Lag
B’Omer
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An
on-the-way-cache close to Korazim National Park (entrance fee) and
on Lag B’Omer
on a safe
distance from the crowd
J.
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I passed here
on Lag B’Omer after having taken part in the yearly ceremony
of taking the Torah scroll out of the house of the Abbo family in
order to pass it to the Meron mountain, which is an event in which
tens of thousands of (mainly religious) people take part. This year
it was the 175 (!) time the event took place.
With the kind
permission of Refaella I copy here the history of this tradition as
it is written on the site of the Abbo House www.abbo.org
:
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The
Start of the Bar-Yochai Celebration and the Jewish settlement in
Meron
As far back as the first half of the 19th
century, a few years after arriving in Israel, Rabbi Shmuel Abbo
purchased the site of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s grave in
Meron and built the synagogue that still stands there today. He
even bought some 1800 acres of agricultural land in Meron Village
from the local peasants and encouraged dozens of Kurdish Jewish
families to settle there. They divided their time between
agriculture -olive orchards in particular- and evening study of the
Torah and Kabbalah.
This settlement campaign predated by decades
the Zionist pioneer settlements in the Land of Israel, and it was a
wonder to the eyes of the local Arabs. In recognition of his
efforts, the Safed community presented him a Torah scroll with his
name, and on the eve of Lag B’Omer 1833, the scroll was
brought from the Abbo home in Safed to the Bar Yochai synagogue in
Meron. Thus began a special tradition that over time became an
inseparable part of the religious folklore of the Galilee and later
spread throughout Israel. A short time later, the first scroll
donated by the Jews of Safed was replaced by a scroll decorated in
silver and gold, donated by the rabbi and consul Yitzhak Mordechai,
and this is the scroll paraded until today in the festive
procession from the Abbo home to the tomb of Bar Yochai in Meron on
Lag B’Omer. And the torch passed from father to son -for five
generations now.
I strongly
recommend getting to the traditional Lag B’Omer procession
(which takes place one day before Lag B’Omer, the 32st day
after the first day of Pesach).
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