Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

POEM: Lag B’Omer

And at home
in these wasted paradises
after the invasion and the raising
of the flag and Cain
after the ousting of one dictator
and the installing of another
the carcasses will be gnawed white
    – Kwame Dawes

Thirty-three days after we left Egypt, the manna started dropping from heaven. It lay on the ground like snow. If we didn’t eat it we would starve to death. If we ate it we would essentially be declaring ourselves his slaves.

We were to purify ourselves.

We were to identify ourselves with the collective.

We needed an enemy.

We could never say that God was our enemy, treating us as a toy. We could say that Moses was our enemy. We could drive him to distraction.

The colors of the desert sweep clean the mind.

Stone, shrubbery, wind

Thistle and thorn

The dunes of morning

On Riverside Drive, the annual Aids Walk: massive crowds fill the promenade to the horizon both uptown and downtown of 97th St. And later, on Central Park West, a parade of Ecuadorans, threaded by Mexicans, drumming and dancing, shamans wearing wild black and silver demonic costumes and terrifying bird masks with big curved black beaks, and others in huge costumes covered in neon-dyed furs and sequins and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and headdresses like large flat bowls topped by immense plumes, and a large brown woman of fifty dancing in a festive bell-shaped blue and white peasant skirt, and…a float with a band, and…it stopped at 97th, where I was about to bike home, and all the folks in the parade were taking off their costumes and stowing them in trunks, and looked just like ordinary brown people. What a great thing to deck oneself in color for an afternoon. We white people should try it.

And then on 97th St between Columbus and Amsterdam was a big Lag b’Omer street party, courtesy of Chabad. Their costumes incline toward black, toward the subdued, and I heard no music. I saw earnest participation. Food. Storytelling. Pale children playing video games, Paradise hovering above their kippas.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.