Lag B’Omer: R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to me
Sefirat HaOmer is a Biblical commandment to count a seven week cycle, i.e. forty-nine days, beginning on the second day of the Pesach holiday and ending with Shavuot.
This time span bridges the barley (spring) and wheat (summer) Temple offerings, as well as the holidays of our birth as a people (Pesach) and the formation of our national consciousness at the giving of the Torah (Shavuot).
The day of Lag B’Omer is on one hand simply the thirty-third day of the Omer count, with the name “Lag” referring to the numerical value of the letters that spell “Lag,” i.e. “lamed” and “gimmel,” which equal thirty and three, respectively.
There is no Biblical mention of the day of Lag B’Omer, nor is it a Rabbinically mandated holiday in the sense that Purim or Chanukah are.
During Sefira we are encouraged to prepare ourselves for Shavuot by refining our character and strengthening our commitment to Torah study.
On Lag B’Omer, the thirty-third day, we have entered the final third of the Omer count, and some of the more mystical books teach that the spiritual energy of Shavuot already begins to enter the world on Lag B’Omer.
But what actually happened on Lag B’Omer? And why has Jewish tradition over the years marked it as a day of celebration?
If Jewish custom has given Lag B’Omer special treatment, it is logical to assume it must commemorate a seminal event in Jewish history, and one whose effects are felt until today.
Within the seven weeks of Sefira, the custom is to observe a period of semi-mourning for thirty-three days, not taking haircuts or shaving, avoiding music, and not conducting weddings.
According to most opinions, this is in remembrance of the deaths of 24,000 Torah scholars from a plague, all of them students of R. Akiva, a Talmudic Sage who lived in the period just after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. The Talmud tells us that the plague occurred between Pesach and Shavuot, during the Omer period.
It is generally agreed upon that they died within a thirty three day period, and therefore Lag B’Omer marks the end of this mourning period.
Lag B’Omer is celebrated with music and dancing; and as one can imagine – since weddings were on hold for a full month, there are many that take place on Lag B’Omer. Also, since haircuts become permitted again, boys, who according to Chassidic custom do not have haircuts until they are three years old, often receive their upshurn (the celebration of their first haircut) on Lag B’Omer.
Building huge bonfires is another custom on Lag B’Omer.
In Israel it is common to see children collecting just about anything that burns and building it into a big pile in anticipation of Lag B’Omer. This custom is rooted in another aspect of Lag B’Omer - it is the yahrtziet of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of the Zohar, as well as one of R. Akiva’s most famous students.
According to the Zohar itself, it was on the day he died that R. Shimon revealed the Zohar to his students, which was preceded by a great fire that surrounded the house – thus the custom to build bonfires on Lag B’Omer.
The Zohar itself is the main work of the mystical Torah, the Kabbala, and Lag B’Omer is therefore described by many Jewish mystical works as the day of Kabbalat Torat HaNistar, the day of receiving the hidden Torah.
The fire which accompanied the revelation of the Zohar was representative of the Shechina (the Divine Presence) much as we find at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, where G-d’s presence was also represented by fire.
As mentioned, the mourning customs which end on Lag B’Omer commemorate the deaths of 24,000 students. The Talmud relates the story of the plague:
Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students, from Gavat to Antiperes, and all of them died in one period because they were lacking in respect toward each other.
The world was desolate until Rabbi Akiva came to our Rabbis in the south (of Israel) and taught them: R. Meir; R. Yehuda; R. Yose; R. Shimon; and R. Elazar ben Shamoah; – and they stabilized Torah at that time. A Tanna taught: they (the 24,000 students) all died from Pesach to Atzeret (Shavuot).
The Effect of the Plague – the World was Desolate (from lack of Torah study)
“The world was desolate” – let’s appreciate what this means.
The time period we are discussing is just in the aftermath of the final Roman-Jewish war (135 C.E.).
At that time the Romans were so determined to destroy Judaism that they forbade Torah study upon penalty of death.
If the Torah was only a book, it could be hidden and preserved, and while a lack of study would be a bad thing, it might not be critical to the survival of Judaism per se. But Torah study has two components, one written – the Torah sh’bichtav, and the other its oral interpretation, Torah sh’ba’al peh, which is entrusted to the scholars of each generation.
The Oral tradition was not allowed to be written down, it was to be a living, dynamic study – not words in a book. But in R. Akiva’s time, the survival of this transmission – the mesora – was threatened as Rome murdered anyone caught studying.
In this context we can appreciate that when the entire academy of the greatest scholar of the time died – the Jewish world was indeed desolate from lack of Torah study.
Torah sh’ba’al peh underwent a fundamental change in two generations after R. Akiva, during a period of relative peace with the Romans.
The leader of the Jewish people at that time was Rabbi Yehuda the Prince, who had a uniquely positive relationship with the Emperor of Rome, Antoninus Marcus Aurelius.
At that time, Rabbi Yehuda, (also simply called Rebbe – the master) wrote down all of the verified opinions of the Oral Law into what we call the Mishna, separating the rest into what we have in the Talmud as Braisos.
But this process of preserving the tradition in written form began two generations earlier, when R. Akiva did not lose faith with the deaths of his students, but rather started over with his students in the South.
First he organized the streams of Oral Torah that been passed down since Sinai by topic, author and origin. This was the beginning of what would be further edited by R. Akiva's student R. Meir (mentioned in the story above) who wrote the clear and concise language of the Mishna, which was finally formalized as the Mishna in the next generation by Rebbe Yehudah HaNassi and his beis din, the High Court of the Jews, as he was also the Exilarch, i.e. the Jewish king.
These final preparations for the redaction of the Oral Law are perhaps what the Talmud means when it says – “and they stabilized Torah at that time.”
This vital work, the preservation of the mesora, would not have happened without the incredible optimism of R. Akiva, who in his old age was forced to start over after losing his entire academy. We called it "optimism" for the modern ear. What it was, was rock-solid emunah, faith in God.
The loss of R. Akiva’s students was more than can be measured in sheer numbers.
It was a historic turning of events, the fin de siecle of the Second Temple period.
The Historical Context of the Story – Interpreting the “Plague” and “Respect”
After a bloody war followed by a horrific siege (the subject of much of the liturgy on Tisha B’Av), the Roman army led by Titus finally destroyed Jerusalem and demolished the Second Temple in 70 C.E.
The spirit of the Jewish people at this time was badly bruised but not yet broken, and the people were filled with messianic yearnings – hoping for a leader who could successfully throw off the brutal Roman yoke and restore Israel to its former glory.
The tension between the Jews and their Roman overlords waxed and waned, but eventually reached a boiling point when in 130 C.E. the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina.” He built a temple in honor of the pagan god Jupiter on the site of the Holy Temple and outlawed Jews from living in the city.
A Jewish military leader by the name of Shimon Bar Kosiba began to gather an army to fight against the Romans.
Shimon’s personal physical strength was legendary, but in addition he was a deeply religious man.
R. Akiva recognised in Shimon bar Kosiba a potential messiah, which in R. Akiva’s view, was not a mystical worker of wonders, but rather a real-world leader of men.
R. Akiva renamed him “Bar Kochva” which literally means “son of a star,” and was a well known messianic reference.
R. Akiva would say when he saw Bar Kochva “this one is Melech HaMoshiach”(King Messiah).
But the memory of the massive slaughter that accompanied the first war against the Romans was still fresh in the minds of the Rabbis, and they initially opposed R. Akiva’s support for Bar Kochva’s rebellion. However, R. Akiva was the most influential Rabbi of the time, and convinced many that rebellion was possible under Shimon’s leadership.
Bar Kochva’s campaign against the Romans was blessed with unusual success at first, and as he succeeded, so too his army grew, until it eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands, even outnumbering the twelve Roman legions which were gathered from as far away as present day England and France.
Bar Kochva’s troops wreaked havoc on the Roman army, and eventually he succeeded in establishing an independent state in Judea.
However, after a couple of years the tide began to turn.
The Romans recaptured Jerusalem, and Bar Kochva was forced to retreat to the city of Beitar.
Still, Beitar was well fortified and could have held out indefinitely, which would have proved too costly for the Romans. But in a final fatal twist, the secret passageways into the city were leaked to the Romans, and Bar Kochva was tricked into believing the Rabbis were turning traitorous, and in retaliation ended up killing his own uncle, R. Elazar HaModai.
At this point Bar Kochva completely lost the support of the Rabbis, which signaled the beginning of the end for him.
Soon Beitar fell in a bloody battle, and in a rampage, the Romans slaughtered more than half a million Jews, a tragedy that existed without parallel in Jewish history until the Holocaust. And if we think in terms of the numbers killed in just a few days, Beitar was more horrific than any other massacre in Jewish history, period.
The fall of Beitar extinguished the last hope for Jewish independence – it would take almost two millennia before we would again regain the land of Israel.
The Romans correctly understood that it was the Jews adherence to their Torah which caused their incredible tenacity. Roman policy was to crush Torah study at all costs.
In fearless resistance to the Romans, R. Akiva publicly gathered Jews and taught them Torah. (One can only imagine the intensity of the subject matter he taught!)
Once he was asked why he was not afraid of the Romans.
Rabbi Akiva answered with an analogy which has become famous:
“Once there was a fox that was walking by the side of a river, when he saw fish darting from place to place. The fox asked them ‘From what are you running?’ They said to him ‘From the nets of people trying to catch us’.
He (the fox) said to them, ‘If you want, come up with me here on dry land and we’ll live in peace as my ancestors and yours did.’
They (the fish) said to him: ‘They call you the smartest of animals – but you are not smart, you are foolish! If in the place where we are able to live we’re afraid, all the more so in the place where we’ll surely die!’
So too for us, (said R. Akiva) if things are this way when we are studying Torah, about which is written: ‘For it is thy life and the length of thy days,’ then if we would cease to study – all the more so!”
Soon afterwards, R. Akiva was executed publicly by the Romans for the “crime” of teaching Torah, but his martyrdom made the point for all generations - without Judaism, there would soon cease to be Jews.
Because of the historical context of the Roman persecution, some scholars suggest that the plague which killed the 24,000 students is actually a veiled reference to a Roman massacre of the Jewish leadership.
This interpretation casts a different light on the Talmud’s description of the plague as diphtheria.
Ever sensitive to the Roman censors, the authors of the Talmud may have been speaking in code, using diphtheria, which has the symptom of closing the throat – as a way of hinting that the scholars were silenced by Rome.
Along the lines of this interpretation, the “lack of respect” mentioned in the story could be suggesting to us that it was factionalism that existed between the leadership which caused the “plague.”
At a time of national crisis, infighting is a catastrophic indulgence.
The Lesson of Respect
What lesson can we learn from the story of R. Akiva’s students that can be applied to our own times?
Looking at the story’s phrasing, it is interesting that the students are mentioned as 12,000 “pairs” instead of simply stating the number of 24,000.
Rabbi Akiva most likely employed the chavruta study method, meaning that two students are joined as study partners.
A good chavrusashaft (Yiddish for chavruta pairing) creates a dynamic polarity between scholars, energizing their creativity and intellects.
When two minds knock against each other, the interplay can bring new insights neither scholar could have achieved on his or her own.
Respect is essential to this type of dialogue.
When people respect each other, that very respect frees them to disagree with each other with the full force of their intellect and personality, without concern that their words will be taken as a personal attack.
But if respect is lacking – watch out!
The entire dynamic changes as egos get bruised, resentments fester, and then words become weapons.
Even the most sublime ideals can be twisted into political boundaries, separating one group from another, carving out “turf,” defining what “we” believe as opposed to “them.”
What was one generation ago a difference of opinion can splinter and crack the community apart, until eventually only what “we believe is acceptable,” while “they” are branded as either heretical or fanatical, depending on which side of the fence is doing the branding.
Once political concerns emerge, it becomes impossible for parties to feel safe enough to resolve the issues, as the priority becomes selfish – “I’m right, I need to protect mine.”
If our approach towards each other as Jews is motivated by political concerns, if we resort to the tactics of division, we not only hurt ourselves, we hurt the entire people.
But when we work within an atmosphere of respect, we allow for our differences to become a source of strength, rather than an impediment.
This lesson applies whether we are working within a Synagogue board, a school faculty, across communal lines or in the Israeli Knesset!
Creative solutions to common problems can be found when diverse minds are free to work together. And the most effective way to develop the respect of others - is to respect them first - as the Mishna in Pirkei Avos teaches: “Who is respected? He (or she) who respects others.”
R. Akiva’s Optimism
Another Lag B’Omer lesson we should take from R. Akiva again relates to his unbridled optimism.
Even in the worst of times R. Akiva was able to maintain his faith that God will never abandon His people.
The Talmud relates that a group of Rabbis gazed down on the Temple mount, crying and tearing their clothes – but Rabbi Akiva laughed.
That they “gazed down” on the Temple mount is in itself significant, because it originally had been the highest mountain in the area, but in order to punish the Jews psychologically, Turnus Rufus plowed down the Temple mount almost 1000 feet.
In the aftermath of this, when the crying Rabbis questioned Rabbi Akiva why he laughed, he pointed out the prophets teach that the Temple will be plowed under, but they also say that in the end, the streets of Jerusalem will again be filled with vibrant Jewish life.
R. Akiva reasoned – “if now I see the first prophecy fulfilled, I can be certain that the latter will be as well.”
Lag B’Omer signals the final stretch of the Omer period itself, as we begin to prepare ourselves for the holiday of Shavuot and re-committing ourselves to Torah study and observance, kept alive long ago through the effort of R. Akiva and his students, now in our hands to maintain.
Remembering what caused the plague that killed them, we should learn to see ourselves as one people, one family, despite our differences.
Au contraire, those differences are beautiful, and we should freely debate our disagreements with a full and healthy respect, through which we will be immeasurably strengthened.
Lag B’Omer celebrates an end to mourning and an embrace of faith.
It is not only that a plague ended, but also we are reminded that the exile which plagues us will have an end, and the Jewish people will return in fullness to our land.
This time span bridges the barley (spring) and wheat (summer) Temple offerings, as well as the holidays of our birth as a people (Pesach) and the formation of our national consciousness at the giving of the Torah (Shavuot).
The day of Lag B’Omer is on one hand simply the thirty-third day of the Omer count, with the name “Lag” referring to the numerical value of the letters that spell “Lag,” i.e. “lamed” and “gimmel,” which equal thirty and three, respectively.
There is no Biblical mention of the day of Lag B’Omer, nor is it a Rabbinically mandated holiday in the sense that Purim or Chanukah are.
During Sefira we are encouraged to prepare ourselves for Shavuot by refining our character and strengthening our commitment to Torah study.
On Lag B’Omer, the thirty-third day, we have entered the final third of the Omer count, and some of the more mystical books teach that the spiritual energy of Shavuot already begins to enter the world on Lag B’Omer.
But what actually happened on Lag B’Omer? And why has Jewish tradition over the years marked it as a day of celebration?
If Jewish custom has given Lag B’Omer special treatment, it is logical to assume it must commemorate a seminal event in Jewish history, and one whose effects are felt until today.
Within the seven weeks of Sefira, the custom is to observe a period of semi-mourning for thirty-three days, not taking haircuts or shaving, avoiding music, and not conducting weddings.
According to most opinions, this is in remembrance of the deaths of 24,000 Torah scholars from a plague, all of them students of R. Akiva, a Talmudic Sage who lived in the period just after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. The Talmud tells us that the plague occurred between Pesach and Shavuot, during the Omer period.
It is generally agreed upon that they died within a thirty three day period, and therefore Lag B’Omer marks the end of this mourning period.
Lag B’Omer is celebrated with music and dancing; and as one can imagine – since weddings were on hold for a full month, there are many that take place on Lag B’Omer. Also, since haircuts become permitted again, boys, who according to Chassidic custom do not have haircuts until they are three years old, often receive their upshurn (the celebration of their first haircut) on Lag B’Omer.
Building huge bonfires is another custom on Lag B’Omer.
In Israel it is common to see children collecting just about anything that burns and building it into a big pile in anticipation of Lag B’Omer. This custom is rooted in another aspect of Lag B’Omer - it is the yahrtziet of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of the Zohar, as well as one of R. Akiva’s most famous students.
According to the Zohar itself, it was on the day he died that R. Shimon revealed the Zohar to his students, which was preceded by a great fire that surrounded the house – thus the custom to build bonfires on Lag B’Omer.
The Zohar itself is the main work of the mystical Torah, the Kabbala, and Lag B’Omer is therefore described by many Jewish mystical works as the day of Kabbalat Torat HaNistar, the day of receiving the hidden Torah.
The fire which accompanied the revelation of the Zohar was representative of the Shechina (the Divine Presence) much as we find at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, where G-d’s presence was also represented by fire.
As mentioned, the mourning customs which end on Lag B’Omer commemorate the deaths of 24,000 students. The Talmud relates the story of the plague:
Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students, from Gavat to Antiperes, and all of them died in one period because they were lacking in respect toward each other.
The world was desolate until Rabbi Akiva came to our Rabbis in the south (of Israel) and taught them: R. Meir; R. Yehuda; R. Yose; R. Shimon; and R. Elazar ben Shamoah; – and they stabilized Torah at that time. A Tanna taught: they (the 24,000 students) all died from Pesach to Atzeret (Shavuot).
The Effect of the Plague – the World was Desolate (from lack of Torah study)
“The world was desolate” – let’s appreciate what this means.
The time period we are discussing is just in the aftermath of the final Roman-Jewish war (135 C.E.).
At that time the Romans were so determined to destroy Judaism that they forbade Torah study upon penalty of death.
If the Torah was only a book, it could be hidden and preserved, and while a lack of study would be a bad thing, it might not be critical to the survival of Judaism per se. But Torah study has two components, one written – the Torah sh’bichtav, and the other its oral interpretation, Torah sh’ba’al peh, which is entrusted to the scholars of each generation.
The Oral tradition was not allowed to be written down, it was to be a living, dynamic study – not words in a book. But in R. Akiva’s time, the survival of this transmission – the mesora – was threatened as Rome murdered anyone caught studying.
In this context we can appreciate that when the entire academy of the greatest scholar of the time died – the Jewish world was indeed desolate from lack of Torah study.
Torah sh’ba’al peh underwent a fundamental change in two generations after R. Akiva, during a period of relative peace with the Romans.
The leader of the Jewish people at that time was Rabbi Yehuda the Prince, who had a uniquely positive relationship with the Emperor of Rome, Antoninus Marcus Aurelius.
At that time, Rabbi Yehuda, (also simply called Rebbe – the master) wrote down all of the verified opinions of the Oral Law into what we call the Mishna, separating the rest into what we have in the Talmud as Braisos.
But this process of preserving the tradition in written form began two generations earlier, when R. Akiva did not lose faith with the deaths of his students, but rather started over with his students in the South.
First he organized the streams of Oral Torah that been passed down since Sinai by topic, author and origin. This was the beginning of what would be further edited by R. Akiva's student R. Meir (mentioned in the story above) who wrote the clear and concise language of the Mishna, which was finally formalized as the Mishna in the next generation by Rebbe Yehudah HaNassi and his beis din, the High Court of the Jews, as he was also the Exilarch, i.e. the Jewish king.
These final preparations for the redaction of the Oral Law are perhaps what the Talmud means when it says – “and they stabilized Torah at that time.”
This vital work, the preservation of the mesora, would not have happened without the incredible optimism of R. Akiva, who in his old age was forced to start over after losing his entire academy. We called it "optimism" for the modern ear. What it was, was rock-solid emunah, faith in God.
The loss of R. Akiva’s students was more than can be measured in sheer numbers.
It was a historic turning of events, the fin de siecle of the Second Temple period.
The Historical Context of the Story – Interpreting the “Plague” and “Respect”
After a bloody war followed by a horrific siege (the subject of much of the liturgy on Tisha B’Av), the Roman army led by Titus finally destroyed Jerusalem and demolished the Second Temple in 70 C.E.
The spirit of the Jewish people at this time was badly bruised but not yet broken, and the people were filled with messianic yearnings – hoping for a leader who could successfully throw off the brutal Roman yoke and restore Israel to its former glory.
The tension between the Jews and their Roman overlords waxed and waned, but eventually reached a boiling point when in 130 C.E. the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina.” He built a temple in honor of the pagan god Jupiter on the site of the Holy Temple and outlawed Jews from living in the city.
A Jewish military leader by the name of Shimon Bar Kosiba began to gather an army to fight against the Romans.
Shimon’s personal physical strength was legendary, but in addition he was a deeply religious man.
R. Akiva recognised in Shimon bar Kosiba a potential messiah, which in R. Akiva’s view, was not a mystical worker of wonders, but rather a real-world leader of men.
R. Akiva renamed him “Bar Kochva” which literally means “son of a star,” and was a well known messianic reference.
R. Akiva would say when he saw Bar Kochva “this one is Melech HaMoshiach”(King Messiah).
But the memory of the massive slaughter that accompanied the first war against the Romans was still fresh in the minds of the Rabbis, and they initially opposed R. Akiva’s support for Bar Kochva’s rebellion. However, R. Akiva was the most influential Rabbi of the time, and convinced many that rebellion was possible under Shimon’s leadership.
Bar Kochva’s campaign against the Romans was blessed with unusual success at first, and as he succeeded, so too his army grew, until it eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands, even outnumbering the twelve Roman legions which were gathered from as far away as present day England and France.
Bar Kochva’s troops wreaked havoc on the Roman army, and eventually he succeeded in establishing an independent state in Judea.
However, after a couple of years the tide began to turn.
The Romans recaptured Jerusalem, and Bar Kochva was forced to retreat to the city of Beitar.
Still, Beitar was well fortified and could have held out indefinitely, which would have proved too costly for the Romans. But in a final fatal twist, the secret passageways into the city were leaked to the Romans, and Bar Kochva was tricked into believing the Rabbis were turning traitorous, and in retaliation ended up killing his own uncle, R. Elazar HaModai.
At this point Bar Kochva completely lost the support of the Rabbis, which signaled the beginning of the end for him.
Soon Beitar fell in a bloody battle, and in a rampage, the Romans slaughtered more than half a million Jews, a tragedy that existed without parallel in Jewish history until the Holocaust. And if we think in terms of the numbers killed in just a few days, Beitar was more horrific than any other massacre in Jewish history, period.
The fall of Beitar extinguished the last hope for Jewish independence – it would take almost two millennia before we would again regain the land of Israel.
The Romans correctly understood that it was the Jews adherence to their Torah which caused their incredible tenacity. Roman policy was to crush Torah study at all costs.
In fearless resistance to the Romans, R. Akiva publicly gathered Jews and taught them Torah. (One can only imagine the intensity of the subject matter he taught!)
Once he was asked why he was not afraid of the Romans.
Rabbi Akiva answered with an analogy which has become famous:
“Once there was a fox that was walking by the side of a river, when he saw fish darting from place to place. The fox asked them ‘From what are you running?’ They said to him ‘From the nets of people trying to catch us’.
He (the fox) said to them, ‘If you want, come up with me here on dry land and we’ll live in peace as my ancestors and yours did.’
They (the fish) said to him: ‘They call you the smartest of animals – but you are not smart, you are foolish! If in the place where we are able to live we’re afraid, all the more so in the place where we’ll surely die!’
So too for us, (said R. Akiva) if things are this way when we are studying Torah, about which is written: ‘For it is thy life and the length of thy days,’ then if we would cease to study – all the more so!”
Soon afterwards, R. Akiva was executed publicly by the Romans for the “crime” of teaching Torah, but his martyrdom made the point for all generations - without Judaism, there would soon cease to be Jews.
Because of the historical context of the Roman persecution, some scholars suggest that the plague which killed the 24,000 students is actually a veiled reference to a Roman massacre of the Jewish leadership.
This interpretation casts a different light on the Talmud’s description of the plague as diphtheria.
Ever sensitive to the Roman censors, the authors of the Talmud may have been speaking in code, using diphtheria, which has the symptom of closing the throat – as a way of hinting that the scholars were silenced by Rome.
Along the lines of this interpretation, the “lack of respect” mentioned in the story could be suggesting to us that it was factionalism that existed between the leadership which caused the “plague.”
At a time of national crisis, infighting is a catastrophic indulgence.
The Lesson of Respect
What lesson can we learn from the story of R. Akiva’s students that can be applied to our own times?
Looking at the story’s phrasing, it is interesting that the students are mentioned as 12,000 “pairs” instead of simply stating the number of 24,000.
Rabbi Akiva most likely employed the chavruta study method, meaning that two students are joined as study partners.
A good chavrusashaft (Yiddish for chavruta pairing) creates a dynamic polarity between scholars, energizing their creativity and intellects.
When two minds knock against each other, the interplay can bring new insights neither scholar could have achieved on his or her own.
Respect is essential to this type of dialogue.
When people respect each other, that very respect frees them to disagree with each other with the full force of their intellect and personality, without concern that their words will be taken as a personal attack.
But if respect is lacking – watch out!
The entire dynamic changes as egos get bruised, resentments fester, and then words become weapons.
Even the most sublime ideals can be twisted into political boundaries, separating one group from another, carving out “turf,” defining what “we” believe as opposed to “them.”
What was one generation ago a difference of opinion can splinter and crack the community apart, until eventually only what “we believe is acceptable,” while “they” are branded as either heretical or fanatical, depending on which side of the fence is doing the branding.
Once political concerns emerge, it becomes impossible for parties to feel safe enough to resolve the issues, as the priority becomes selfish – “I’m right, I need to protect mine.”
If our approach towards each other as Jews is motivated by political concerns, if we resort to the tactics of division, we not only hurt ourselves, we hurt the entire people.
But when we work within an atmosphere of respect, we allow for our differences to become a source of strength, rather than an impediment.
This lesson applies whether we are working within a Synagogue board, a school faculty, across communal lines or in the Israeli Knesset!
Creative solutions to common problems can be found when diverse minds are free to work together. And the most effective way to develop the respect of others - is to respect them first - as the Mishna in Pirkei Avos teaches: “Who is respected? He (or she) who respects others.”
R. Akiva’s Optimism
Another Lag B’Omer lesson we should take from R. Akiva again relates to his unbridled optimism.
Even in the worst of times R. Akiva was able to maintain his faith that God will never abandon His people.
The Talmud relates that a group of Rabbis gazed down on the Temple mount, crying and tearing their clothes – but Rabbi Akiva laughed.
That they “gazed down” on the Temple mount is in itself significant, because it originally had been the highest mountain in the area, but in order to punish the Jews psychologically, Turnus Rufus plowed down the Temple mount almost 1000 feet.
In the aftermath of this, when the crying Rabbis questioned Rabbi Akiva why he laughed, he pointed out the prophets teach that the Temple will be plowed under, but they also say that in the end, the streets of Jerusalem will again be filled with vibrant Jewish life.
R. Akiva reasoned – “if now I see the first prophecy fulfilled, I can be certain that the latter will be as well.”
Lag B’Omer signals the final stretch of the Omer period itself, as we begin to prepare ourselves for the holiday of Shavuot and re-committing ourselves to Torah study and observance, kept alive long ago through the effort of R. Akiva and his students, now in our hands to maintain.
Remembering what caused the plague that killed them, we should learn to see ourselves as one people, one family, despite our differences.
Au contraire, those differences are beautiful, and we should freely debate our disagreements with a full and healthy respect, through which we will be immeasurably strengthened.
Lag B’Omer celebrates an end to mourning and an embrace of faith.
It is not only that a plague ended, but also we are reminded that the exile which plagues us will have an end, and the Jewish people will return in fullness to our land.