Lag Ba'Omer

Some holidays are celebrated much more in Israel than they are in America.  Some holidays are even celebrated more in other parts of the country/ world than in my community at home.  One example of this is Lag Ba'Omer.  I can't think of anything that I've done for this holiday in the past few years. The night time is the best part of this holiday.  All over Jerusalem and Israel people are lighting bonfires.  We took a bus out to the middle of nowhere and we made a huge bonfire.  One of the customs is to burn old wood that is no longer being used so we burned old doors from our school building.  We cooked potatoes, hot dogs, and croissants while sitting around the fire with someone playing the guitar and the rest of us singing.

The next day, we went to the City of David.  We split into three tour groups where they showed us around the ruins of King David's Palace.  It was a really nice day outside and they had beautiful displays of flowers.  One of the highlights was walking through the Hezekiah's Tunnels.  Many tunnels were found and had lots of different uses such as moving water, sewage, and passageways.  This tunnel was filled with water a little lower than the height of an average person's knee and it was pitch black.  It was also so narrow that you could easily touch both sides of the tunnel with your hands and sometimes just walking your shoulders would brush up against it and the ceiling was often so low that even I had to duck.  Walking in front of me was Rinat whose knapsack I was holding on to and behind was Paige and we held hands the whole time.  Behind Paige were Sarah and Dani and both of them were about six feet tall so they had to go through almost the whole tunnel crouching.
Later on in the night, Raquel and I taught a lesson about  the six reasons we found to celebrating Lag Ba'Omer.
1. That was the day that the Manna began to fall from heaven.
2.There is a custom that says that they wouldn't have weddings from the end of Pesach until this day.
3. From Pesach, Rabbi Akiva's students were dying from a plague and this is the day that the plague stopped.
4. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai died, but before he died, he gave over the kabbalistic book called the Zohar.
5. This was the date of the first successful rebellion against the Romans led by Bar Kochva.
6.  (This one is my personal  favorite) This was the day that they burned Hitler's body.

I hope you too did something special for this holiday.  If you didn't there's always next year. Find some special way that you would like to celebrate.  Shalom V'lehitraot!