura in 1841 after arriving from Ruzhyn.

Every year, Hasidim come here to pay their respects at the tzadik’s grave; during his lifetime, he possessed the gift of healing the terminally ill, and, according to pilgrims, he has not lost this ability even after his death.

Belz

The Jewish (Ashkenazi) community in Belz was established in the late 14th century.
In 1665, the Jews of Belz were granted equal rights. It was here that Rabbi Solomon Rokach (1779–1855), a miracle-working Hasidic tzaddik, settled. From that time on, Hasidim began flocking to the city.

Between 1839 and 1845, the Great Synagogue was built in Belz according to a design by Sholom Rokach, becoming a sacred site for Jews around the world. Later, after 1849, a Beit Midrash—a Jewish educational institution with a library—was built in Belz.

Sholom Rokach and his family are buried in the local Jewish cemetery.

Polonne

Polonne is a town in the Khmelnytskyi region, one of the oldest in Ukraine, first mentioned in a chronicle from 996. Jews began settling here as early as the 16th century.

In the 18th century, the preachers Aryeh Yehuda Leib and Yaakov Yosef Cohen lived and worked in Polonne.
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Cohen (1704–1784) was one of the most renowned spiritual leaders of the city’s Jewish community, as well as one of the closest disciples of Baal Shem Tov, who was a follower of Tzadik Nachman. Yaakov Yosef Cohen was an ardent supporter of what was then a new religious movement within Judaism—Hasidism (translated from Hebrew as “the teaching of the pious”). He authored four books on the teachings of Baal Shem Tov.

Aryeh Yehuda Leib (year of birth unknown, died in 1770) was a follower of Hasidism and the rabbi of the town’s Jewish community.

Both rabbis are buried in a stone crypt that has been preserved at the ancient Jewish cemetery in Polonne. Their graves have become a place of pilgrimage for followers of various branches of Hasidism. All that remains of the Jewish community in Polonne is the cemetery and several old wooden Jewish houses near the cemetery, one of which houses an active synagogue. The choral synagogue building has also been preserved; it now houses a museum dedicated to Peretz Markish, a native of Polonne, public figure, and poet who wrote in Yiddish.