Category Archives: Holidays

Surprisingly, the holiday that requires the most advance preparation is not Pesach or Succot; those require one, two, maybe three or (all right, for some) four weeks. In Israel, preparations for Lag Baomer began well before Pesach, almost six weeks in advance of the celebrations. Why?
A ubiquitous sight from early spring was seeing children gathering wood for the big bonfires made on Lag Baomer. Children become scavengers. These urchins clear their homes of all wood in a way that is not done before Pesach with chametz. They frequent construction sites and build makeshift wagons, schlepping their new-found wood from block to block to the central gathering spot. Anything not nailed down is seized, and I suspect that even much that is nailed down is seized anyway. Often, the pieces of wood are two or three times the size of the child carrying it; it looks like the wood is moving itself. This went on for weeks, and really intensified this last week with Lag Baomer’s imminence.
Of course, there are persistent reminders to exercise caution. Fire is obviously dangerous, and in an American context, it is hard to conceive of letting children play with matches, much less ignite stacks of wood in the hopes of producing an enormous conflagration. And, indeed, most fires were well-supervised (although it is clear that the hills surrounding Modiin did catch fire.)
How seriously do Israelis take this quasi-holiday? This year, children were off from school for two days, Sunday and Monday. And the Rabbinate, wary of Shabbat desecrations if bonfires were lit on Saturday night, directed that Lag Baomer pyrotechnics be delayed until Sunday night. (The Rabbinate has developed a habit of minimizing the real dates of Jewish observances in favor of commemorating events.) As can be expected, this just induced the boisterous, youthful participants to light fires both nights – Saturday night in fulfillment of the “custom,” and Sunday night in deference (so to speak) to the Rabbis. What is the origin of this strange custom?
For sure, it is rooted in kabbala (admittedly, not my thing), and a celebration of the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai who brought eternal light to the world through the Zohar and whose illumination is commemorated annually on this day. Perhaps there are other reasons, and some thoughts occurred to me.
In addition to the hilula for Rabbi Shimon, Lag Baomer primarily celebrates the cessation of the plague that afflicted Rabbi Akiva’s disciples. There is a common denominator that links the two: both Bar Yochai, and Rabbi Akiva and his students, were caught in the inferno of Roman persecution. Rabbi Shimon had to hide in a cave with his son for many years, and Rabbi Akiva’s students were actively engaged – as was Rabbi Akiva – in the failed rebellion of Bar Kochva (which, as I learned last week from Modiin’s mayor, actually began in Modiin).
It was a dark time for the Jewish people. Torah study declined and had to go underground. Jewish settlement in the land of Israel was constricted. It was 75 years after the churban, and the future seemed even more bleak that at the time of the churban itself.
And yet, we survived. The plague stopped. The rebellion ended. Rabbi Shimon came out of hiding with a change of government, and Torah study began anew – culminating just a few decades later with the publication of the Mishna.
Fire is the symbol of Torah and Jewish continuity. We are the heirs to a “fiery faith” (Devarim 33:2). Even in the darkest moments, all it takes is one spark to reignite the flames of Torah and it burns again. And fire has the capacity of not being diminished when it is spread; one candle lights another without that flame being lessened in intensity at all. The spread of Torah enriches all of us – teacher and student, parent and child – and nothing need be lost.
In essence, Lag Baomer is a celebration of the mesorah – not just the hidden aspects as revealed by Rabbi Shimon, and not just the revealed aspects as represented by Rabbi Akiva – but a celebration of the mesorah of Torah and the land of Israel that sustains us, that gives us direction in life and eternal hope for the future.
Undoubtedly, children are always the best examples of this hope, and so they have become, if not the masters of the mesorah (yet), then at least the masters of the fire that symbolizes Torah, mesorah, our love for Israel and our confidence in the redemption ahead. They may fully comprehend why they toil for so long gathering their wood and assembling their bonfire, but they do not toil in vain. They aim to keep the fire raging until the coming of Moshiach. May they stay strong, and safe.

Some Lag Baomer pictures:

We recite every year in the hagada and experience the rest the year one of the challenges of Jewish life: “it is not just one who rises against us to destroy us, but in every generation, they rise against us to destroy us.” It is not the cheeriest thought, but still perplexing. Why do they rise against us in every generation? And who or what is the “one”? A person, a nation, or what?
What makes it even more bewildering is that the people and the nations differ greatly in their ideologies. The ancient pagans (Egyptians, Philistines, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans) hated us, the medieval Christians hated us, modern Muslims hate us, and the political atheists (the Communists) hated us. The royal classes hated us and the peasants hated us. There is no common denominator for those who rise against us to destroy us; often they hate each other as well. What they have in common is that they wish to destroy us. So why is that?
There are some among us who harbor the illusion that today it is all about Israel – that if Israel just compromised and conceded then all the problems of the world would disappear, and we would live happily ever after because no one – no one – would have any issues with us anymore. It is a delusion.
“It is not just one who rises against us to destroy us” means that there is not one ideological foe that confronts us, but that each generation has new reasons to be antagonistic. It is the ideology that changes – but there is always an ideology that is hostile to Torah and to G-d. So what is it in our generation? After everything that we have endured, and even in recent memory, Jew hatred is again a pressing concern in many parts of the globe. So what do they want from us? The Islamic hatred is at least comprehensible – religion, land, designs for global domination – but why should Jews be targets across the world, and evoke so little sympathy from the International Left – who should see Israel as a modern progressive state that supports most of the same causes they do, and is often the first to help emergency victims across the globe, friend or foe?
The Exodus from Egypt was unique for many reasons. It was G-d’s very public entry into history, the reaffirmation of G-d as Creator, the introduction of His moral law and expectations to mankind, and others. But one is especially important: “Has G-d ever before extracted a nation from the midst of another nation, with sign and wonder, as G-d did to you in Egypt before your eyes?” (Devarim 4:34)
The Exodus was the creation of a nation from another nation – the only time that occurred in all of history. Individuals or groups can be liberated, people can throw off the shackles of oppression and become free (or, as is happening in various places today in the Arab world, throw off the shackles of oppression and become even less free) – but for a nation to emerge from another nation, that has never happened, before or since. Only G-d can do that – and what G-d did was create a new model of nationalism – the Am Hashem, the “nation of G-d.”
Of the various ideological currents that swirl about the globe in any one era, recent times have seen the decline of nationalism – almost the revulsion of nationalism. The Arab world has long flirted with the idea of one Arab union, which fortunately they can never implement, and has now been overwhelmed by waves of repressive rulers. Europe has tried to implement it – one union, one currency – and that has been a notable failure of both economics and culture. Despite the Euro, it seems that Germans and Greeks, Spanish and Portuguese, Italians and the French, are really not as similar as they thought they were. Cyprus is the latest country to fall onto hard times. America is in decline because a culture of individual responsibility and entrepreneurship is being replaced by the intrusiveness of government that will purportedly to relieve all discomforts and solve all problems, at the expense of seizing the work product of the successful and industrious.
The Exodus from Egypt was the formation of a “nation from a nation,” the creation of a new form of nationalism formed to represent the Creator in His world. Therein lies the hostility of the Left – we are the last bastions of the national idea, and one that differs dramatically from the national ideas of East and West, left and right – a nation based on “and He gave us His Torah,” a nation in which every individual finds satisfaction and ultimate purpose, a connection with the Creator.
In Orot Hatechiya (44), Rav Kook wrote that the decline of the national idea is part of the birth pangs of Messiah. It is a spiritual discontent that will afflict mankind as it searches for meaning and contentment, and it will be the cause of this generation’s attempt “to rise against us to destroy us.”
But, as before, “and the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands.” Their discontent – especially in seeing the rebirth of nationalism in the Jewish state, its prosperity and success, with the majestic sight of an entire nation preparing to celebrate the Pesach of our freedom – will fester, and they too will eventually overcome their hostility, avert their own self-destruction, appreciate the true nature of the Jewish people, and guide the world to the era of redemption and fulfillment for all mankind.

Chag Kasher Sameach to all !