Why I hate Lag Baomer

An extremely personal lament

I’m not a Lag Baomer grinch. I like the fires, I like the pageantry, and I have no intention of spoiling other people’s fun. (I waited to after the chag to post this). But I personally hate Lag Baomer.

This is a serious post, so trigger warning.

My personal Lag baomer fire

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I used to love Lag Baomer. I davened in Meron for 8 years in a row. I missed COVID, but that was pretty much it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was my highlight to my year and one of my experiential foundations to my Yiddishkeit. I looked at Meron as a spiritual amusement park. There was a mikvah to toivel in! A Beis Medrash to learn! Chai Rotel! Free Hachnasos Orchim BBQs! Millions of tayere Yidden davening their hearts out! It was a beautiful celebration of Hashem and Toras HaNistar. I felt connected to Hashem and R Shimon there and wouldn’t miss it for the world. At times it felt overcrowded and dangerous, but I knew the power of the tzaddik protected me there. I just knew.

Until that fateful year. I was there. Not less than five minutes walk away from the tragedy. I had left that exact area maybe fifteen minutes before. I called my wife a few minutes before the tragedy. I said the crowds are out of control. Someone is going to die. I headed to the buses and started to leave. I had just boarded a bus when ambulances started wailing past me. My father calls asking if I was ok. The bleachers collapsed and there are piles of talleisim-wrapped bodies, he said. I was shook. I could not stop crying. I called my wife and told her that I was ok and what happened. We cried together. She still can’t let me go somewhere with crowds. My Father-in-law was there and my brother-in-law was there. They were ok too. My brother was there and I couldn’t contact him. Luckily, he was ok but I didn’t find out in the morning. Actually, he wasn’t ok. Two of his close friends (Hashem Yikom Damam) were killed in the crush. Not a bleacher collapse, but a crowd crush. Something that was easily preventable but wasn’t.

I was angry and sad and angry and sad and then numb.

I haven’t been back to Meron since. I don’t believe in it anymore. I wish I did. But I don’t. I simply cannot. Other people may disagree. But if Avraham could smash an idol because it couldn’t move, what use is a gravesite that can’t protect its pilgrims from getting killed?

I also stopped believing in a lot of other things too. I don’t believe in Daas Torah anymore. Again, this isn’t inherently logical. It’s just how I feel. Do you know that Rav Dovid Soloveitchik was asked by his close talmid on the Vaad Hachamisha whether to allow renovations to be done to the site for safety, and he said that Rashbi will protect? I heard this from an eyewitness. Guess what. Rashbi did not.

I certainly don’t believe in Chareidi-ism anymore (if I ever did). I am still Chareidi and raising my kids that way. I just don’t believe that it is the actual continuation of Chazal. When the Kohanim’s practice of running up the ramp resulted in death, Chazal put a stop to it. When a backwards shoe resulted in trampling, Chazal banned the shoe. When Chareidim’s lack of safety practices and crowd control resulted in the death (murder?) of 45 people, they blamed the police, the Zionists, and anyone but themselves. They did not implement crowd control. They did not renovate the tziyon. They did not ban the Meron gathering. Instead, they try to break in by the tens of thousands whenever it is closed due to a security threat. Chazal would have viewed this as blatant disregard for life. Chareidim view it as protecting their way of life.

Yes, it was unsafe the previous years before the tragedy. Yes, it should have been stopped immediately. The Meron murders were preventable yet they sadly were not prevented, because ‘Rashbi protects’. I was once under the same illusion of the emunah idol. Now I am not. Now I hate Lag Baomer.

The 45 people killed there were not kedoshim of the Zionist police. They were sacrifices to the Chareidi Moloch of irresponsibility and irrational faith.

Now the Litvaks are going, “of course you lost your faith. You believed in a false God of Lag Baomer and R Shimon.” Well guess what. When your rebbe tells you that R Shimon really wants you to learn, and that enjoying bonfires (or anything) is a shtus, that religion is a thousand times worse than any fire-worshipping pagan one. God forbid a person enjoy himself. Instead he must pretend that he should enjoy learning while he wishes he were having fun, feeling empty inside while desperately wishing he did something that mattered.

That fake religion I never believed in at all. You know why? Because at least the false religion of Lag Baomerism brought me happiness. And it only took a sacrifice of 45 people after a hundred years. Your fake religion sacrifices around 50% of its followers on the altar of one type of Torah for life for everybody. It literally preaches the gospel of sacrificing 1000 to make one gadol as a selling point. It literally promotes a metaphorical Meron-style crowd crush as an ideal! Even the most extreme other forms of irrationalist Judaism don’t demand that high a blood price. You cut half your students on the bed of Sedom and its evil leaders while claiming the mantle of Yavneh and its wise men.

The main refuge of religion is bringing meaning and fulfillment to life. It is a contrast to the empty nihilism of the depressed atheist. Ideally, a frum Yid finds meaning in all that he does, knowing that Hashem wants to imbue his everyday life with holiness. However, modern day Litvish yeshivish Judaism has corrupted all that. It robs people of meaning by preaching that the only purpose of life is to learn in a certain style. Its whole system is built on teaching people a certain type of iyun that will help them become a maggid shiur. It is utterly worthless and pointless to the vast majority of those who go through the system. It is a waste of time!

And we laughably call it Torah Lishma instead of what it really is, a self-serving system whose sole success is in perpetuating itself while adding nothing of external value to the world. Worse, those who go through it end up believing that nothing else is of value, except this ardent waste of time. Yes there are successes. But the sacrifice is way too high - way higher than Meron. Every bochur trapped inside wishing he could leave and do something that he personally enjoys is a sacrifice no worse than anyone in Meron. And there are tens of thousands of such bochrim. It is a sick system that - while necessary when no one was learning Torah to revitalize it - is now spreading into a crushing lifestyle where everyone must keep it exactly or feel empty inside, with no foreseeable end.

In case someone thinks I am angry at Yiddishkeit as a whole or going OTD, I’m neither. I believe in Hashem. I believe in his Torah. I think everyone should be learning his Torah and being kovea ittim! But Hashem does not think that we should be training everyone to learn. Chanoch lana’ar al pi darko is not a cute vort - it’s a pasuk! 95% of Shulchan Aruch is about living in the real world. But we do not prepare our kids for the real world. We prepare them with skills to become mesivta rebbeim - or bust.

I escaped to Meron because I was tired of feeling like a korban to the system. Well, turns out both are an illusion. Meron and the current system. That’s why I hate Lag Baomer. It reminds me there’s nowhere to escape. There’s nothing else I can do but actually try to improve things.

We must take on our responsibility to be metaken olam bemalchus Shakai. And it’s our olam - the Yeshivish/Chareidi olam - we must fix first.

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Heads up. I know that was a difficult read. I know I am ignoring the beautiful world the frum yeshivish olam has built. I am not denying that or denigrating that ki hu zeh. But these are the emotions that Lag Baomer makes me feel, and I am sharing that uncensored. Like all emotional pieces, they should be read in that context, not as truth, not as lies, but as an emotion, long buried and now coming out.

I am deliberately not including any pictures or external links. I think this piece should stand on its own.