JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Lag B’Omer is traditionally a happy festival when Jews celebrate with bonfires and picnics, but I have always known it as the day when most of my mother’s family was murdered. My mother, Lunia Athalie Backenroth Gartner Weiss, came from the Gartner family, which was well-known for philanthropy. The Gartners built the theater in Stryj,…
Seeing bags of marshmallows in the supermarket stopped Michal Reit in her tracks. “That’s when it hit me: It will be a whole year,” said the American-born Israeli mother of six. Like Reit, observant Jews across Israel typically celebrate Lag B’Omer, which begins on Wednesday evening, by building bonfires, roasting marshmallows and potatoes and making…
Rabbi Shragi Gestetner was born to make music. He started composing when he was 12. He sold his first song at 18. His debut album, Shragee, pulsates with the joy of a man who has found his calling. The year after it came out, Tablet called Gestetner one of the “rising talents of the current…
Every tragedy seems to cry out for an explanation. Initial explanations are practical and outline the worldly reasons why a terrible event occurred. For believers there is an additional burden — the question of how God could allow such suffering. The deaths on Lag B’Omer at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount…
Editor’s note: Dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews were killed in a stampede on April 29, 2021, while celebrating Lag B’Omer in the city of Meron in northern Israel. As details of the horrific incident are still unfolding, we are republishing this 2017 article with background on the festival. What is Lag B’Omer? Lag B’Omer is one…
(JTA) — In late April, police in London and Chicago broke up splashy Jewish weddings that far exceeded the number of people allowed under social distancing rules. Since then, no weddings have made the Jewish news — but that could change in the next day. That’s because tonight begins Lag b’Omer, a holiday when observant Jews get…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Sephardi Jews often complain that Ashkenazim dominate Jewish culture to the point that they are losing aspects of their own cultural identity. The way one studies in a typical Yeshiva, the type of food eaten in honor of the Sabbath, the music, the men’s clothing, everything symbolizing…
Hasidic Jews celebrating a Jewish holiday triggered a massive explosion in London’s Stamford Hill neighborhood after putting cell phones into a bonfire pyre, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The bonfire had been kindled for Lag B’Omer, a holiday that falls halfway between Passover and Shavuot. It is traditional in Israel and among religious Jews to create…
