The annual Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel – which in 2022 falls on Wednesday night, May 18 – until recently has attracted as many as half a million visitors every year. The annual gathering, which takes place at what is believed to be the gravesite of the second-century Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, is by far the largest Jewish pilgrimage in modern times.
In 2021, at least 45 people – mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as “Haredim” in Hebrew – died in a stampede when over 100,000 people gathered in a space meant for only 15,000.
