I guess that I'm writing this after Skald said something about 'sharing' my life in one of our comments. My life, in the physical sense, lately, is boring. When I was younger, I had a more exciting existence. Especially the time I lived on border kibbutzim and worked in the fields or walked the fence with an oozi machine gun (if I ever would have had to fire it-- anything under twenty five feet in the air would have been safe, for I couldn't deal with the force of the kickback so that it fired at 3 oclock. I'm much more deadly with darts).

Anyway, I used to love taking day trips in the Galil, the Galilee in English. For me, this is the most beautiful place in the world. It is my place. And I've been to Europe and was up on Mount Blanc and saw some breathtaking views. But they weren't my views.

Other parts of Israel are more lush than the Galil and the Negev is more solumn and impressive. You feel alone with G-d in the brutal scenery of the Negev. That's the uncultivated Negev. Once you come to a Yishuv, an inhabited place like Beer Sheva or Arad or Dimona, or any of the Kibbutzim or Moshavim suddenly there are flowering trees and bushes and childern and the clutter of people. But outside, just half a mile away, you could be on the moon.

Yesterday we took our old car on a heavy ride uphill, and went to the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Now to call it a gravesite is a bit misleading. The graves of many of our great Rabbis are within buildings that were built around the grave during the last three milenium. And it is not a lonely gravesite-there are visitors year round, and near the building, part of which is a Yeshiva or institution of higher religious studies, is a bazaar where you can buy books, CD's. souvenirs, candles for lighting outside the building, scarfts, paintings etc. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai lived in the Roman period and there is an extant painting some where from that time that everyone copies. In the better copies you can get an idea of the dramatic eyes of this legend of a man.



At one time during the year, Mount Miron is as busy as Times Square in New York or Piccadilly Circus in London or the Champs Elysee in Paris. On L'Ag B;Omer or the 30th day of the counting of the Omer, and the days before and after, maybe a million people come to pay their respects to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. For the police it is a nightmare and they close all the roads anywhere in the vicinity to anyone who does not live there or is not driving a known commercial vehicle. At the night of L'Ag B'Omer huge bonfires are lit on the roof of the building and bonfires are lit throughout Israel (causing some air pollution since some idiots throw plastic bags on the fires, but that is a different story). Why this celebration? Well there is a lot to tell, but the basic premise is that on this day Rabbi Shimon died, and at his death bed he was able to dictate great secrets of the Kabbalah to his students. He commanded them to be joyful on that day, for it was a day of great revelation. (It is also the day when Rabbi Akiva's students ceased dying of a plague. Of course there is a lot hidden in these simple facts).

I made and attempt to take some pictures but it was with a toy digital comera whose battery was skittish, so only after I finish this blog will be be able to find out if they are downloadable and worth posting. Anyway, only a panaramic view camera could really do justice to the mountain view and the view of the valley and of the neighboring mountain city of Tzfat, which appears as a white stone during the day and as point of light at night. And I don't like to take pictures of people, I feel that such pictures are an invasion of privacy. And it is the people who are the story here.

There are black suited Chassidim with all types of customes,some right out of medieval Poland or Hungaria. There are modern orthodox, there are Sephardi Rabbis, there women in Saries from the Indian Jewish community, women in modern dress and undress, women in jeans and bulging sweaters trying to be modest this day of the year by covering their hair, in short all types of Jews come to Rabbi Shimon to pay their respects, if they can tell you why or not. But there is great love for Rabbi Shimon, and his love for the masses of Jews is something that is part of our tradition (and he had to come to it after being far above and apart from the average Jew who tilled the soil or built cabinets or made hats. But that is another story.)


So we made it there and back in our 1973 car! breathing exhaust inspite of the new muffler and that is a little piece of my day.