The West Hempstead community came together for a Lag B’Omer celebration barbecue at Hempstead Lake State Park on Tuesday, May 6. The event was organized by Chabad West Hempstead along with local synagogues, including Beis Medrash of West Hempstead. Over 1500 participants attended the celebration.
Attractions and activities for children at the celebration included a video game truck, a bouncy house and inflatable slide, the park carousel, a pony ride station, and marshmallow roasting. The event was catered by I&D Glatt Kosher Food Market of West Hempstead.
Rabbi Yossi Lieberman, director of Chabad West Hempstead, has organized the Lag B’Omer celebration for 20 years. “I coordinated this on behalf of the entire West Hempstead community,” Lieberman said. “The fact that we’ve been doing it this long speaks to the generosity of the community; it’s nice to bring people from all different backgrounds together.”
Lieberman takes pride in bringing West Hempstead’s Jewish community together for a celebration of this magnitude. “Today, being proud and able to celebrate our festivals is a top priority,” he said. “I see the enthusiasm on everyone’s faces, and it brings me pride. It’s all about Jewish pride.”
He hopes that people who are not as familiar with Lag B’Omer can learn about it and celebrate it in the future. “I hope they embrace this holiday,” he said. The holiday celebrates one of the “great sages of old, Rabbi Shimon bar-Yochai,” Lieberman said. “He directed us to celebrate this holiday on the day of his passing.”
Yochai is credited with the writing of the Zohar, a Kabbalistic text. The Kabbalah is, according to Chabad, “the mystical dimension of Torah.” Lag B’Omer is usually celebrated with bonfires, music, and other outside community events, like what Chabad West Hempstead organized this past week,
