Sunday, May 6, 2012

Nail Down Your Furniture, Close Your Windows, and Don't Go to Meron!

I don't think Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai would appreciate that these are the warnings associated with Lag B'Omer, but there it is.

Here's what happens about 2 weeks before Lag B'Omer:

Hoarding
1.  You notice that groups of school kids are walking around your neighborhood with shopping carts.  You see adults with them (sometimes) and figure they are on some sort of educational tiyul.  You feel good that the schools want kids to walk around the neighborhood with their teachers.

2.  Then you notice that the kids are filling the shopping carts with huge pieces of wood, many from building sites.

3.  Then you notice that the kids are filling the shopping carts with actual pieces of construction from building sites.

4. Then you hope that the workers don't fall from the scaffolding the next day.

5.  Then someone you know tells you that the kids stole the wooden support stakes from the trees in front of her house and every house on her street.

6.  Then the rabbis, on the Shabbos before Lag B'Omer, all speak about how wrong it is for kids to steal wood to make their Lag B'Omer bonfires.

7. Then you scratch your head in wonder.

8.  You also can't stop thinking about the scene in "Dr. Zhivago" when Yuri steals a plank of wood from a fence to heat his and Tonya's apartment, his brother the policeman sees him, and lets him go, and that great line, "One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city."  [No one can deliver a line like Alec Guiness].

Warnings
Everywhere you go you see signs put up by the Fire Department about not playing with fire and being careful with bonfires.  Kids in school come home with fire warnings, go on visits to fire stations, etc.

Also, I have heard from perhaps five friends to KEEP YOUR WINDOWS CLOSED starting today through Lag B'Omer because the entire country will smell like a bonfire.

Meron
Article after article warn people NOT to go to Meron on Thursday - the crowds will be unmanageable, the fire danger is terrible, etc. etc.

So what do we have here?  Basically a day of celebration for a great man's life has turned into a reason to steal, torch the country, and avoid crowds.


1 comment:

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