The year 2020 with an outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic put unprecedented challenges to all forms of travelling, including religious tourism and pilgrimages. Particularly, the Hasidic pilgrimages to numerous graves of their spiritual leaders in Poland and Ukraine were cancelled for the danger of spreading the deadly virus. Although the Hasidic pilgrimage destinations are connected with Ultra-Orthodox groups in Judaism, they remain the most visible representation of the pre-war vibrant Jewish life in the region. Thus, pandemic restrictions provoked many historical parallels with the war times and the ban on any religious activity by the Communist regime. At the same time, the topic of pilgrimages has become an important one in resurrection of old stereotypes and myths about "the Others" and their place in local discourses. The times of pandemic has become the times of outlining new borders of what is accepted and what should be forbidden, based on a definition of "Us" and "Ours".
In my presentation, I will focus on two most numerous and well-known places of pilgrimage in Ukraine and Poland, namely Uman and Lężajsk. Taking into account non-official voices about the pilgrimage in local mass media, I will outline main discourses about the absence of pilgrims in both town. Specifically, I will apply the framework of purity and danger elaborated by Mary Douglas and analyze the explanatory schemes beyond each discourse. I will also touch official discourses of local bodies of power, although they are much less illustrative due to formal requirements to public speeches. However, in the case of Uman, official voices became the source of public debates about the pilgrimage and could not be ignored, either.
Both cases became connected in September due to intentions of many Hasidic pilgrims (of Breslov stream) to get to Uman for celebrating Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) despite the entry ban to all foreigners. Being cut from Ukraine, some smaller groups stopped in neighboring countries, visiting other important places (such as Leżajsk). The topic of pilgrimages to Uman gained national and international attention; it also posed a question about possibilities to keep rituals and cultural memory of Ultra-Orthodox communities in alternative forms and spaces.
