The Great reveal - Lag Ba'Omer/Emor 5785

Tonight and tomorrow (Friday) is Lag Ba’omer.  What exactly is Lag Ba’Omer? The word “lag” is not actually a Hebrew word.  It is a composite of two letters, lamed and gimel, and is used for the numerical value.  Lamed is 30, gimel is 3, so “lag” is 33. Ba’omer means “of the Omer.”  So Lag Ba’Omer is the 33rd day of the Omer counting.  One of the questions I wan tto address is why we mark the day as the 33rd of the Omer and not by the date on the calendar, 18 Iyar.

During the period between Pesach and Shavuot, we “count the Omer”, counting each of the 49 days leading from the Exodus until the Receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.  It is called “Counting the Omer" because it begins on the second day of Pesach when the Omer offering - a measure of barley flour, was offered on the Altar.  

Chassidus explains in depth the connection between the sacrifice, the counting, and the two holidays.  In a nutshell, when the Jewish people left Egypt they were in a very low spiritual state.  Hashem revealed Himself to them at the time of the Exodus, and this jump-started a process of purification in order to be ready spiritually to receive the Torah.  This process took 49 days, corresponding to the 49 “midot” - facets of the emotional makeup of a human being, explained at length in Kabbalah and Chassidus.  The Jews at that time counted each of the 49 days as they purified each of the 49 midot.  

In the Parshathis week, Emor, we read the Mitzvah for future generations to count these days.  “Starting on the day after the day of rest (Pesach), from the day you bring the omer of barley as a wave-offering, count for yourselves seven weeks.”  (Vayikra 23:15).  We have kept this Mitzvah of counting the Omer for thousands of years.  

On Lag Ba’omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, we celebrate two major events.  One was the end of a plague that took the lives of 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva.  The plague ended on this day, and the few students who remained became the pillars of Jewish teaching for all generations.  One of the remarkable things about this day is that Rabbi Akiva, having suffered the loss of almost his entire Yeshivah and the vast community he had painstakingly established, picked himself up and created a whole new Torah environment that has impacted Jewish life till today.

One of Rabbi Akiva’s surviving students was the great Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.  He passed away on Lag Ba’omer, and this is another important reason that we celebrate this day. It might seem counterintuitive to celebrate a death, but Kabbalah teaches that when a Tzaddik dies, his or her soul, together with all their holy work and the light they brought to the world, rise to the upper worlds.  This greater light is als suffused throughout the world, and this day therefore has a profound impact on all those affected by the Tzaddik.

All the more so with someone of the caliber of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who was a sage whose impact on the world has been compared to that of Moshe.

 

Moshe taught us the Torah.  While there is only one Torah, and only one Receiving of the Torah, the Torah that Moshe taught contains many facets, including deep secrets embedded in every word.  The meaning of the Torah was transmitted orally for many generations, and eventually published in the Talmud and the thousands of books of the Oral Torah.

The deepest secrets were hidden from all but one or two of the holiest people in each generation, until the process of revealing these secrets gradually developed over many hundreds of years.  This process of revelation was begun by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.  He was the first to verbalize these secrets of Kabbalah to a group of students, and to have them written down, in his holy book of Zohar.  Later Tzaddikim, like Rabbi Yitzchak Luria known as the Arizal, further explained and disseminated these teachings, and eventually Chabad Chassidus made these deep secrets understandable and accessible to all. 

So just as Moshe is the one who brought us the Torah for all time, Rabbi Shimon brought us the inner Torah, the secrets of the Torah that had never been revealed before.  It is no coincidence  that the day of the week of Lag Ba’Omer, the day of Rabbi Shimon’s passing, is the same day as the past seventh of Adar, when Moshe passed, both this year on Friday.

Now we can give an answer to the question, why do we mark the day as Lag Ba’Omer and not the 18th of Iyar.  The letters of the word “Lag”, lamed and gimel, when reversed, spell “Gal”, which means reveal.  As in the verse in Psalms (119:18): “Gal Einai... Uncover (lit. reveal) my eyes and I shall look at hidden things from Your Torah.”  This is an allusion, among other things, to the revelation of Kabbalah by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.  

So there is a deep connection between the day of Rabbi Shimon’s passing, who embodied the verse “Gal Einai,” with the number 33, Lag ba’Omer, and it is providential that hispassing was on this day.

Rabbi Shimon himself requested that the day of his passing be celebrated as a holiday,  It is marked with music and dancing, bonfires and barbecues, as always giving extra Tzedakah, and of course spending some time studying the secrets that Rabbi Shimon revealed, primarily as expounded and explained in Chassidus.  Happy Lag Ba’Omer.