MAY 26/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. 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.

3930 (170 CE):

Yahrzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi), one of the greatest disciples of Rabbi Akiva, a leading Tanna of the Mishna and author of the basic work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar. After criticizing the Roman government, Rabbi Shimon was forced to go into hiding with his son in a cave for 13 years. On Lag Ba-Omer, tens of thousands of Jews come to his tomb in Meron to pray, study and light bonfires symbolically illuminating the deeper truths of Torah, as revealed by Rabbi Shimon.