(Lag Ba-Omer) לַ״ג בָּעֹמֶר

Lag ba-Omer, a minor Jewish holiday commemorating the cessation of a plague that killed 24,000 disciples of the great Rabbi Akiva, began last Thursday night and continued on Friday. According to one interpretation, the “plague” is in fact a coded reference to the Romans, who bloodily suppressed a Jewish revolt in Rabbi Akiva’s time and eventually murdered the rabbi himself in a particularly cruel and gruesome way that I won’t describe here. The cessation of the plague, accordingly, may refer to a temporary Jewish victory over the Romans in the struggle for national independence and political sovereignty. The name of the holiday simply means the 33rd day (33 was written with the Hebrew letters לג before the adoption of Arabic numerals) of the Omer (the period between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot).

In modern Israel, Lag ba-Omer is a school holiday celebrated with bonfires in the evening (mainly lit by kids and teenagers) and picnics the next day. A. and I were in Rehovot having dinner with some Israeli friends of ours on Thursday evening, but from the balcony of their thirteenth-floor apartment we could see lots of bonfires springing up down below. We saw more bonfires on the beach in Tel Aviv when we returned home. Apparently, it’s customary for children and teenagers to begin pilfering wood from construction sites weeks before the holiday, which led the Tel Aviv Municipality to supply firewood this year. No word yet on whether it reduced pilfering. I tried to take some photos of the bonfires, but none of them came out well.

Lag ba-Omer became known as the “Scholar’s Festival” in the Middle Ages, apparently because the merrymaking of rabbinical students was especially enthusiastic. (Ironically, Akiva was said to be not only unlearned in his early years -- an עם הארץ [am ha-aretz or ignoramus] – but also a bitter enemy of scholars: “When I was an עם הארץ I said, ‘Had I a scholar in my power, I would maul him like an ass’” [Pes. 49b]. No doubt a few of my students and colleagues have had the same thought about me.) A. and I, scholars that we are (though of a secular sort), decided to celebrate the “Scholar’s Festival” with a picnic in the Yarkon Park on Friday. Here are a few pictures of our excursion.

The park:

The scholars:





And the best snack food ever, "Bambah":