Lag B'Omer with the Gerstens

Kids sitting on "artistic hand chairs" outside the Children's Section of the Israel Museum

Lag B'Omer in Eretz Yisroel is slightly different than in the US. Aside from being permitted to light bonfires almost anywhere, it is also the custom to allow all kids, regardless of age, to stay up all night long with said bonfires. This by the way is the 50% of the country that did not travel to Meiron for Lag B'Omer

So even though American-born Ema and Abba just don't get this holiday, and would prefer that everyone gets a good night sleep (including Ema and Abba), the schools purposely give the kids off the next day on Lag B'Omer, and the pressure of "I'll be the only kid in my class not at the bonfire" becomes too much to bear.

The good news is that you don't have to travel far to the bonfires as they are everywhere. The problem is that no one wants to light the bonfire, until all of the children who made the bonfires showed up. So if you get their early, your just waiting for all the people who come late. You see, kids start collecting (read: snatching any wooden objects from everywhere without bothering to find out if it belongs to someone) wood from the day after Pesach. So for weeks, lining the streets are piles of wood and kids take shifts day and night guarding their piles while others find more wood to add to the pile.

Before the inferno...

It takes a few minutes to the fire to catch, but once it does WHOOOSH, the chill of night is gone and you feel like you stepped into an oven. But that only lasts a few more minutes depending on what the bonfire is made of. Just enough time to sing Bar Yochai at a safe distance.  Then we get to come home with our clothes smelling from smoke

Not too close, kids...

The next day, all the museums are free, so its a good time to check out the museums. When Abba comes home from shul after Shacharis, Ema flips the 5-Shekel coin, "Heads I stay home with the baby, while you take the kids to the museum -- Tails you take the kids to the museum, while I stay home with baby".

So I took the four older kids on the bus to Museum Street (it's actually called that) where all the Museums are. Since the kids have already been to the Science Museum many many times, we started at the Biblical Lands Museum. However, after being there for a few minutes I realized that Elazar and Noam could break a lot of ancient expensive artifacts that were on display, we left to go next door to the Israel Museum.


Baruch Hashem they had a kids section to the Museum, and after looking around at mostly ridiculous exhibits about "sleeping" (I'm not kidding) we found a place the kids could jump around, and then we found a great library with hundreds of books. The kids like reading and listening to stories so we spent about an two hours in the library, just reading and lounging and enjoying the A/C (they had these great bean bag mats and chairs for the kids and Abba to lounge on). Granted any library in any town in the United States is bigger than this library, but for Israeli Standards this was perfect. Hundreds of children's books in both Hebrew and English. 

They even had these Jumbo books of "Curious George" and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

A Whale of Tale...

After we ran out of food and drink supplies, and we fulfilled our quota of "out of the house time so Ema can rest" we headed back home for an early dinner

All the best,
Betzalel