Na Nach Nachman of Uman in the Landscape

posted by Pearl Abraham

In Israel, in the streets of Jerusalem, on bus stops and buildings in Tel Aviv, at checkpoints in Jenin, the stuttering mantra, “Na Nach Nachman of Uman,” appears as colorful grafitti. The legend surrounding this mantra is intriguingly absurd in the way Hasidic writings often are:

Some eighty years ago, at the age of 17, a teenager named Yisroel Ber Odessa became enamored of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, an early 19th century Hasidic master, writer, and charismatic whose interrupted tale inspires The Seventh Beggar. Disturbed by their son’s strange obsession, Ber Odessa’s parents banished him from their home, which depressed the young man. In an effort to cheer him up, several of his friends penned a letter and signed it “Na Nach Nachman of Uman,” a kind of stutter of Nachman’s name. Ber Odessa considered the letter a genuine missive from Nachman, accepted the stuttering signature as a mantra, and persisted in his belief even after his friends confessed that they had authored the letter as a prank. When Ber Odessa became a spiritual teacher in Tiberius, his young students adopted their teacher’s mantra as their own and started broadcasting it in graffiti format. The uplifting spirituality taught by Ber Odessa came to be associated with Nachman, and the ubiquitous mantra continues to proliferate in the form of this graphic populist art.

I will be reading from The Seventh Beggar tonight at 7:30 at B&N at 8th Street and 6th Avenue.

21 September 2005 | uncategorized |