Lag B'Omer

Today my son and I celebrated Lag B'Omer by building a fire in our driveway. Well, first we constructed a makeshift outdoor fireplace from concrete pavers (stepping stones), concrete edging, and bricks lying around the house.  Well, we cheated and had to buy a couple of pieces (about $1 each) of edging since we didn't find enough lying around the house.

I'm always torn about keeping stuff lying around the house. There are times like this where it is convenient to have such stuff, but in general of course if you kept everything "just in case" your house would end up being like a garbage dump.

Anyway, enough hand-wringing about that. Too much hand-wringing might cause my eczema to act up.

So, in addition to the edging, we bought a bundle of wood from our corner 7-11. It was $8. That seems like a lot, but what do I know. It sure was convenient, though.

Anyway, here's before:

And here is during:

What is the point of Lag B'Omer? Well, I'm not sure we should strain to hard to figure out the "point" of any ritual. But one thing I will mention, which I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, is that if you don't celebrate Lag B'Omer, and you don't celebrate Pesach Sheni, then there are no Jewish holidays in the month of Iyyar! And we can't have that. It'd be like Cheshvan all over again.

Oh well, I can't resist mentioning one other thing, even though it is mentioned elsewhere. For the mystically inclined, note that Lag B'Omer is the 5th day of the 5th week of the Omer, and thus represents Hod she-be-Hod, or Splendor within Splendor.

Oh yeah, and by the way, since Lag B'Omer is the 18th of Iyyar, that means the moon won't rise until pretty late at night on Lag B'Omer. For example, tonight in Los Angeles it will rise at about 11:46pm. So the moon won't compete with your fire.

Shalom and good night.