Lag Ba’Omer

Lag Ba’Omer holds two contrasting meanings in the narrator’s account: it is an occasion associated with pilgrimage to Israel, which Satmar authorities prohibit, and a night of public bonfires in Williamsburg. The holiday’s rituals illuminate how communal rules shape movement and gender, while the narrator’s memories of watching from the margins give the night a personal significance that lasts beyond the celebration.

Calendar and Religious Meaning

Lag Ba’Omer commemorates the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, whom the narrator identifies as the second-century sage who wrote the Zohar, a central work of Kabbalah. In the account, the holiday is associated with thousands of American Jews preparing to travel to Israel. That destination is otherwise forbidden to the narrator: the rabbi has barred travel there until the messiah comes, and her school warns that a student who visits—even to see family—could be permanently expelled.

The prohibition makes the holiday’s connection to Israel especially charged. The narrator knows that some girls have gone despite the rule, their families taking circuitous routes to bring them into the country. The contrast is between a religiously significant land described through communal history and a present-day restriction that keeps the narrator from seeing it.

Pilgrimage, Prayer, and an Exception

The account also describes a family pilgrimage that crossed this boundary. The narrator’s aunt Chavie traveled to Israel a year before her son was born to pray at Rabbi Shimon’s grave. The custom described is that women who cannot conceive pray there for a son and promise to return when he is three for his first-haircut ceremony on Lag Ba’Omer. Chavie’s son, Shimon, is regarded by the family as a miracle, and the narrator expects that Chavie will take him back when he is old enough.

Zeidy approved of Chavie’s journey, despite the Satmar Rebbe’s rule. The stated justification was reproductive purpose: in this instance, a restriction could be overlooked. The episode shows that the travel ban is not applied as an absolute in every circumstance; a pilgrimage connected to having and raising a child can be treated as warranting an exception.

Bonfires in Williamsburg

In Williamsburg, Lag Ba’Omer is marked by large fires built by men on street corners. They dance around the bonfires until dawn and sing traditional tunes, while women watch from windows or from the stone stoops. The narrator stays awake as long as she can to observe the scene, drawn to its visual force even though she does not understand precisely what it means.

Fire department trucks monitor the fires at every corner. The firemen, mostly accustomed to being called to safeguard the community’s activities, appear distant, and some seem resentful of the repeated calls. The narrator wishes she could speak to one, but understands that being seen doing so would be considered inappropriate. Instead she watches them from within the crowd, where she can remain unnoticed.

A Lasting Memory of the Boundary

The firemen’s clean-shaven faces and direct gaze contrast with the men the narrator is used to seeing. Her attention to them carries a longing to cross the distance between the Hasidic community and the surrounding world, alongside shame about that attraction and an awareness that it would horrify those around her. The scene therefore makes the holiday more than a communal spectacle: it becomes an early encounter with the pull of a world close by yet kept at a distance.

The narrator later connects this childhood feeling to encounters with men outside the community. She recalls that the longing returned when she met a man whose face was freshly shaved and whose gaze met hers without the shame or repugnance she expected. Lag Ba’Omer’s bonfires thus remain in the narrative as the setting for an attraction that outlasts the night, recurring across later years.