The Holiday of Many, Many Fires..Lag B'omer

Hard to believe folks but this is our fiftieth blog entry, I cannot believe we have written so much. It helps us to feel connected to you and to know you have access to details about our life. I also find it very relaxing and enjoyable and I quite enjoy looking back at our experiences and milestones in writing.

Lag B'omer in Neve Daniel began weeks before Lag B'omer actually began. Soon after pesach we began to notice young children wandering around the yishuv pulling around sticks, branches oh and skids! This was the beginning of the great wood hunt which would continue on until the night of many fires. It was hysterical, driving home I would come across a group of little people, together, pulling massive pieces of wood to some site where it was counted and catalogued until the night. It was necessary to catalogue the wood because if you didn't keep track of what your shevet owned and what was in your woodpile, items would disappear. The kids clearly took this whole ritual very seriously and parents were subsequently pulled into the hoopla and could be found filling up their nice vans with old wood and shlepping it to their kids medura (bonfire) site. We couldn't imagine that the kids would manage to burn all this stuff, but that didn't seem to slow them down any, the wood was travelling and my kids kept going out with their shevets to collect. If you didn't collect with the shevet you may not be welcome at the medura.


Well, Lag B'omer did arrive and after we had bought the mangal (BBQ) items that each kid was asked to bring for their bonfire, we set out to the first stop. We went to the shechunah chadasha, our future neighborhood, and there was a neighborhood medura happening. A huge , massive fire with hotdogs and marshmellows and music and singing and a lot of great people was a happening. Bubbie, of course, was with us and thought this all so interesting. IT was really just so much fun, eating burnt marshmellows, singing rebbe shimon bar yochai how much better does it get? The kids were all over the place just so happy to watch their wood go up in smoke. MOre than anything I think we felt , once again, this overwhelming sense of community, where everyone came together to celebrate together what was important in their lives. We looked out over the hills of yehuda and saw a landscape speckled with bonfires, beitar seemed to have a couple of massive ones happening. That day we had heard commercials and warnings on the radio reminding people about fire safety and how to build and maintain a safe medura! only in Israel!>


We finished up at the neighborhood bonfire and promised the kids we would visit each of their bonfires. So off we went Darrell, bubbie, myself and Sara to visit our kids bonfires. We arrived to the sites and were met with a long row of bonfires one after the other..........it was incredible.

Each bonfire was surrounded by a bunch of happy kids, preparing all their meat and food, potatoes were being wrapped to throw into the fires to bake as were whole onions, and grills were being prepared with MEAT for the late night eatathons that were about to take place. At one point I looked at Darrell and told him that clearly hashem and his angels were watching over the little children of Israel and their blazing infernos. How would I sleep knowing my children were out here with their madrichim and all these fires?

Oh, how things have changed! We said goodnight to our kids and gave them insane curfews, David 1:00 am and Yonatan 5:00am and Avital's was only starting at midnight so there wasn't a curfew per say. Now don't think we were completely negligent, each fire had atleast one madrich and sometimes a parent would stick around, I think security was circulating to check on the infernos and their arsonists. We walked home listening to the laughing , and singing of all the children.............."amar rabbi akiva, ve'ahavta le'reicha kamocha"! Oh, to be jewish in a jewish country.....

.