For the first 10 years of her life, Lag B’Omer was pretty much a non-issue for Amit Yaniv-Zehavi. Her parents were Israeli, but Yaniv-Zehavi had been born and raised in Westchester County, New York.
“I don’t remember anything about it until I got to Israel,” said Yaniv-Zehavi, who is the community shlichah with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center.
In Israel, bonfires are common for celebrating the holiday. Rachel Macagon, who moved to the Milwaukee area from Haifa 30 years ago and raised her four children here, said it is also the most popular holiday for getting married in Israel, something her mother-in-law and an aunt both did.
Macagon also said she can conjure up the smell of a Lag B’Omer bonfire just by talking about it. Every year, she and a group of friends did the same thing.
“We collected rocks and branches in advance, went to the Haifa beach, and we were there until 5 a.m., sitting around singing and talking,” she said. “It was fun. It was really, really fun.”
Ophir Ben-Yitzhak and his family also lived in Northern Israel before moving to the Milwaukee area. He, his wife and their children lived in Avtalion, a small village in the Galilee.
“Everyone got together and built a bonfire and there was a kumzitz (stories, singing and visiting around the fire).”
Ben-Yitzhak’s experience is typical in some of Israel’s smaller communities. An entire village, moshav or kibbutz may pull together for an all-ages communal bonfire. In others, it’s a little more stratified. The adults have their bonfire, and kids form groups by age or school class.
In the cities, where Macagon and Yaniv-Zehavi grew up, bonfire groups form well ahead of the holiday.
“It starts about two months in advance,” Yaniv-Zehavi said. “Kids get organized in groups and find old shopping carts and start roaming the streets for wood.”
In Wisconsin, where wood and trees are plentiful, that doesn’t sound like a tough task. But in Israel, finding enough of it to fuel a bonfire – especially when everyone else is trying to do the same thing – can be a challenge.
Yaniv-Zehavi described roaming construction sites for wood, the streets for old chairs and furniture and orchards for branches.
“Anything that was able to be burned was loaded onto this cart, and we’d go and put it all in a pile somewhere,” she said. “Kids would also steal from other kids’ piles. Sometimes you’d come and your pile would be gone because someone else took it.”
Ben-Yitzhak said his mother, who lived in a suburb of Jerusalem, eventually gave up trying to plant a small tree outside of her apartment.
“My mother tried for years, and the tree would disappear, either at Lag B’Omer or Sukkot,” he said.
“I remember how special I felt when the eighth and ninth graders invited me when I was a seventh grader,” Yaniv-Zehavi said. Aside from the cachet of being in a group with the older kids, they were allowed to stay out later.
At the bonfire itself, she said, there are food, games, and if someone in the group plays guitar, singing. Participants either bring things potluck style, or collect money to buy food in advance.
“We wrap potatoes in tinfoil, and sit by the bonfire on any rock that was available,” she said. “A lot of times if kids get bored, they start visiting each other’s bonfires, especially at the beach. People like having them there if the weather is good. And if you can, you bring your sleeping bag and sleep over.”
Her own children, who are growing up on Kibbutz Tzora outside of Jerusalem, organize bonfires with their classmates when home.
Last year, for her first Lag B’Omer in Milwaukee, Yaniv-Zehavi organized an Israeli picnic.
“We made (pita bread) outside on a little bonfire and the next day we went to the Chabad bonfire,” she said.
Ben-Yitzhak said that’s where he took his children, now 21, 18 and 15, after moving here.
“They have a nice big happening and it’s a fun time,” he said. “There’s good food and all kinds of activities for kids.”
As for Macagon, shortly after arriving in Milwaukee, she became part of a group of Israelis that organized a local bonfire for several years.
“When the kids were young, we used to go down to the Lakefront,” she said. “We did it until the kids were teenagers.”
As Jewish holidays go, Lag B’Omer is a relatively minor player, albeit with a very interesting backstory. It originated as a commemoration of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s yahrzeit. Bar Yochai, a second-century Torah scholar and student of Rabbi Akiva, is reputed to have written an important work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar.
Lag B’Omer has also, in modern times, come to be associated with the Bar Kochba Rebellion, which took place in Judea during the second century. Simon Bar Kochba was able to raise an army that took Jerusalem from the Romans and held it for several years.
Some say the traditional bonfires are to bring forward the light that Bar Yochai gave to the world.
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· For 2016, Lag B’Omer falls on Thursday, May 26.
· Though bonfires for Lag B’Omer are less common in Wisconsin, the practice is widespread in Israel.
· Some rabbis do not permit weddings in the weeks after Passover, but Lag B’Omer is often considered an exception.
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