Police plan to limit visitors to Mount Meron for Lag B’Omer holiday

By Charlie Summers

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14 May 2025, 11:44 am

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Haredi Jews celebrate Lag B'Omer at Mount Meron on May 8, 2023. (David Cohen/ Flash90)

Police plan to limit attendance on Mount Meron to 63,000 people at any given moment for the coming Lag B’Omer holiday, says a spokesman for the event to The Times of Israel.

Over 100,000 mostly Hasidic revelers are expected to ascend to the mountain tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a 2nd-century mystic and rabbi, over a 16-hour period from Thursday to Friday.

Though the festivities usually last for 30 hours straight, this year’s celebration will be cut short, as participants will travel home early Friday evening in preparation for Shabbat, the spokesman says.

Attendees will enter and exit the compound in specific time slots, and are barred from arriving by car. The only way to get to the mountain tomb will be by bus, train or shuttle from a nearby parking lot, with advance registration.

The Transportation Ministry also announced major transit shakeups to accommodate the masses of pilgrims expected to throng the Galilee pilgrimage site.

Israel Railways plans to divert trains from the center and south for the use of those going to and from the pilgrimage site from Thursday to Friday. The special arrangements cost the ministry some NIS 12.5 million, according to Channel 12.

In effect, this means that a major train route between Tel Aviv and Beersheba will not operate from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, and the northern Karmiel station will be closed from Thursday to Friday to all passengers except returnees from Mount Meron.

Advocacy group Israel Hofsheet railed against these changes, calling them “discrimination against the general public.”

The group notes that Thursday is considered a peak day for railway activity as many soldiers return home for the weekend.

“The right of Meron attendees to access public transportation cannot come at the expense of IDF soldiers, residents of the north and south, or any other citizen. Regular soldiers have the right to return home for the weekend,” said the organization’s director Uri Keidar in a statement earlier this week.