Featuring clowns, floats, elaborately-decorated vehicles, and drum-carrying children, Berlin’s first-ever Jewish parade was as colorful as it was historic.
Organized by Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin and co-sponsored by a host of Jewish organizations in the city, the May 2 parade and accompanying street fair brought out 1,500 men, women and children of all ages for the holiday of Lag B’Omer.
“The excitement was palpable,” said Rabbi Shmuel Segal, program director at the Rohr Chabad Center. “Hundreds of people marched together in a display of unity and happiness.”
An estimated 1,500 people took part in what is widely-believed to be the city of Berlin’s first-ever Jewish parade.
Marching alongside clowns, floats, and elaborately-decorated vehicles, attendees snaked their way through central Berlin, stopping at the city’s Chabad-Lubavitch educational center for a street fair and carnival.
Echoing similar parades elsewhere in the world, Berlin’s festivities celebrated the springtime holiday of Lag B’Omer, which marks the passing of the second-century mystical sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
Rabbi Yehuda Tiechtel, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin, addresses the crowd.
The program included a children’s recital of Torah passages.
A bagpipe corps led the way.
The parade came just a day after neo-Nazis held an illegal May Day demonstration at the same location as the parade’s starting point.
A children’s drum corps helped keep the tempo.
Attendees stressed the historic nature of the proceedings.
Carnival-style rides and games awaited revelers at the Chabad-Lubavitch educational center in Berlin.
Jewish organizations in Berlin, including the Israeli Embassy, the Jewish National Fund, the Central Welfare Council of Jews in Germany, B’nai B’rith, and United Israel Appeal co-sponsored the event.
The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement Written by Steven Pease it highlights succinctly the achievements of Jews worldwide in time for Jewish American Heritage month.
-representing only 2% of the world's population, Pease notes:
-36% of the world's Nobel Prize in Economics winners are Jewish
-51% of Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction are also Jewish
-37% of Academy Award winning directors are Jewish as well
The book is much more than its numbers but elaborates the journeys to excellence as much as the significance of the accomplishments as well as their impacts still represented today.
Pease was in fact raised Presbyterian, though his own background doesn't preclude him from effectively researching not only why but how only 2% of the world's population came to contribute so much?