The Jewish Power Blog: Power over the Past (2)

One of the mysteries of the Jewish calendar is Lag Ba’omer (May 16 this year), the 33^rd day of the counting of the Omer – the 49 days from the second day of Passover until Shavuot (see Leviticus 23:15-6).  These seven weeks are treated as a time of mourning – people refrain from weddings, from getting a haircut or a shave, and other pleasures.  The Talmud (Yebamot 62b) says that 24,000 of Rabbi Akiba’s students died during this period from a plague, brought on by their disrespectful treatment of each other.  Anthropologists suggest that many cultures observe mourning during this period of grain-ripening, because of worry over the possibility of a downpour which might destroy the harvest.  In any case, sometime in the middle ages, a custom developed of taking a break from mourning on day number 33.  There is no record of any event that occurred on that date; it is not mentioned or recognized in rabbinic literature or in the liturgy.  After the middle ages, it came to be observed as a kind of school holiday, a “field day” with picnics and campfires for children.

In the sixteenth century, the kabbalists of Safed experienced a number of revelations regarding the burial places in the Galilee of rabbis and biblical figures.  Among these was the “discovery” of the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai at Meron – and the discovery that he died on Lag Ba’omer.  And since Rabbi Shimon was not just any rabbi, but the one reputed to have written the Zohar, the central text of kabbalah, pilgrimages to his grave on Lag Ba’omer became a popular custom.

And then, in the twentieth century, along came Zionist educators looking for heroes, models for the “New Jew.”  Rabbi Akiba had apparently accepted the claim of one Shimon Bar Kokhba that he was the messiah who would, with God’s help, lead a military campaign to overthrow Roman rule (Jerusalem Talmud Ta’anit 4:5).  The resulting revolt, in 132-135 CE, was a bloody failure, and Rabbi Akiba, among others, was tortured to death.  So maybe the “plague” that killed all those students was actually the war.  And maybe Bar Kokhba’s last stand against Rome could serve as a model of national pride and military heroism “against all odds.”  And so, while there is no evidence linking Bar Kokhba with Lag Ba’omer, this is the song generations of Israeli school children have sung on that day, written by Levin Kipnis (1894-1990) one of the most prolific creators of Israeli children’s culture:

There was a man in Israel, his name was Bar Kokhba. 

A young man, tall, with blazing eyes.

He was a hero; he called for freedom.

All the nation loved him.

He was a hero!  A hero!

So what do we have?

• A day culminating weeks during which children raid construction sites for wood to burn in bonfires, so that the whole country smells of smoke and the fire department trembles.
• A day of massive (~200,000) pilgrimage to the tiny village of Meron, where the reliance on Providence instead of rational safety precautions led to Israel’s largest-ever civil disaster, when 45 pilgrims were killed in a stampede in 2021.
• A day when the chief rabbinate will allow you to get married between Passover and Shavuot.
• A day when we celebrate the memory of Shimon Bar Kochba, a false messiah who led even great leaders like Rabbi Akiba to support his disastrous apocalyptic campaign.

So what do we have?  history – or collective memory?  What “really happened” on Lag Ba’omer, and what should it mean?

Maybe what we need is a state commission of inquiry to try to conduct a nonpartisan historical inquiry, stripping away the “uses” of the memory for our current needs, and presenting us with a modest, reasonably coherent picture of how this day made its way into our calendar and our culture.  Maybe it would be better for everyone if we could go back to some kind of innocent agricultural “May Day” harvest festival which it seems was the true origin of the day.

But national identities and religious beliefs are not interested in scientific history.  All they care about is collective memory.  So maybe the image of the country burning while its heroic leadership, “with blazing eyes,” charges forward toward the apocalypse, is actually the appropriate memory for Lag Ba’omer in our time.