For many years, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum of the Satmar group, who was based in the US, said to his students that it was not customary outside of Israel to make bonfires, and he discouraged the students in his yeshiva from lighting bonfires on . However, in 2000 his father, Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, the then-Grand Rabbi of Satmar, instructed his son to make a large bonfire in the Satmar enclave of Kiryas Joel, New York, US on the night of . In 2012 the Lag BaOmer bonfire in Kiryas Joel drew an estimated 50,000 participants.