Barred from Meron, Jewish worshipers mark Lag B’Omer at flashpoint East Jerusalem site
Thousands crowd into venue outside Shimon HaTzadik tomb as police lock down tense Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood; Sephardi chief rabbi lights fire, speaks before enthused audience
Thousands of Jewish worshipers flocked Saturday night to the tense Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festival of Lag B’Omer, after the government massively scaled down the traditional festivities on Mount Meron for fear of rockets from Lebanon, amid daily cross-border attacks by Hezbollah terrorists.
Hundreds of police had the area near the East Jerusalem tomb of 2nd-century high priest Shimon HaTzadik (Simon the Just) locked down, directing traffic with barricades erected to block off entrances to the Palestinian-majority neighborhood, as religious Israelis from across the country gathered at the venue — a large stadium with separate entrances for men and women.
Around midnight, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef arrived at the event and gave a speech to the thousands gathered on the turf. He spoke to the men’s section of the venue, with women attendees on the other side viewing a live recording of him via a large screen.
Lag B’Omer signals a break in the 49-day Jewish quasi-mourning period that runs from the beginning of Passover to Shavuot, with its name literally translating to the “33rd of the Omer.”
Typically, around 100,000 people gather at Mount Meron in the Galilee, a popular pilgrimage site where the 2nd-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is thought to be buried. But the government canceled the mass event this year amid the ongoing war, prompting many to travel south for festivities in both Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem, including at the Western Wall.
Police enforced a total travel ban around Mount Meron, which was declared a closed military zone and where festivities were limited to three ceremonial bonfire lighting ceremonies attended by no more than 30 people at any given time.
However, hundreds of Haredi men and boys nevertheless tried to reach the area, with several of them hurling bottles at police officers at one point. Police officers were seen escorting at least two men away from the compound.
חרדים קיצונים מתפרעים בהר מירון pic.twitter.com/NVeVPWgAvQ
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The three traditional bonfire lightings only began around 5 a.m. — one led by the leader of the Boyan Hasidic dynasty Nachum Dov Brayer, one by Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar, and one by Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu.
The holiday is a major occasion for Orthodox Jews in a few respects. Not only does it fall on the anniversary of the death of the sage Shimon Bar Yochai, but it is also thought to mark the day in which a plague that, according to Talmudic tradition, killed thousands of students of Mishnaic-era sage Rabbi Akiva, ended.
Most of the revelers in Sheikh Jarrah on Saturday night were Haredim — yeshiva students, rabbis and parents with their children. Many came from outside Jerusalem, particularly Israel’s north and the West Bank.
Shimon Goldstein, a resident of Tiberias who traveled to Jerusalem for the event, told The Times of Israel that he was not worried about the potential outbreak of violence over the course of the holiday due to a heavy police presence.
He chose to celebrate at Shimon HaTzadik’s tomb rather than in Beit Shemesh not only to witness Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s speech, but also because of the venue layout.
“In Beit Shemesh, there would be nowhere to sit. I’m an older man, here I’ll have a place to sit,” he said with a chuckle.
Jerusalem municipal authorities did not approve the lighting of bonfires, a widespread custom of the Lag B’Omer holiday, in the area, though Rabbi Yosef was permitted to light a large wick onstage before the dancing crowd around midnight.
The rabbi then gave a brief speech to the attendees, quoting Shimon HaTzadik.
“In Pirkei Avot, Shimon HaTzadik said that the world stands upon three things: the Torah, the Temple service and acts of piety,” recanted Yosef, adding that the high priest’s naming of the Torah first and foremost proves the intrinsic value of Torah study.
“We need to pray and study hard for the sake of the soldiers serving in the IDF and for the sake of the return of all the hostages speedily home. We will bless all the displaced people of the north, who will return to their homes soon, and we will win with the help of God in the campaign,” he continued.
The event in Sheikh Jarrah was organized by the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry under minister Meir Porush of the United Torah Judaism party. The Jerusalem event was meant to offer an alternative to the Meron one, a spokesperson for the ministry confirmed to The Times of Israel.
The Shimon HaTzadik tomb, a less popular but still frequented pilgrimage site on Lag B’Omer, typically receives around 10,000 worshipers over the course of the holiday, but the ministry anticipated before the event that this number would triple in size this year.
Shimon HaTzadik’s tomb in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood that has been a flashpoint for the conflict since the early 2000s, served as a pilgrimage site for Jerusalem’s Old Yishuv Jewish community in the Ottoman period and provided a local fix for the many Jews unable to undertake a long, arduous journey up north.
In the late 19th century, Jews began to reside in the area around Shimon HaTzadik, forming two neighborhoods — Shimon HaTzadik and Nahalat Shimon. However, they were forced to flee their homes under the threat of the Jordanian army during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Jordanian authorities, who controlled East Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967, then resettled Palestinian refugees from within the Green Line in Sheikh Jarrah, where many of their families still live.
The neighborhood came under Israeli control in 1967 and became a focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the early 2000s, when private Jewish organizations unrelated to the former owners began to buy out homes inhabited by Palestinian families to hand them over to prospective Jewish residents.
Outside the venue on Saturday night, the Jewish residents of Sheikh Jarrah organized their own bonfire, but declined to give recorded interviews. One unnamed resident emphasized that the bonfire was police-approved.
Ir Amim, a dovish organization that tracks government policy in East Jerusalem, had warned in a statement Wednesday against the arrival of many pilgrims to the Jewish gravesite in that Jerusalem neighborhood.
“For the authorities to sponsor this event in a context in which they also promote the eviction and displacement of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah is not a gesture for diversity but an attempt to Israelize East Jerusalem,” Ir Amim wrote in the statement.
Canaan Lidor contributed to this report.
