Reb Noson arranged the first Rosh Hashanah kibbutz in Uman after Rebbe Nachman of Breslov died. The gathering began in 1811, the year after Nachman’s death, at the gravesite in Uman, Ukraine.
During his lifetime, Rebbe Nachman strongly urged his followers to spend Rosh Hashanah with him. He died in 1810 and was buried in Uman, so Reb Noson understood the continuing pilgrimage as a way for the Hasidim to remain connected to their teacher and to preserve his central holiday instruction.
Reb Noson, whose full name was Nathan Sternhartz of Breslov, became the movement’s principal organizer and transmitter, although he did not claim to replace Nachman as a new rebbe. He continued leading the annual gathering until his death in 1844.
The Uman pilgrimage later grew from a small Hasidic gathering into the defining annual event of Breslov Hasidism. Michel Dorfman and Levi Yitzchok Bender were important later leaders, but they belonged to subsequent generations, while the Baal Shem Tov lived more than a century earlier.