[Avodah] Bonfires

[Chana Luntz]

RMB writes:

<<On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 08:51:06PM +0000, Prof. L. Levine via Avodah
wrote:
> https://web.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/bonfires_mandel.pdf

> I think you will find this article an interesting read.

Maybe, if we didn't go around this circle EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

Derekh Emori is only assur if it serves no other purpose. CS's rejection of
/any/ innovation aside, we permit the Shabbos morning sermon. (And no, I
don't really care whether or not you personally find them meaningful or
tiresome.)>>

I think you are being somewhat unfair to RSM (who wrote the article to which
RYL points) as he concludes:

<<Is there anything osur about a bonfire on Lag Ba'Omer, or waiting to give
a son a haircut until he
is 3 or until you go to Meron? Certainly not. As I believe R. SBA has noted,
the opsheren provides
an excuse for a party that is connected with the boy's beginning to learn;
it could be done without
the haircut, but if people feel that it is important to give a haircut as
well, there is no issur.
Certainly no one who lights bonfires or celebrates opsheren has any idea
that the source of these
customs is extremely questionable. And after 130 years most Jews forget the
origin of customs
anyway and just assume they are old Jewish customs.. However, those who
studiously avoid eating
turkey on Thanksgiving should know that the origin of the customs of the
bonfire on Lag ba'Omer
and halaqa/opsheren are much more suspect.>>

Which actually seems very close to your statement that:

<<If people find sitting around a bonfire singing together to be inspiring
in their service of the Borei, let them.>>

On the other hand I am not so sure about the following statement from the
Times of Israel:

" On Thursday, hours before the disaster, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri
bragged to the Haredi radio station Kol Hai that he had successfully
prevented Health Ministry officials from limiting the number of attendees
over coronavirus fears. Deri lamented that the professional echelon at the
ministry did not grasp that attendees would be protected by the spiritual
influence of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the second-century sage commemorated
at the Meron festival.
“The government clerks don’t understand,” he said. “This is a holy day, and
the largest gathering of Jews [each year].” Bad things, he suggested, don’t
happen to Jews on religious pilgrimage: “One should trust in Rabbi Shimon in
times of distress.”

The definition of Darchei Emori as found in the Rema in Shulchan Aruch Yoreh
Deah siman 178 si’if 1:


או בדבר שנהגו למנהג ולחוק ואין טעם בדבר דאיכא למיחש ביה משום דרכי האמורי
ושיש בו שמץ עבודת כוכבים מאבותיהם,

...or a matter in which they go for custom and for statute and there is no
reason for the matter, there is to suspect it because of darchei emori, and
there is in it a drop of idol worship from their fathers.

The idea that trusting in a saint on his holy day protects and that one
should be somech al hanes, and not even a nes from HKBH, but one believed to
be brought about by the agency of a rabbi from two thousand years ago, in
the face of both medical opinion and security opinion (the latter reiterated
year after year) which say that allowing the numbers that go is dangerous -
seems to stray uncomfortably close to this definition of darchei emori.  At
that point it is hard not to see the parallels that RSM brings regarding the
attitudes of other religions and their pilgrimages to their saints graves
(indeed, the entirety of the non-Jewish world who have commented on this,
immediately saw the parallel to what happened in Mecca, and have reported on
it in that context - that is the particular gathering that the Ran
(Chiddushei HaRan Sanhedrin 61b) specifically identified as idol worship).
And bottom line, IF the medical advice had been followed, THEN those who are
dead would be alive today as there would not have been the numbers to crush
anybody, whether they slipped or not.  It is not about singing around pretty
bonfires, it is about taking risks that rely on nissim to not end in
tragedy.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Regards
Chana