{"id":20464,"date":"2021-04-30T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T18:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20464"},"modified":"2021-04-30T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T18:31:00","slug":"horror-on-lag-bomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2021\/04\/30\/horror-on-lag-bomer\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror on Lag B’Omer"},"content":{"rendered":" \r\n\r\n

Last year on Lag B\u2019Omer, two months or so in to this extraordinary pandemic, I wrote about my difficulty in holding to the idea that we are all connected, that we all join the same breath, even those who were not, as I felt, treating the public health with respect, and were acting in the same terrifyingly shortsighted and dangerous ways that (according to the Sages of Blessed Memory) were to blame for the plague that killed twenty thousand students of Rabbi Akiva. I don\u2019t agree with the Sages\u2014I don\u2019t think pandemics are Divine Retribution for sin\u2014but as I said, we want<\/i> to world to have that kind of justice, even that isn\u2019t how it works.\r\n

This year we have terrible news: forty-five people were killed and another hundred and fifty injured when an overcrowded Lag B\u2019Omer celebration became a panicky stampede<\/a>. A hundred thousand people came to celebrate at a place that is rated hold fifteen thousand, and while the death toll wasn\u2019t inevitable, it isn\u2019t precisely inconceivable, either.\r\n

I don\u2019t have anything to say. I think it was poor judgement to congregate in such dangerous crowd, but I have surely made worse judgement calls in my life without suffering at all, much less being crushed to death by a crowd.\r\n

Lag B\u2019Omer is\u2014or is hoped to be\u2014a kind of oasis in the wilderness between Passover and Shavuot. I don\u2019t count the omer, or observe the restrictions of the period of counting it, and often I don\u2019t notice Lag B\u2019Omer, honestly. But when I do, I like the idea of that oasis, that day off in the middle of what can honestly be a hard grind of life. Not that there aren\u2019t Good Things, even during a pandemic! But a day off from bad news is a valuable thing.\r\n

And yet, there it is. Horror and death. Terrifying. I really don\u2019t have anything to say.\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger has nothing to say.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20466,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20464\/revisions\/20466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}