Our parasha today recounts God’s commandments regarding sacred time,
our holy days, from Shabbat to Sukkot and Yom Kippur, Pesach to Shavuot.
It tells us to count the seven weeks of our grain offering from our barley harvest, ending with the festival of the first fruits or Shavuot. And while we may not personally be harvesting barley anymore and elevating the omer (a bundle of stalks), we still count the omer, that is each day from Pesach to Shavuot.
Tonight begins the most famous day in the 49 days of counting – it’s Lag B’omer, which stands for 33 days (lamed-gimel) and it’s a day that’s celebrated, especially in Israel, as a day for parties, weddings, bonfires, haircuts, and visits to the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the supposed author of the Zohar, whose yahrtzeit falls on that day. How did Lag B’omer come to be a day of celebration?
First of all, the reason for celebrating is because the time of the counting of the omer until Lag B’omer is considered a mourning period in the Jewish tradition. It’s a time of when weddings aren’t held and some people observe other mourning customs like not shaving and getting haircuts or listening to live music, but on Lag B’omer the mourning is lifted. Why? It goes back to a fairly obscure and somewhat questionable source that is nevertheless quite interesting, especially for us in our community today.
The Talmud says that Rabbi Akiva had 12,000 pairs of disciples and all of them died of some kind of disease plague between Passover and Shavuot because they did not treat each other with respect. The idea of instituting mourning practices to commemorate the deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s students, as well as the idea that the plague ended on Lag B’omer seem to be of much later, medieval origins, likely arising during the time of the Crusades. Scholars have suggested that the massacres of the Crusades took place in the spring and so Jewish communities reinterpreted and re-emphasized the need for mourning during the omer. Some have suggested that we drop the mourning practices because their origins are unclear and questionable, but nevertheless, they have been retained, along with the celebration of Lag B’omer and with the Talmudic legend of Rabbi Akiva and his students, which is also retained as the mythic reason for the holiday, which I’d like to explore a little more with you.
So Rabbi Akiva, the great 1st Century rabbi, had, according to the Talmud, 12,000 pairs of disciples who all died of a plague during this time because they did not treat each other with respect. Any thoughts on this intriguing little text? What might this be about? It certainly seems legendary – a nice round number, an unlikely historical occurrence, but what are the rabbis trying to teach here in the Talmud? (discussion)
One thing that’s interesting is that the Talmud doesn’t say 24,000 disciples but 12,000 “pairs of disciples.” Some have read this as a teaching about chevruta, study pairs, as Torah is traditionally studied in chevruta, in pairs, and as a teaching about how people listen to each other when learning. The idea is that Rabbi Akiva’s disciples are described as pairs suffering from a plague - because study partners did not respect each other; they didn’t listen to each other and only tried to prove their own point.
24,000 people dying in a plague on account of this seems pretty harsh, but again, it’s a legend, there to tell a story and make a point, a point that the rabbis emphasize in exaggerated ways in many places – like saying the Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, causeless hatred.
I’ve been thinking about these disciples of Rabbi Akiva and this plague being lifted because I’ve seen so much healing already taking place in our community, and I want to share with you what I’ve seen and what I feel we still have left to do.
I’ve been to all four of the healing sessions that have been held so far with our facilitator, and they’ve been very powerful for me. I know some people have been skeptical about these groups and questioned the need for or purpose of them, but I want to tell you that people, including me, have found them to be very helpful. People have come together from different perspectives, with different feelings and with a lot of emotion, but each time, a safe and holy space was created where people really listened to each other.
Listening to someone, even to someone you disagree with, speak from their heart, sharing their story, their experience, their feelings, their vulnerability creates a heart-opening in the other people, creates an understanding, creates a connection. We learn, in listening to each other, that the other person, even the one we disagree with, is motivated by their highest values, their highest Jewish values and is coming from a place of goodness. I’ve seen people drop out of their anger, which brain studies show causes people to function not from their most evolved, human front of their brain but from the primitive, reptilian part of the brain. I’ve seen people drop out this angry reptile state to a state of calm and compassion, even towards the person they disagree with.
I’ve also seen that people are in various stages of grief and of even processing the information, which is really important for all of us to remember, especially if you’re one of the people who has been dealing with this situation for a long time. You might be through all the stages and ready to move on and be done talking about all this, but some people are still in shock and just learning all this for the first time. At least one person just got home from being out of town last week and opened their mail to find out for the first time any of this. Remember back to how you felt when you first found out what was going on and remember that some people are still there right now, and be sensitive to that.
The other thing I’ve seen is that people in our community are really hurting, in all different ways and for all different reasons – each person’s own background and life experience and angle on our situation means that people have a lot of different feelings. But for many, as I talked about last week, the sacredness of this community has been damaged for them. Their faith has taken a beating. For those of us who’ve been here in shul or who went to our wonderful Wild Wild West auction on Sunday, we’ve felt the loving care of a community who wants to reach out to each other, make repairs, and strengthen ourselves, but let’s also remember that there are people who aren’t here, who may be feeling isolated or unsafe being here. And we should reach out to them too.
On Lag b’Omer, we celebrate because a plague where people didn’t respect each other or listen to each other ended. So may we celebrate Lag B’omer by reaching out to each other, listening to each other, even to those we might disagree with, and in doing so, may we find compassion for each other and continue to strengthen and make sacred our community.
Shabbat Shalom.
|
