MAY 16/IYAR 18

Lag ba-Omer

Rabbi Akiva, who was a poor and ignorant shepherd until he was forty years old, became the greatest Sage of his time, with twenty four thousand students. According to tradition, in the weeks between Passover and Shavuot circa 120 CE, a plague broke out amongst his students because they did not conduct themselves with love and respect for one another. Every day some students died, but on this, the thirty-third (ל”ג) day of the Omer, the deaths stopped and the day has been celebrated as a minor holiday since.