WEB EXCLUSIVE: Lag b'Omer Draws Fire Of Israeli Environmentalists

by Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem - It begins right after Passover. Wooden pallets begin to disappear from loading docks and parks and forests are suddenly bereft of broken twigs and branches.

The "thieves" are Israeli schoolchildren, who count the days until the start of Lag b'Omer, which this year begins on Monday night.

While the holiday - a celebration of the day a raging plague stopped, saving the lives of Rabbi Akiva's students - is especially popular in haredi circles, secular and traditional Jews also light bonfires and get a day off from school, making Lag b'Omer a truly national holiday.

The problem with the holiday, say many environmentalists and ordinary citizens, is the amount of pollution generated by hundreds of thousands of bonfires that release soot into the air

and make vulnerable people sick. The issue is so acute that emergency rooms around the country prepare not only for burn patients but also for those suffering from respiratory ailments.

Despite the spike in contaminants, neither the government nor environmental groups have done very much to combat the pollution.

"I'd like to pass a law to limit the amount of pollutants but I don't think it would pass the Knesset," Dr. Levana Kordova, scientific director of the Air Monitoring Network at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told The Jewish Week. "A lot of people, and not only the religious, like the holiday and don't want things to change."

Last year, after the environment ministry released hard evidence of the harmful effects of the fires, the Knesset Interior Ministry asked the public to create communal bonfires instead of individual ones, and to ban potentially toxic materials - from plastic bottles to treated wood - from the circle of flame.

The committee also suggested that the Ministry of Education educate students about ways to protect the environment during the holiday, but it seems that the majority of students either don't receive this information or simply ignore it.

So do many parents and teachers, who do not heed the environment ministry's ads, placed in religious and mainstream newspapers, about the dangers of burning plastics, tires, asbestos and other toxic flammables. The ministry does not run an education program.

Kordova said her ministry's air-quality monitoring stations annually detect a huge increase in pollution that lasts for about three hours.

"Much depends on the atmospheric conditions. If it's a hot sharav [heat wave] it's our biggest problem. When there are cooler winds the problem is reduced."

In 2007, a crowded haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem registered a whopping 691 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate matter on Lag b'Omer eve, compared to the usual 60 micrograms on ordinary (non-dust storm) days. That number was 126 micrograms in 2008 - still twice the normal average, but a lot less than the previous year.

Judy Siegel, the Jerusalem Post's longtime health reporter, said studies have shown that hospital visits related to breathing problems jump every Lag b'Omer.

"Particulate matter upsets the respiratory system, so anyone with respiratory conditions such as asthma, pregnant women, the elderly and young children suffer the most. They should stay indoors."

Siegel, who is Orthodox, recalled a Lag b'Omer night in the fervently Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, where she lived for almost two decades.

"Har Nof is next to the Jerusalem Forest and every year the fire service came to make sure the bonfires weren't too close to the trees or electric wires. It didn't help. As soon as the fire department left the kids moved closer to the forest. Some of the kids were wild and uneducated about the health dangers, and some of them burned spray containers, plastic bottles. This stuff can cause cancer when burned."

Not that this practice occurs only on Lag b'Omer.

"Once there was a strike and garbage wasn't collected for weeks," Siegel said, "so the kids burned it and it hurt the health of the people in the neighborhood. And during demonstrations some haredim burn plastic garbage cans, which are also a health hazard."

Siegel attributes some of this apparent ignorance to the fact that environmental science is rarely taught in fervently Orthodox schools.

"The rabbis don't know anything about air pollution. [Non-haredi] kids in the youth movements know more, but haredi kids very little."

Some members of the haredi world are working to change this.

Rabbi Yosef Juliard, co-principal of the Torat Habayit network of haredi boys' schools, integrates environmental awareness into his school's religious curriculum.

"On Lag B'Omer eve we have a learning session with fathers and sons, and afterwards we take them to a small bonfire in a controlled area. We use cotton wool and oil to light the fire. Kids aren't permitted to drag anything in. There is dancing and singing and a lot of fun. We've been doing this for 10 years now, first because it's environmentally friendly and second because it's safer for the kids."

Juliard said his environmental curriculum - very uncommon in fervently religious schools - involves every holiday.

"We teach that it is a Jewish imperative to care for our surroundings. This is the way I was raised, and I was shocked when I saw how others celebrate the holiday. We focus more on the spiritual aspects than the physical."

Although Daniel Pedersen, an environmental scientist and engineer, would like to see Lag b'Omer festivities scaled down, he urges Israelis to see the holiday in context.

"Yes, air pollution during Lag b'Omer is very severe. It comes directly from combustion from wood and there are a lot of small particles that go deep inside the lungs. Also, the fires may contain more hazardous materials than dust storms, which also cause pollution."

Still, Pedersen insisted that cars, buses, trucks and factories create far more air pollution than a couple million Israelis toasting marshmallows for a few hours.

"You have to balance your quality of life versus protecting the environment," Pedersen said. "In my opinion it's more dangerous to live next to a busy road than to sit by a bonfire."