In the spring of 1994, I, and a few friends from Hebrew University, took the midnight busses from Jerusalem to Mount Meron in the Northern Galilee to celebrate Lag Ba’Omer, a minor Jewish holiday observed this past Wednesday night and Thursday. The busses would leave every half-hour or so, mostly catered to the Orthodox community (we were the only non-black hats on board).
The strangest of all Jewish holidays, Lag Ba’Omer marks the thirty-third day of the Omer, two-thirds of the way between Passover and Shavuot. The origins of the holiday are unknown. While it supposedly recounts events from the second century CE, the first mention of it does not occur until the middle-ages. It is celebrated with a combination of bonfires, picnics, study, and mass hair shearings (haircuts are typically off limits during the entire period of the Omer with the exception Lag Ba’Omer).
Mount Meron, in addition to being the only place in the Holy Land with consistent annual snow, is also supposed burial plot of Shimon Bar Yochai, the patriarch of Jewish mysticism and student of Rabbi Akiva. After getting off the bus, one is accosted by Hasidim, singing, dancing, and filled with freilach in a mood that can only be described as part New Orleans’ Mardi Gras and Times Square on New Year’s Eve. For my friends’ and me it was like entering another world. We did not stay long, inspecting the cave and gathering the view at the top, before returning to the half-filled bus to make the pilgrimage home.
Ironically, this week our Torah portion, Behar, celebrates the other central peak of our Torah cycle, Mount Sinai. It seems fitting that the two mountains are joined this year. While geographically separated, they are in conversation with another, one marking the beginning of the biblical period, the other the end; each containing mysteries. Having climbed both, I feel their presence in my soul. They serve as reminders of the way past experiences vibrate in the everyday, giving off the warm glow of human aspiration. They beckon us to climb to the unknown and unknowable, because it is only there where we can fully experience the divine.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 06/04/2019 by Marc Slonim