Wishing You A Wonderful Lag B’Omer!
The festive holiday of Lag B’Omer is coming to an end here in Israel, but there are many more hours left of the holiday around the world, so wishing you a very happy Lag B’Omer! For the first time in a very long time I actually went with my teenage daughter to Meron, the burial site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, last night at around midnight. Her friends chose to go with other friends, so I decided to be a good mother and offer to go with her, and off we went, yawn. Generally we go during the day, when it is very hot, and this year with very hot weather I was honestly relieved to go at night, plus it quite an experience! By midnight 400,000 visitors had already arrived with the holiday just getting started! Is there anywhere else on earth where more than a half a million people gather in one place to celebrate the life of someone who lived 2,000 years ago? That is a testiment to holiness of this great man, and the logistics of it all are mind boggling, and yet everything seemed to go quite smoothly.
Vistors from around the world, and Israelis aalike throng to the Meron, Galilee burial site of the famed 2nd Century CE sage and mystic, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, for a festival of bonfires and prayers. Arrival to the area is by bus only, so counting the number of arrivals is quite simple. Not counting of course those who set up camp grounds up to a week before the holiday in the woods around the burial site. Throughout the 24-hour holiday, many great rabbis — most of them prominent Hasidic or Sephardic leaders — are honored with public bonfire-lightings, as the crowds watch from bleachers or in areas set up for dancing.
And just for a bit more background, Rabbi Shimon’s tomb at Meron is the second most visited Jewish pilgrimage site in Israel after the Western Wall! Lag B’Omer is a very important holiday in the Jewish mystical tradition, as it was the day of the death of Rabbi Shimon, as well as the anniversary of when he first conveyed the text of the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar.
Literally meaning the “33rd of the Omer,” the holiday falls during the seven weeks between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot that are treated as a semi-mourning period for the students of rabbinic sage Rabbi Akiva, who perished in a plague during those weeks. The period before and sometimes after Lag B’Omer is thus traditionally a time when public celebrations are avoided.
Lag B’Omer like many Jewish holidays is a day filled with both festivities and serious introspection and prayer. And that said, one can celebrate anywhere in the world, as the light of Rabbi Shimon, as symbolized by the bonfires, is not location specific, but rather fills the world, and that is something truly worth celebrating!
