Parashat Emor

Lag BaOmer is an odd moment on the calendar. It isn’t really a holiday — it has no special rituals or rules — and it is defined totally in terms of another, larger process, the counting of the Omer from Pesach to Shavuot. Even more mystifying is the association that has grown up over time with the the rabbinic legend of a plague that struck the students of Rabbi Akiva. If there was truly such a devastating plague, one might imagine it making a more significant imprint on our collective memory than this later association with the Omer and this day of pause in the middle. Nonetheless, this year I find the Rabbi Akiva story newly compelling, at least as a metaphor for this moment in our own year of plague. The legend about Rabbi Akiva is not, in fact, about the students. It is part of a series of stories through which the rabbis try to illustrate the extreme lengths to which Rabbi Akiva went to ensure that Torah survived a period of harsh persecutions following the Bar Kokhba revolt. He taught, lost everything he’d built, then got up and started over undaunted. He kept teaching despite risking and ultimately giving his life to ensure that his Torah would outlive him and outlast those dark times.

Along the way, he and the community he led endured repeated setbacks. And when a danger passed, they celebrated. They rejoiced, they reveled in those moments of peace. They didn’t forget what they’d gone through or the scars it had left, yet they were determined to cling to life and to hope, to make the effort to look forward and not get trapped in dwelling on what was lost or what might have been. 

So Lag BaOmer, in this framing, is a day not of celebrating some joyous event or salvation, but the intense relief of emerging, at long last, from a time of darkness and loss. Doing this feels tricky and weighted. How do I embrace the new and look forward without being dismissive of the terrible price our plague exacted, especially since, speaking personally, I know that so many people bore far more of the brunt of it than I. It feels almost too easy to slide right back into life as it was and forget how much has been lost or forever changed for so many. 

Yet of course dwelling in the past cannot in itself be the answer. Rabbi Akiva and Lag BaOmer offer a kind of path forward. They need to take a moment to celebrate this reprieve, this return to normal, this gift of a chance to start over. But ultimately they remain focused on their mission, preserving the tradition of Torah and being inspired by that Torah to keep working toward a more ideal world. This is our moment. As more and more of us are vaccinated and emerge from isolation, we need to embrace and savor the pleasures of the simple things, the fresh air and human contact we’ve missed for so long. We need to restore our battered spirits. And hopefully, that enjoyment will be the first step in returning to our mission, in taking in the lessons of this year of hardship and getting back to the work of building the world we want our children to inherit. 

Shabbat shalom and happy Lag BaOmer.