How fitting that today would be a beautiful spring day when lots of families are outside reveling in the sunshine and cool air. Today is the day Jewish children are encouraged to play outdoors. It is Lag Ba’Omer, the 33rd of the 50 days between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot (Lag, in Hebrew letters, is the equivalent of the number 33.)
As a child I was taught the significance of this day harkens back to the time when Jews were once again rebelling against Roman rule some 60 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70 CE and the desert fortress Masada fell in 73. The remnants of the Jews, under the leadership of Rabbi Akiba and the general Bar Kochba, challenged Rome between 132-136. On this day it is believed Bar Kochba’s army achieved a significant, though temporary, victory. To commemorate this triumph children were encouraged to go out into the fields with bows and arrows and to play games.
As youngsters in Brooklyn my brother, sister and I were a little too urbanized to go around shooting arrows on Lag Ba’Omer. Instead, on the Sunday closest to the actual day our Hebrew school, Yeshiva Rambam, organized a family outing to Cunningham Park in Queens. It meant not only a day of fun but also freedom from 9-12 Sunday school.
We'd assemble at the school on Kings Highway and East 31 Street to pile into yellow school buses with our fathers and mothers for the ride to the park. It was one of the few times kids would see their parents dressed informally in public. No ties, no white shirts and, this being the 1950s, hardly any jeans or sneakers. But in their open collar short sleeve sports shirts the fathers looked less formal or fearsome. Mothers wore skirts with bright blouses. No pants. They might have adored Katherine Hepburn, but they were not movie stars with the confidence to challenge societal sensibilities.
Once at the park it was like a scene from an Oklahoma land rush in an old western movie. We'd race across the lush grass to stake out a spot for a blanket, hopefully a small plot of land shaded by the leaves of a tall tree. Then the games would begin. Baseball for mostly the kids from the older grades and their fathers. Organized races for others: Wheelbarrow races. Three legged races. Eggs on spoon races. Potato sack races.
When it was time for lunch we would retreat to our respective blankets. My mother would unwrap cold hamburger sandwiches. Maybe they were meatloaf, though I never recall her ever baking a meatloaf for dinner. Active in her youth, even a horseback rider, mom kind of lost the feel for the outdoors as we grew older, though she did claim to have taught her three children to play ball. Dad surely didn’t. He had no concept of any sport.
A few years before mom passed away we kidded her that we never barbecued in our back yard in Brooklyn. She disagreed strongly, asserting we would eat tuna fish sandwiches at a table in the yard. That to her was close enough to be called a barbecue.
More games followed after lunch. My father usually napped. On the ride back to the school we would sing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Or, more than likely for kids my age, we would fall asleep, perhaps dreaming of Bar Kochba smiting the Roman legions.
