Lag B’Omer is intimately
related to the memory of the Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon
Bar Yochai). He is
intimately connected to the Jewish contemplative tradition, especially where it
involves solitude and seclusion. In 2008,
I published an essay on this website to celebrate Lag B’Omer and as that is now a
good while ago, I have decided to repost
some of it here today with a few editorial additions:
 |
| Graphic: Nachman .Davies 1994 |
The precise connection between the Rashbi and Lag B’Omer is disputed. Some say it was the day he left the seclusion of his cave, some say it was the day of his ordination by Rabbi Akiva, some say it was the day of his death. Some say all three.
In kabbalistic texts, R. Shimon Bar Yochai is often called by the Aramaic name “Butsina Kadisha”—the Holy Light (or the Holy Lamp).
For this reason (and others) the torch has become one of his symbols. There is fire and flame everywhere in his life-story. For example, the story is told that on leaving the cave for the first time, his ferocious gaze set things and people ablaze—and then there is the story that his death-bed was surrounded by fire. Some say that this is the origin of the custom to encircle his tomb with bonfires.
No other personage in Judaism has a whole day of feasting and festivity devoted to their passing (though perhaps the Moroccan Maimuna festival for Maimonides’ father comes close). On Lag Ba Omer, in Israel, barbecues are held, there are bonfires and torches galore, and a mass celebration takes place around his tomb in Meron near Tsfat in Northern Israel.
But not this year, for 2020 is the year of coronavirus and the celebrations in Meron are more or less cancelled, they have been curtailed and replaced by a nominal celebration with limited guests in the interest of pikuach hanefesh.
ooOoo
I made aliyah to Tsfat from Spain in December 2019 and I am fortunate to live within sight of the kever of the Rashbi in Meron. Each year previously, I had "attended" the online Lag Ba Omer celebrations in Meron via live webcam, and so I was sad to realise that I would not be able to take part in that celebration physically for the first time this year.
But there are no accidents.
It seems to me that the Holy Fire of the Rashbi is not just a physical fire lit by human hands anyway—It is meant to be lit in our hearts not just on a hillside or in a back-yard.
During our current period of quarantine and social distancing, many have mourned the loss of certain physical expressions of religious communal practice—but maybe this is not a loss but a call to re-adjust the balance in our priorities.
Perhaps the message we are intended to receive from the restriction placed on external and communal practice is a Divine invitation to increase and strengthen our appreciation of the interior and individual practice of our religion.
Is it all part of call to become more aware of the spiritual and essential, the contemplative and the intimate?
The bow and arrow is a secondary symbol of Lag BaOmer. Perhaps we are being invited to adjust our aim—to re-focus our view of the ulimate Tachlis.
Instead of mourning the loss of familiar and routine external practices, perhaps we are being encouraged to light a fire of living and renewed interior devotion.
Nachman Davies
Lag B'Omer 2020
