Meeting Him on the Mountain 

I sit on the couch long after nightfall and stare at the white tablecloth and the remnants of Shalosh Seudos in a daze. A close friend of my husband’s has passed on in the tragedy, and my husband is shaken to the core. And it’s not just the friend, it’s the place. Meron.

It’s been a blur of messages and images: What? Who? Horrible answers and stumbling into Shabbos. By now I should gather myself, pick up the pieces, but my mind is thick with cotton wool.

What is it? It’s not like we haven’t known tragedy; bombs and gunmen and wars and freak accidents on highways. Then I let out a sigh and said some Tehillim. Why is this different?

I think of Meron on Lag B’omer, the last time I’d been there, several years ago. I’d come to Yerushalayim for a few days with a friend; both of us needed the break. Between a writers’ conference we wanted to attend and Lag B’omer the next day, that was all the reason we needed. At the last minute, my friend, afraid of the crowds, opted not to come up to Meron, and I went with a different friend and her mother.