Community Magazine May 2019

16 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE Words of Rabbi Eli J. Mansour Everyone knows that Lag Ba’Omer, the thirty-third day of the omer counting, is a holiday. After this day, something changes. We resume holding parties, listening to music, and are allowed to take haircuts. But what is the significance of this day? What happened on Lag Ba’Omer, and what does it have to do with us? The answer is that Lag Ba’Omer has a double significance. Two important events happened on this day, and they each teach us an important lesson. First, the students of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying, and second, it is the day that Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai passed away. These events may not sound so significant, but it’s worthwhile to explain the background, so that we can appreciate the great impact of these events. Rabbi Akiva and His Students The great sage, Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, only became lettered and religious at the age of 40. It’s mindboggling that most of us were more knowledgeable at the age of eight than Rabbi Akiva was at the age of forty. His life changed when he married a very righteous girl, Rachel, against the wishes of her father, Calba Savua, one of the wealthiest men of Israel. She believed in Rabbi Akiva and saw that he had a future. She agreed to the marriage on condition that Akiva attend yeshiva. She sent him to learn for twelve years. When he arrived, they put him in Pre-1A, with the little kids. But due to his diligence and brilliant mind, he emerged twelve years later as a rabbi of rabbis. He went on to stay and study for twenty-four years, establishing his own yeshiva with twenty-four thousand students. Tragically, all but five of Rabbi Akiva’s students perished. It started on the second day of Pesah and continued for about a month, until all twenty-four thousand died. Go figure how many funerals he went to each day. By the end, he lost his students, but more significantly, the Jewish people lost their future. Our Torah is given from generation to generation, starting from Moshe to Yehoshua. Rabbi Akiva’s students were the vital link in transmitting the Torah to the next generation. If the link would have been broken, the Torah itself would have been in jeopardy. Thus, it was one of the greatest calamities that ever befell our people. The question is: why did they die? While we could never conjecture “Woe to the people who stand on principle. When there is no flexibility, Heaven forbid, Gd also says, “If you are standing on principle and insist on being right, I will also be strict and stand on the letter of the law.” לעילוי נשמתם של משה בן עליזה, יצחק הלל בן עליזה, והנרייט לאה בת עליזה, דוד בן גילה, רבקה בת גילה, יהושע בן גילה, משה בן גילה, שרה בת גילה, יעקב בן גילה, ואליאנה בת גילה. ולרפואה שלמה ליוסף בן אהובה מסעודה, שילת אהובה בת עליזה, ודניאל בן עליזה. The Power of UNITY