About nine months into our first year in Israel I was introduced to a phenomenon that I still can't get my mind around -- and probably never will.
As soon as school resumes after the Passover holiday, the streets are filled every afternoon with children dragging wood scraps around in a variety of mobile units -- stolen grocery store carts, family strollers, empty garbage cans on wheels, and wagons. And it isn't just the big kids -- kids of pretty much all ages from six to 16 are involved in the collection of scrap wood.
If you wonder what they are doing with all the old, used wood, let me tell you. They are collecting it for their class bonfires which will be held on the night of Lag B'Omer.
Lag B'Omer is a holiday celebrated 33 days after the first day of Passover. It commemorates all sorts of things depending on who you ask but the most well-known is the commemoration of the end of a plague that killed Rabbi Akiva's 24,000 rabbinical students. Once again, if you need to know more, you are going to have to google it yourself. My history lesson is over.
Let's get back to the commemorating with bonfires. This, to me, is the crux of the issue.
School children of all ages, all over Israel, get out of school early on Lag B'Omer and light gigantic bonfires around which they dance and sing -- and try to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. In fact, it is almost impossible to roast anything but one's self at these bonfires from hell. You just try to stand next to a 10-foot-high circle of fire. Seriously, try it. I am confident that you can't get within several feet of said fires unless you have no body thermostat and are oblivious to pain.
The first year we lived here my son Ari was in second grade and he and his friends had so much fun collecting wood that I was actually looking forward to the bonfires.
That enthusiasm disappeared about three seconds into the bonfire experience. Let me describe the scene. A bunch of crazed second grade boys arbitrarily throwing every movable piece of wood that they had collected and dragged to the designated bonfire sites (with the help of their stupid mothers) onto the ever-growing-out-of-control bonfire.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps just handing all the kids a needle, a rubber rope and a hit of heroin might have been more fun and less dangerous.Or better yet, we could have all handed over our car keys and told the kids to have fun joyriding. I know that I would have felt safer with that option.
The native-born Israeli parents don't even bother to show up for these bonfires. They send the kids off alone. You can rest assured that every parent present and yelling hysterically at the kids to stay back, is an immigrant who is trying to figure out who came up with such an inexplicable way to have fun. Fun for who? Definitely not the parents and I suspect only kind of fun for half the kids (the sensible ones).
I have heard from friends that if you are flying in or out of Israel on the night of Lag B'Omer the entire country looks like it is ablaze. I am sure that is quite a sight from 30,000 feet but it's a whole different story at 3 feet!
The entire country participates in this pyromania. It has nothing to do with your religious persuasion or your age. And in preparation you have to virtually seal your house as if someone inside was suffering from the most contagious of all diseases. Otherwise you are left to smell day-old smoke on everything you own for weeks to come.
The reason that I am thinking about this now is because today, for the first time, my daughter who is now in third grade, got together with friends to collect wood. At one of her friend's mother's insistence I volunteered to escort the girls on their wood-collecting mission. I haven't done so in a few years since my boys are more than capable of wood hunting without me.
I admit that it was fun and the girls were so cute sneaking into construction sites and dumpsters in search of wood. I have to admit that it brings me back to my truant teen years. That said, the bubble of fun will probably burst just in time for one of the third-grade fathers to have to go out and light the fire. As soon as it that first match is struck, reality comes charging back at you and you start to pray that someone will show up with the heroin or the car keys.
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