The rights to lighting the Lag B’omer fire in Meron from the Sephardic rabbinical elders of Tzfas
Toward the end of the 18th century, Kollel Vohlyn was established in the Old Yishuv. Vohlyn, or Volhynia, was a region in today’s central and western Ukraine, and this center of Jewish life was proud to support a community of scholars in the holy cities of Teveria, Tzfas, and later Jerusalem when they coalesced into Kollel Vohlyn.
Rav Yisrael Friedman of Ruzhin assumed a leading role in the Kollel in the 1830s, overseeing fundraising, distribution of the chalukah, and settlement of disputes. Kollel Vohlyn soon dominated chassidic life in the Old Yishuv, and was the largest and richest of all the chassidic kollelim.
The Ruzhiner worked earnestly for the community’s development. Following the devastating 1837 Tzfas earthquake, he attempted to curb immigration to the Land of Israel until the community’s economic situation could be stabilized: “I hereby decree on all of acheinu bnei Yisrael in chutz la’Aretz that G-d forbid anyone should immigrate to the Holy Land unless they have financial means to support themselves for a period of three years.… Anyone who does so without such financial means should not receive any chalukah for three years unless he has my signed permission.”
Another of the Ruzhiner’s initiatives was to purchase the rights to lighting the Lag B’omer fire in Meron from the Sephardic rabbinical elders of Tzfas, who had maintained this mystical tradition for centuries. This financial transaction gave the Ruzhiner and his progeny eternal ownership of the coveted hadlakah in honor of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, a tradition that continues until this very day.
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