Hundreds of thousands of mispallalim will be making their way to Meron in the coming days, including before and after Lag B’Omer, to be mispallel at the tziyun of the Rashbi ZY”A.
The many who make their way to Asara Kadisha Meron on Lag B’Omer are familiar with the sad and outrageous scene. Massive volumes of the kisvei kodesh are unfolding in every corner, along with the tens of thousands of pamphlets they did not manage to distribute to the public, and they are abandoned irresponsibly.
This is also the case in the bus parking lots, since every bus that goes to Meron is cleaned, and the cleaning workers sweep all the garbage from the bus, which unfortunately includes all the holy things that were distributed at the departure stations for limud and tefilos on the way!
The materials are distributed by various people with a good purpose of publicizing to the masses, by free distribution of tefilos and Torah materials.
Even if the desire is to provide words of Torah and Tefilos to the masses, then the distributors, together with the public taking the material, possibly result in a מצווה הבאה בעברה.
“The Committee for Halacha for Genizah” has taken upon itself for many years, to end the terrible disgrace. Dedicated volunteers gather what can be saved. With effort and weariness, they clean the parking lots, the huts, the roads leading to tziyun as well as the tziyun itself.
The volunteers note that their activities are carried out with a shortage of manpower, and under pressure as the cleaning crews will take them to the trash, but the reality is that the cleaning workers do their work properly.
The genizah committee notes with satisfaction that last year there was a significant improvement in the subject. In light of the call of the gedolim not to take materials distributed at the exit stations and in Meron itself, the painful sights have declined considerably. The committee stresses that there is no doubt that if the public does not cooperate with the distributors, they will be able to stop this painful phenomenon for everyone.
“The committee appeals to various advertisers to desist from this improper practice, which causes a terrible disgrace of holy names and words of Torah. Gedolim have issued an explicit order that no pages of tefilos and/or tefilos should be distributed at the Meron site.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
This problem can be alleviated according to some Dayos, by making one copy of the original, paste modified version of the Sheimos over each word that can be a problem, and copy that for distribution. E.g. Shem Hashem can be replaced in Hebrew with a Hei and apostrophe. Then the only Sheimos to be buried are several single sheets