A Fortuitous Phone Call

My phone rang this afternoon, and a wonderful gentleman was kind enough to tell me about the amazing salvation that he received when he turned last year to Rabbi Abuchatzera (the great mekubal). If I wanted his prayers on Lag B'omer to save me too, all I needed to do was...press 1.
I pressed 1.
A moment later, a lovely young woman told me my options.
It seems that the Rav Abuchatzera is having a hachnasat Sefer Torah on Lag B'omer, and wants me to dedicate a page of the Torah.
How much? Well, for just 360 shekel a month for 12 months (they never tell you the full sum, just how much it will cost), I can dedicate an Amud of the Torah, and the names that I submit will enter into the Rav's special list for whom he'll say Kabbalistic prayers during a special Tikkun. But that's not all.
I will also receive a special kamea (amulet). She didn't specify what the amulet was for.
But wait, there's more.
I would also get a special flask of olive oil that was (her words), "Found from the era of the holy Ar"i." Wait, really?
"Yes, she said. There's a tradition from 'back then' that this oil was kindled and remained lit from the time of the Ar"i.
But how can they have that much oil, I wondered? After all, they couldn't have found that much? I hope this isn't oil that they bought in the supermarket. (Yes, I said that.)
No, she explained. I just get a flask of shirayim (leftovers). And, the Kabbalists blessed the oil and sanctified it.
"Really? They made kiddush over the oil? I thought you only make kiddush over wine?"
She explained: "I don't really understand Kaballah, but the rabbis prayed that this oil should help the people who use it." Now I understood.
What if a whole amud is too much for me? Can I buy a verse?
Sure you can, she said. That will cost 148 shekel. (times 12 months). But then you get the amulet, but you don't get the oil. They don't have very much of the oil.
Any other options?
You can dedicate four words of the Torah, and that's 74 shekel (times 12). You get the amulet too.
Really? That much? Almost 1,000 shekel for four words?
Look, she told me. This isn't just any Torah. It's a special Torah in which all of Klal Yisrael is taking part. That's a great merit.
She was pretty convincing. After all, who doesn't need salvation? I sure do. But then my wife called, and I had to hang up.
Then I remembered an article published last year listing the ten richest rabbis in Israel. It seems that three of them have the last name "Abuchatzera." It's amazing that they're the ones who found the holy oil. How fortunate.

Lag B'omer Schedule 5772

Just to give you a sense of the craziness that is Lag B'omer in Israel, I'd like to share with you the suggested schedule emailed to the members of our yishuv, with suggeted "times" that the various bonfires should end this coming Wednesday night.

זו המלצה בלבד, אך כוחה של המלצה זו יפעל רק אם כולנו ההורים ניישמה, ובכך ניטיב עם ילדינו. עשרות הורים בכלל הקהילות כבר הודיעו על הצטרפותם למהלך. בהצלחה לכולנו.

המדריכים מתנועות הנוער נתבקשו להיות במדורות עד שעת הסיום המוצעת.

כיתות א-ב (אם יש כאלה שעושים ללא ההורים)	22:30
כיתות ג	23:30
כיתות ד	24:30
כיתות ה	01:30
כיתות ו- ח	בשעה  01:00-03:00 יוצאים למשחק המרוץ למיליון.

Translation:
This is just a recommendation, but its power is only effective if all of us parents follow through - for the benefit of our children. Tens of parents in the community have notified us that they will partipate in this initiative. Good luck to us all.
Madrichim of the youth groups are asked to remain present at the bonfires until the recommended end time.

Grade and Suggested End time:
Grades 1-2 (If there are those who make bonfired without parents: 10:30pm
Grade 3: 11:30pm
Grade 4: 12:30am
Grade 5: 1:30am
Grades 6-8: Between the hours of 1:00am and 3:00am the children will participate in the "Race for the Millions" games (a takeoff on a popular Israeli game show).

Reading the email, all I could think was, "Really? My fourth grader should be up until 12:30am at her bonfire? Kids in sixth grade have a program that begins at 1:00am? Why is this a good idea? And why in the world are there parents who let their kids stay out so late?

Lag B'omer Recap

Our entire neighborhood still smells. Ahhh, smoke. Which, of course, made it harder to breathe for a period of time.
We were in Yerushalayim for Shabbat at the Gruss Kollel in Bayit Vagan. For those of you who have been there, there's a road that leads down the hill towards the Kollel. On one side there are houses, and on the other a steep hill. The kids built what must have been a fifteen foot fire there. They were just getting started when we drove by. The fire was so big, that the kids couldn't stay on the same side of the street. In the middle of a major city! You can't make it up. How could they be sure that the fire wouldn't fall into the street (where many buses and cars drive by)? Be sure? Are you kidding? That's probably what they were hoping for.
Back at Yad Binyamin, we returned to quite a surreal scene. I love a bonfire as much as the next guy, but why thirty of them? Each of my older children had a separate fire to attend, and they all participate in the same youth group. I can't think of a reason why they couldn't all build a fire together (or at least one for the boys and one for the girls), but apparently there is one. A fellow Oleh remarked that the scene reminded him of a downed F16 fighter in Vietnam - fires along a line as far as the eye can see.
I think this is one minhag - and it really is a cultural thing - that I just will never understand.

Lag B'omer is Coming, Lag B'omer is coming! (Close your windows)

The powers that be in Israel debated briefly whether to push off Lag B'omer. Push off? How do you do that? You don't actually, but the education system considered briefly giving off Monday instead of Sunday. They considered not because they think religious people will start burning everything in sight when it's still Shabbat. Rather, they considered the measure because there's concern that much of the secular public sector that deals with safety and security (mainly police on the roads leading to Meron) will start preparing while it's still Shabbat.
In the end, though, they decided to keep Sunday as the day off (why give a day off, you ask? Because many children will spend much of the night bored out of their minds telling themselves that they're having fun burning things.). This, I think is because no matter what government officials decided, Lag B'omer would still take place on Saturday night, as would the bonfires. 
For those of you already living in Israel, you know precisely what this means: close your windows! Lag B'omer eve is an orgy of male-dominated pyromania, some guitar playing, and many hot dogs.
Just as an illustration, I took a short trip around my block. Yes, my block. The pictures below are all within a sixty-second radius (walking) of my home. And this scene can be found all over the country. The zeal with which children (and often their fathers) gather, store and burn wood is almost amazing. If only they worked so hard on their schoolwork, Israel's education problems would be solved.
But it's not school. It's fire. A lot of them.

Bonfires on Lag B'omer

OK, OK. I know that this post will make me sound like a crotchety old man.
I can live with that.
Lag B'omer here is really hard to explain. As I've posted previously, preparations for the day involve literally weeks and weeks of wood collection, as children compete with each other to construct the largest possible pile of wood. They form groups, teams, collectives, all in the goal of building the biggest and best fire.
And they steal much of the wood from building sites.
On Lag B'omer, we sealed our windows, and went out to watch. In the small area where my children were burning their wood, I counted 12 bonfires. Twelve. One neighbor commented that the scene reminded him of the doomsday scenes after a nuclear holocaust that you see in the movies: masses of people huddled around fires on a dirt field. Another (from South Africa) noted that the scene reminder her of Soweto.
Next to my son's bonfire, the boys had collected a pile of wood larger than my living room. I think that they were hunkering down for the winter. At the scene, parents had constructed makeshift barbecues, grilling hot dogs, kebabs, burgers, etc. Now, I like a barbecue like the next guy, but on Saturday night?
My favorite little "nugget": I went to bed at about 12am, having had enough of the fires. When I got up and went to minyan the next morning, at 6:45am, a group of boys were standing next to a fire in broad daylight, and they were still throwing wood onto it. They were prepared.
I guess there's nothing really "wrong" with all the bonfires, other than the incredibly dangerous nature of burning numerous open fires in residential areas without taking really any safety precautions. (I'd be curious to know about burn statistics in the country on Lag B'omer.) But what bothers me more is the vague notion that these fires are somehow religious in nature, and connected to Lag B'omer in some way.
I don't see it.
At our fires, I didn't see any spirituality, religiosity or connection to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. There was no Jewish music that I could hear, and the only Jewish content I saw was in the form of a "quiz" that our neighbor conducted for the very small children who were afraid of all the fire.
I imagine that could we ask Rabbi Shimon today what he thought about the way we observe Lag B'omer, he would probably prefer that instead of eating hot dogs, we all learned a mishnah with our kids that night, put them to sleep, and instead of giving them a day off, sent them off to learn Torah in school the next day.
I guess I do sound pretty crotchety. Oh well.