A good time had by all at Chabad's Lag B'Omer

By State Rep. Jason Bedrick (N.H.)
GateHouse News Service
Thu May 10, 2007, 12:34 PM EDT

Wellesley - Rabbi Moshe and Geni Bleich hosted more than 75 people at the Wellesley-Weston Chabad on May 6 for what some partygoers described as “the best Lag B’Omer event ever” in Wellesley. Children jumped and played on a large, inflatable Moon Bounce and ran around with cotton candy while adults feasted on hamburgers and hot dogs grilled by Leib Shaeffer, a Marine who recently returned from Iraq.

The Talmud records that in the early second century, a plague killed 24,000 students of the great Jewish sage, Rabbi Akiva. Lag B’Omer commemorates the day when the plague ended. Rabbi Bleich explained to guests that Lag B’Omer is also the anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a student of Rabbi Akiva who wrote the Zohar, the central mystical book of Kaballah. Hundreds of thousands of Jews gather every year on Lag B’Omer at Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s burial site on Mt. Meron in Israel.

This coming Friday night, Chabad will host a Shabbat dinner where Rabbi Pinny Lew of Brooklyn, N.Y., will speak about Professor Liviu Librscue, the Holocaust survivor who sacrificed his own life to save the lives of several students at Virginia Tech. The event begins at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, May 11. The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP by calling 781-239-1076, Chabadwellesley@aol.com.