In honor of Lag BaOmer, many Jewish media platforms are publishing archival footage showing how children’s parades were held in different years to mark the occasion. Particular attention, of course, is given to New York – the global center of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Among the many parades held in New York on this day, the 1990 parade stands out as truly legendary. It was a time of great historic change: the Berlin Wall had fallen, “velvet revolutions” swept across Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the global communist utopia seemed inevitable. A powerful spiritual awakening had begun among the “Jews of silence” – the Jews of the still-Soviet Union.
At this parade, the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, delivered a major address to Jews around the world. Soon afterward, a young rabbi, Shmuel Kaminezki, was entrusted with an important mission by the Rebbe – to become his emissary in Dnipro, a city the Rebbe referred to as his own, a city he blessed, and one that would soon become a leader in the Jewish revival.
