Dignity & the Inner Meaning of Lag B’Omer - Aish.com (2024)

There was a Rabbi in a town called Slabodka in Lithuania who never told his children – or anyone for that matter – to not do something because it’s wrong, bad or a sin. He would always say, “Don’t do that, it is beneath you. You’re better than that.”

This Rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer Yehudah Finkel, maintained that the ideal education is to teach people about the greatness of the human being, the elevated and refined nature of the soul and the idea of human dignity. He believed that the greatest challenge of the human was to live up to his inner potential, his greatness and his soul’s nature.

The sense of dignity you feel is related to the Divine origin and nature of your soul. Virtually all people feel some sense of self-respect and dignity, hence, for example, the vast majority of the world’s population feel the need for some type of clothing, however minimal. If a person would have every shred of their dignity removed, they would likely either go insane or die. We believe that this sense of dignity is a result of the human possessing a spiritual essence, the soul, which according to Jewish tradition is from the infinite, spiritual world that is beyond time, space and matter. Hence, unlike animals that are at home in the physical finite world, the human feels elevated and above the purely physical. This feeling is expressed in human dignity.

Unlike animals that are at home in the physical finite world, the human feels elevated and above the purely physical. This feeling is expressed in human dignity.

Rabbi Finkel understood dignity as the greatest single motivator for good and one of the most powerful tools to achieve morality and greatness. As we shall see, the period between Passover and the festival of Shavuot is focused precisely on this idea.

Historically the Jewish people’s journey toward nationhood began on Passover with the Exodus, when they were redeemed from physical slavery and subjugation. However, the Jewish people, who had been slaves for over 200 years, still lacked a sense of national identity, purpose and dignity. They had been conditioned to see themselves as inferior, as beasts of burden. From the time the Jews left Egypt until they received the Torah on Mount Sinai they were involved in rehabilitation from their slave mentality and a restoration of their dignity. This period of time, from the Exodus to Mt. Sinai is known as the period of “counting the Omer.”

The Torah emphasizes the link between the two events of Passover and the festival of Shavuot, the festival of the Sinaitic revelation, by giving a commandment to count every day of these 49 days. We are told to count the days and weeks from the second day of Passover until the festival of Shavuot. The commandment is known as Sefirat HaOmer meaning “the counting of the Omer.” The Omer was an offering of newly harvested barley that was brought in the Temple in Jerusalem on the second day of Passover. On Shavuot the offering was bread made from wheat flour. Barley was most often used as animal fodder in ancient times, while wheat is predominantly for human consumption and bread is an exclusively human food. Thus, as we count, we also mark our progression from slavery and the materialistic, animal state, to the increasingly human realm of free will, dignity and the soul’s attachment to God.

For the Jewish people who came out of Egypt, the period between the Exodus and the revelation at Mt. Sinai was one of continuous spiritual awakening and a time of tremendous joy.

In the first century of the Common Era, the Jewish people experienced a major tragedy during the period of counting the Omer. The greatest sage of the generation was Rabbi Akiva, who had taught vast numbers of people. The Talmud relates that 24,000 (!) of Rabbi Akiva’s students, who constituted the primary chain of Torah transmission, died as a result of an epidemic between Passover and Shavuot. The Talmud states that the reason for this Divine punishment was that they did not treat one another with sufficient respect. In a sense they succumbed to a “perfect storm.” They, the primary transmitters of Jewish tradition, taught by the greatest of Rabbis, during the precise time when our focus is on human dignity and honor, failed in their mandate to treat each other with the utmost respect and honor. The lack of proper respect for a colleague demonstrated deficient understanding of the intrinsic, infinite potential of the human soul.

To commemorate this tragedy, certain customs associated with mourning were accepted by many Jewish communities. Marriages are not performed, people do not get haircuts, and men do not shave during this period. Among the Jews of Europe (Ashkenazim) this was also a time of tremendous suffering during the Crusades, and therefore they are stricter about the mourning laws than the Jews of Spain, the Middle East and North Africa (Sephardim). For most communities the mourning ends on the 33^rd day of the Omer, known as Lag B’Omer. This was the day that the plague ended and there were no more deaths, and hence the original joyous nature of this period is able to manifest itself once again.

An additional event occurred on this day, which was the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Rabbi Shimon was the greatest scholar of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) who ever lived. He died on Lag B’Omer, and on that day tradition has it that he revealed many of the deepest ideas of the Kabbalah to his students, who recorded his teachings in the book known as the Zohar.

There is an ancient Jewish custom that on the anniversary of the death of a great scholar, a festival is held in his honor as a means of inspiring people with his lessons and teachings. For hundreds of years on Lag B’Omer, people have gone to the grave of Rabbi Shimon on Mount Meron in the Galilee region of Israel. There they celebrate by lighting bonfires, to symbolize the light of Torah that Rabbi Shimon revealed, and by dancing and singing, and studying Rabbi Shimon’s teachings. This is also related to the idea of honor and dignity. The more one is able to see the incredible depths hidden in the Torah, the more one will realize the hidden depths within each person and within oneself. This awareness will enhance the idea of dignity and ignite within each of us a glowing Divine fire.

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