"This is nothing compared to India. Very mild." 

We scrabbled round a corrugated-steel fence and ran for it, out of the delirium and the filth of "the ghetto" like our great-something grandfathers had done — mine to Berlin, his to Moscow. 

"These are the Hari Krishna of Judaism." 

We cursed the rejection of Herzl and Einstein around us. We longed for blonde girls and beer and a world without beards. But before we got there we were cornered by three beefy Hasids in prayer shawls. They shoved a magic plant in my face. "Repent! Repent!" 

We hunted for booze. We passed Uman's forlorn concrete Lenin. We made eyes at a few local ladies in shellsuits loitering by an open car. "What's up?" they laughed, making a Hitler salute. I had forgotten to take off my black crocheted kippah (skullcap). We grabbed some beers from a roadside kiosk. We met Igor, a typically verbose nocturnal alcoholic. "Those dirty Yids are an absolute disaster." 

We found a club called XY. It was all strobe lighting and miniskirts. The sacked diplomat wanted pepper vodka, which triggered an argument about whether Israel should make territorial concessions. We calmed down with a beer and tried our luck. Two beauties to our drunken eyes recoiled in horror. "You're really Hasids!" The redhead who seemed up for it at first quickly turned out to be a prostitute. "Buy me a packet of cigarettes . . . at least . . . if you want to dance."

My friend insisted he had diplomatic skills that could salvage the evening. Chitchat was initiated smoothly with a drunk blonde holding on to the bar for support. "Merry Christmas," she said. "Merry Jew Christmas." 

"How did you know we were Jews?" shouted the diplomat into her ear as the turbo trash beat dropped.

 "How did I know you were Jews? Because . . . Jew is written all over your fucking face." 

I will never forget this about Uman. The muddy streets packed with every kind of Jewish man I could have imagined: tattooed Ethiopian barmen, Hasidic dandies in white cloaks and shtreimel fur hats, buzz-cut Israeli surfers in T-shirts and leather jackets, exulting rabbis in white tasselled prayer shawls, trembling ginger settlers in knitted kippah and tie-dyed ponchos, emaciated old Hasids in white fur bushy kolpik hats and ultra-Orthodox teenagers in fox hats and rags. 

The 20,000 filled the muddy crossroads, climbed atop kiosks, crammed the long and dreary Soviet streets, lined by dilapidated housing estates. Hasids came out on to every rickety balcony of every grey, drab block as fathers lifted fidgeting little sons in skullcap yarmulkas on to their shoulders. The Jews trembled. Israeli rude boys in hoodies waved leaflets of psalms and climbed telegraph poles and street lamps. At the front there was one unremarkable, medium-sized loudspeaker. Each and every eye was fixed on it.