(JTA) — In normal times, Budapest’s Jews come together to celebrate Lag b’Omer with large bonfires featuring loud music, dancing and lots of high spirits.
The COVID-19 pandemic and Hungary’s ban on gatherings made the fire impossible this year. But some community members were determined to persevere with the other holiday characteristics.
On Tuesday, Budapest Jews took to the city’s main streets in a Lag b’Omer convoy comprising dozens of vehicles bearing signs with messages of encouragement and blasting upbeat music.
The signs read: “To love your fellow is the most basic principal,” “There is no despair in the world at all” and “Continue to smile and others will smile after you,” Rabbi Shlomo Koves, director of the Chabad-affiliated EMIH federation of Hungarian-Jewish communities, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Lag b’Omer is a holiday of hope during a difficult time of an ancient epidemic,” Koves said of the holiday, which some associate with a Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire and others connect to the survival of many Jews of a first-century pandemic.
“During this period, when we are separated from each other in the physical sense, it is especially important to strength the message of the neighborly love and human dignity, principals that are like light posts in times of darkness.”
The EMIH Lag B’Omer convoy drove along some of Budapest’s main traffic arteries and across the Danube River.
About 425 people have died of COVID-19 in Hungary. Most were from Budapest.
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