Meron, again

There are few places to go for recreation in Israel. It's a tiny place. It's not an affluent place. It hasn't been around very long. It spends all its energy on militarism.

There are a few ancient sites to see. Most of them are ruins of goyish buildings, like in Caesarea. Even the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem were build by Turks. And since the psychological programming in Israel (both in Haredi and Chiloni circles) is to hate all gentiles, visiting these places doesn't generate warm feelings. These are the walls of the oppressors. That's basically the attitude.

As for Jewish sites, they are sketchy. I once went to Beer Sheva with the aim of seeing Avraham's well. I learned my lesson about that one. Nobody has a clue where that might have been. Even the Beit Shemesh area where Samson supposedly roamed and was buried doesn't have any visible signs of any of that. Turns out that even graves of the Amaroim are uncertain. It is said that the Arizal pointed out many of them using his spiritual abilities. So it all feels kind of ify.

But Meron is a mountain, a pretty mountain. And we are told that Rashbi is buried there, and on Lag B'omer, in recent decades, thousands of frum Jews came for the bon fires. It's something to do in a country where there is little to do. 

But the government has made visits there complicated. Since the tragedy of several years ago, which was caused in large part by police blocking exits, the government has tried to put controls on Lag B'omer in Meron. Now, you have to buy a special ticket and can stay for only four hours. 

When do you buy this ticket? You cannot buy it throughout the year. Tickets go on sale when they go on sale. Supposedly they went on sale today. So says the website. But the website doesn't work.

Here's the circled message:

"מכירת הכרטיסים לאירוע זה אינה פעילה"

That means "Ticket sales for this event are not active" even though the site tells us that tickets go on sale on Monday, which is now.

And since tickets are limited, that means anxiety and wasted time for you have to go back to the website 100x to try to buy tickets.

And that's Israel. Limited opportunities, poor communication, and bad services and technology that leads to anxiety.

And let us not fail to mention that it also means the memory of a tragedy caused by the government. Actually I don't blame the government entirely, the Meron site was poorly maintained and overcrowded, but it never become a problem until the government got involved. 

Update: It's now 9 PM and the website opened 12 hours late. The wait list is over 18,000!