A trip to Uman in Ukraine to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov briefly turned into a scene from a crime movie for a group of 10 Israeli women on Wednesday, when they thought their bus was being hijacked by the local mafia. It turned out that the matter was a misunderstanding and involved an unpaid debt of the driver, which because of the language gap was at first believed to be an abduction. A representative of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the National Security Council, along with an Israel Police liaison with the Ukraine police, handled the incident with local officials. The Foreign Ministry reported that the driver's debt has been discharged and the incident was over. The Israelis whose trip to Ukraine got off to a shocking start were among the tens of thousands of Israelis who travel to Uman ahead of Rosh Hashanah to pray at the grave of Rabbi Nachman. While mainly men arrive for the holiday itself, both women and men make the pilgrimage in the weeks before the High Holidays, as well as at other times during the year.
