Lag b’Omer

Dear Friends,

Today is the 33rd Day of the Counting of the Omer. (The Hebrew letter lamed has the numerical value of 30 and the Hebrew letter gimel has the numerical value of three, hence, the 33rd day) Those who are observant have been in a state of semi mourning since the second night of Passover. Each night we count the omer as we move from Pesach to Shavuot. As we remember, Passover marks a spring planting and Shavuot marks a spring harvest. During the counting of the omer, which is a grain offering, observant Jews will not get married, cut their hair or participate in other joyous events (except on Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the month) as we commemorate a plague which afflicted students. Lag b’Omer marks the 33rd day of the counting of the omer which was a day on which the plague broke. In Israel there are major picnics, bonfires, and celebrations, and in the Conservative movement and to the left, people can renew joyous celebrations.

The counting of the omer is a way for us to prepare for the revelation at Mt. Sinai which marks a transition from the slave mentality which preceded the Exodus and prepares us for the responsibility of becoming a people in the Promised Land as we receive the 10 Commandments. People often can’t just leave things behind and need a ritual in order to make change in our lives. I hope that we we celebrate today in some way (we are going out for ice cream!!!), we will take this journey seriously and leave behind those things that enslave us and find meaningful ways to celebrate life. One of the ways in which we do this is through study and I hope that you will seek out a Jewish book or study some of the ethical teachings found in Pirke Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers/Ancestors).

Please see an interesting summary of Lag B’Omer below taken from MyJewishLearning.com.

B’shalom,
Rabbi Bruce Aft
GMU Hillel Rabbinic Advisor

Lag Ba’Omer (from My Jewish Learning website)

The thirty-third day of the Omer is an occasion for happiness during an otherwise mournful period.

Reprinted with permission from Jewish Days: A Book of Jewish Life and Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Few of the many couples who marry on Lag Ba’Omer give much thought to why this is one of the very few days between Pesah and Shavuot when Jewish law permits weddings. If they were to investigate, they would find a conflicting array of explanations, all appealing, none definitive.lag ba'omer

Why We Celebrate

The explanations begin with the Omer period itself, those forty-nine days that are counted off one by one between the two festivals. This is a time of semi-mourning, when weddings and other celebrations are forbidden, and as a sign of grief, observant Jews do not cut their hair.

Anthropologists say that many peoples have similar periods of restraint in the early spring to symbolize their concerns about the growth of their crops. But the most often cited explanation for the Jewish practice comes from the Talmud, which tells us that during this season a plague killed thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students because they did not treat one another respectfully. The mourning behavior is presumably in memory of those students and their severe punishment.

According to a medieval tradition, the plague ceased on Lag Ba’Omer, the thirty-third day of the Omer.  (The Hebrew letters lamed and gimel which make up the acronym “Lag” have the com­bined numerical value of 33.) As a result, Lag Ba’Omer became a happy day, interrupting the sad­ness of the Omer period for twenty-four hours.

The talmudic explanation makes most sense when put into historical context. The outstand­ing sage Rabbi Akiva became an ardent supporter of Simeon bar Koseva, known as Bar Kokhba, who in 132 C.E. led a ferocious but unsuccessful revolt against Roman rule in Judea. Akiva not only pinned his hopes on a political victory over Rome but believed Bar Kokhba to be the long-awaited Messiah. Many of his students joined him in backing the revolt and were killed along with thousands of Judeans when it failed. The talmudic rabbis, still suffering under Roman rule and cautious about referring openly to past rebellions, may have been hinting at those deaths when they spoke of a plague among Akiva’s students. Possibly, also, Lag Ba’Omer marked a respite from battle, or a momentary victory.

A completely different reason for the holiday concerns one of Rabbi Akiva’s few disciples who survived the Bar Kokhba revolt, Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai. He is said to have died on Lag Ba’Omer.

Rabbi Simeon continued to defy the Roman rulers even after Bar Kokhba’s defeat, and was forced to flee for his life and spend years in solitary hiding. Legend places him and his son Eleazar in a cave for twelve years, where a miraculous well and carob tree sustained them while they spent their days studying and praying. When they finally emerged, Simeon denigrated all practical occupations, insisting that people engage only in the study of Torah. For this God confined the two to their cave for another year, accusing Simeon of destroying the world with his rigid asceticism.

But Rabbi Simeon’s otherworldliness resonated with mystics in his own time and later, so much so that tradition ascribes to him the Zohar, the key work of the Kabbalah (although critical scholars attribute it to the 13th-century Spanish kabbalist Moses de Leon). And in Israel, on Lag Ba’Omer, people flock to the site of his tomb in the village of Meron in the Galilee, near Safed, where they light bonfires and sing kabbalistic hymns. Hasidic Jews follow the custom of bringing their three-year-old sons to Meron to have their hair cut for the first time. (The custom of not cut­ting the child’s hair until his third birthday is probably an extension of the law that forbids picking the fruits of a newly planted tree during its first three years.)

Unrelated to Rabbi Simeon, the kabbalists also give a mystical interpretation to the Omer period as a time of spiritual cleansing and preparation for receiving the Torah on Shavuot. The days and weeks of counting, they say, represent various combinations of the sefirot, the divine emanations, whose contemplation ultimately leads to purity of mind and soul. The somberness of this period reflects the seriousness of its spiritual pursuits.

Finally, on yet another tack, some authorities attribute the joy of Lag Ba’Omer to the belief that the manna that fed the Israelites in the desert first appeared on the eighteenth of Iyar.

Though its origins are uncertain, Lag Ba’Omer has become a minor holiday. (For Sephardim, the holiday is the day after Lag Ba’Omer.) Schoolchildren picnic and play outdoors with bows and arrows–a possible reminder of the war battles of Akiva’s students–and in Israel plant trees. And every year numerous couples wed at this happy time, oblivious to Rabbi Akiva or Simeon bar Yohai, manna or mysticism.

Francine KlagsbrunFrancine Klagsbrun is a writer, editor and columnist. She has also devoted her energies to the Jewish Publication Society, the Jewish Museum, the JTS Library, the American Jewish Committee, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. 

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