Bullying March of the Living

It is Yom Haatzmaut. It is the first time I am celebrating the holiday. It is the first time I have ever heard of the holiday. It is Mercaz in the spring, and whatever hold the Yeshiva has had on us is slipping.

There are four or five of us out that night, and we are on Ben Yehudah, Boomer be damned. We have missed enough trying to hide from him, and besides, the perception in the office is that he is no longer as needed as he was earlier in the year.

Yehudah is there. So are others, but I can’t remember who they are. It is pure madness on Ben Yehudah. Tons of people have filled the street with shaving cream and bopping hammers. Everyone is feeling the euphoria of the street party.

March of the Living has arrived in Israel as well for Yom Haatzmaut. They are another group that I have never heard of before, but they are all wearing their blue jackets with their March of the Living logo on the back.

They do not know it. But their jacket has turned into our target.

We watch as March of the Living people run up to one another and jump and scream and hug.

We find one, and surround her. Are you from March of the Living, we ask, knowing full well that she is wearing the jacket and is part of the group. Her eyes light up. Yes, she says excitedly.

We scream March of the living as we cover her in shaving cream and bop her on the head with our hammers. We leave her alone, and move on to the next girl in a blue jacket. We are having a great time, when we are bopping one girl on the head and she looks up and I realize that she is my cousin. Step cousin actually. My grandmother married her grandfather a few years earlier, so we are not really related at all. But I do recognize her. We go and catch up and hang out and then it is back outside to the madness.

I am back with my friends and we are in a shaving cream fight with some girls and then there is the obligatory post-fight picture pose.

We are a motley looking bunch, with Sefirah beards and being a mess from the evening’s activities.