Here's a piece written a while back by Rabbi Berel Wein but which remains of timeless relevance.
The thirty third day of the counting of the sefirah between
Pesach and Shavuot has become, by Jewish tradition, a minor holiday on our
yearly calendar. The origin of this day of commemoration lies in the Talmud’s
reference to it being the day when the disciples of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying.
Most commentators interpret this to mean that the deadly plague that afflicted
thousands of disciples of Rabbi Akiva had run its course and abated after the
thirty-third day of counting the Omer.
Some hold that this may refer to the participation of Rabbi
Akiva and his disciples in the revolt of Bar Kochba against Roman oppression
and that these thousands of disciples were killed by the Romans during and
after the failed rebellion. However, we will view the actual origin of this day
of muted celebration as it is now, having morphed into something entirely
different through the addition of Jewish customs adopted over the ages.
Today hundreds of thousands of people have made pilgrimages to Meron, the
grave of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. Then there are the lighting of bonfires,
parades for children and adults, weddings, music and entertainment and a relief
from the tension that the earlier days of the Omer carry with them.
Yet after all of the layers of trappings and customs of this
day are accounted for, Lag B’Omer stands out starkly as commemorating a day
when Jews stopped dying. The death of millions of Jews throughout our history seems
be such a common occurrence that we manage to take comfort from celebrating the
day when this dying stopped. To my knowledge there is no such comparable day of
commemoration in any other faith.
The Talmud offers us the insight that, even among the great
disciples of Rabi Akiva, there was a lack of mutual respect one for the other. We
are often reluctant to legitimize another’s opinions and viewpoints. We feel
somehow threatened or demeaned by people who hold beliefs and opinions contrary
to our own. This gives rise to eventual tragedy in Jewish life, as the Talmud
points out regarding Rabi Akiva’s disciples.
Just as this is true regarding life within the Jewish
community, as exemplified by the story of the disciples of Rabi Akiva, so too
is it applicable to the relationship of the general world towards Judaism and
Jews both currently and throughout the ages. The world begrudges us even a
modicum of respect; we are perceived as being the most nonconformist of all
faiths and peoples—and therefore the most threatening.
Eventually this lack of respect cumulatively builds to the
concerted attempt to deal with this nonconforming people in a violent fashion.
We state in the Pesach Haggadah that this remains an ongoing situation in
Jewish relations with the rest of the world. In every generation there exist
those that wish to eliminate us completely and yet somehow, with God’s help, we
survive, bloodied but unbowed.
So this people that lives under the constant, indeed omnipresent,
threat of annihilation will mark on its calendar as a special day, a day when
Jews stopped dying. It is not much of a stretch of the imagination from not
giving basic respect to others to finally demonizing them and wishing to
destroy them root and branch. Just as the fires of Lag B’Omer consume the wood
gathered for the bonfire, so too does the lack of basic human respect of each one
for the other consume the lives of many innocent people.
Lag B’Omer thus comes to redirect our moral and social
compass to allow us to respect those that are different than from us. We
certainly need not agree with those who we believe to have wrong ideas, ideals
and policies. We are also certainly not bidden to “turn the other cheek”. But
unnecessary divisiveness and callous disrespect for others, an inability to
honor those that somehow differ with us, are a sure-fire recipe for future
disaster and tragedy.
I feel that this is the basic underlying message of Lag
B’Omer: in commemorating the day when Jews stopped dying almost nineteen
centuries ago, we are to internalize the message of what happens when we do not
give honor one to another.
The commemoration of Lag B’Omer this year, as in many years in the past as well, is clouded by threats and dangers directed against us. But we believe that there will again be a day when Jews will stop dying and that day will be hastened by a better social comity of mutual respect given by one Jew to another.
