The Pain & Joy of Lag B'Omer

[First Published on May 1, 2002]

Lag B’Omer, Neve Daniel - This has certainly been a week of extremes. Last Sunday, I joined about two hundred other people at the cemetery in Kfar Etzion to commemorate the yahrzeits of of Kobi Mandel & Yosef Ish-ran, HY”D. You remember them - the two 14 year-olds from Tekoa who were guilty of the capital offense of playing hooky on an irresistible spring day one year ago. Yosef was a student at the Azori school where my girls attend. Instead of detention, they had their brains splattered against the boulders of the cave where they were trapped, had their ears slashed off, and suffered other unspeakable mutilations. Perhaps worst of all, Yosef was forced to witness the butchery of his best friend, aware that there was no hope of escape.

As I stood there, overlooking the kvarot, all I could think about was what must have been going through Yosef’s mind in those last moments of his precious life, watching his best friend murdered, unable to prevent it. How do you even attempt to imagine what he saw and felt? And what of their families? As I stood there, I tried to scrutinize the faces of the parents, trying to understand where they find the strength to continue. As a father, I cannot even begin to imagine the depths of sorrow the parents of these holy boys have endured and continue to endure - it is plainly beyond my ability to comprehend. How do they sleep at night? Will they ever sleep again? How do they comfort their other kids? How do they make themselves whole again?

I could not sleep; that is why we made aliyah. I could not sleep knowing that the future of Klal Yisrael was being decided here, while I sat, bound and gagged, in heiligeh Baltimore. I could not sleep knowing that 5 million Israeli Jews are shouldering the responsibility that should properly be borne by all 15 million of us. I could not sleep knowing that if 500,000 or a million American Jews stopped fighting it and made aliyah already, that the retzach would stop, that maybe - maybe - Kobi & Yosef would be alive today.

And then, almost suddenly, was the chagigah of Lag B’Omer. There was once a time when the thought of a bonfire instantly elicited haunting images of Nazi book burnings - chalk it up to my Yiddesheh kopf, I guess. Tonight, though, as I strolled through our yishuv, visiting, well-wishing, singing, toasting, and nibbling at numerous bonfires/barbecues, I recognized that fascinating mental process when new information overwrites old. Images of Lag B’Omer medurot have supplanted the golusdikeh images I carried around in the past. Our older girls came home well after midnight, faces full of soot and stomachs full of charred hot dogs and marshmallows, voices hoarse from singing, legs aching from dancing. It is a good thing indeed that there’s no school the next day!

On Lag B’Omer day, we had the most soulful Hachnasat Sefer Torah I have ever attended. Hundreds of people attended, singing dancing, and escorting the new Torah behind a big American pick-up truck with a live band in the back. The dancing, the joy, lasted well past dark. Afterwards there was a lavish seudat mitzvah, hosted by the donor families, and open to all. What a way to end Lag B’Omer!

I will thus end this epistle on that happy note. From the Gush Etzion, where we are living your dreams.