Lag BaOmer is a religious holiday where bonfires, both huge and small, are lighted in many areas of the communities. Families gather around it, setting up tables for food, doing barbecue and grilling steaks, while some even have karaoke with giant screens installed. Bonfires can already be seen 2 days earlier. To me, it is a day for the bigger kids to make the most out of playing with fire.
My husband and I, with our two tots, went walking around our area and witnessed a number of bonfires. One area has about 4 bonfires and there were many, many children playing around it, of course with the supervision of their parents. Big chunks of wood were on stand-by to keep the flames higher and bigger!
LagBaOmer is the 33rd day of the Omer. The Omer are the 49 days counted after the night of Passover or Pesach (the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in the hands of the Egyptians) to Shavuot, the day the Torah was handed to the Israelites from Mt Sinai. This is actually a commandement from the Torah found in Leviticus 23: 15-16.
LagBaOmer is in celebration of one of the greatest rabbi who ever lived..Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who wrote the Zohar, a book on Jewish mysticism and who died on the 33rd day of the Omer. It is also on this day that he revealed the secrets of the Kabbalah. Thousands of Jews make pilgrimage to his tomb in the north of Israel and they say miracles have occured when impossible requests made by some pilgrims were granted.
The lighting of the bonfires symbolizes the spiritual light opening upon the revelation of the secrets of the zohar.
There are more stories that coincide with LagBaOmer.
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lag baomer,
israel
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Religious Holidays and Traditions