Lag Ba’omer is commonly considered the yahrzeit of R. Shimon bar Yochai. We do not have a solid source for this, but it makes sense that it is.
This is also the day that R. Shimon bar Yochai received semichah. On this day, R. Akiva conferred semichah on the five great talmidim that established Torah among the Jewish people, and one of them was R. Shimon. And the Tur writes that on this day, the talmidim of R. Akiva stopped dying in the plague. But it is accepted to consider this day to be also the yahrzeit of R. Shimon bar Yochai.
The Zohar, authored by R. Shimon bar Yochai, is composed of several books. There is Zohar on the Chumash, there is Raya Mehemna, which is like the Sefer Hamitzvos of the Zohar, and there are two fundamental books called Idra. There is Idra Rabba and Idra Zuta.
What are these books all about? R. Shimon bar Yochai gathered his talmidim and revealed to them secrets of Torah, and all Kabbalah is built on this. And, most importantly for us, there are the writings of the Arizal, also based on Zohar. The first time R. Shimon spoke was in Parshas Naso, when he said that all of the talmidim should say over words of Torah, not just him, and this comprises the Idra Rabba. The second time was in Parshas Ha'azinu, when R. Shimon alone said over words of Torah, and this is the Idra Zuta.
This time, R. Shimon said divrei Torah that are the foundation of all Kabbalah, and in the midst of that sweetness of divrei Torah, R. Shimon departed from this world. It is written that he concluded with the pasuk ... and in the middle of the word ... he fell silent.
This is what it says there:
Said R. Abba: The holy luminary did not finish saying the word ... and his words fell silent, and I wrote, and I thought I would write more, but I did not hear. And I did not pick up my head because the light was great and I could not look.
R. Abba recounts that R. Shimon bar Yochai fell silent, and he could not pick up his head to see if he fainted, simply stopped speaking, or actually passed away. He could not look due to the tremendous light, due to the powerful fire that was there, until the fire died down, and then they saw that he passed away.
Assuming that Lag Ba’omer is R. Shimon’s yahrzeit, the day he passed away, the joy on this day is because in the midst of his passing away, he revealed the foundations of Kabbalah. This constituted a tremendous revelation of Torah. It is written in the Zohar itself as follows:
Since the Jewish people are destined to eat from the Tree of Life, which is the book of the Zohar, they will thereby leave Galus in Divine mercy, and the following verse will be fulfilled regarding them: ... “Hashem alone will lead them, and there is no [worship of a] foreign god with Him.”
Through these words of Torah we will leave Galus, and this is the reason for the great simchah that we make on this day.
This simchah is totally amazing and there is nothing comparable to it anywhere. This day is not mentioned in the Gemara and was not enacted by Chazal, and was not brought before the Sages for their approval like Chanukah and Purim were. (All we have Halachically speaking is the Rema who writes that we do not recite Tachanun on this day, and this itself is puzzling, because if it is because the talmidim of R. Akiva stopped dying, according to the view of the Shulchan Aruch they in fact stopped dying only the next day.) Rather, the Jewish people decided on their own, so to speak, that this day will be a simchah.
There is a well-known story brought in the writings of the Arizal about R. Avraham Halevi who would constantly cry over the Churban, and the Arizal said about him that he is a spark from the soul of Yirmeyahu Hanavi. And one year, he was in Meron on Lag Ba’omer and was shaliach tzibbur at Minchah, and he cried a lot, as he usually did, and he even recited Nachem, the addition usually recited on Tish’ah bAv, when he came to the blessing of Boneh Yerushalayim. R. Shimon appeared to the Arizal and asked, “Why is this Avraham crying on the day of my simchah?” and informed the Arizal that because of this, Avraham will receive tanchumim, meaning that one of his children will die.
So we see that Lag Ba’omer is a day of simchah. The Jewish people made it a Yom Tov. It is a Yom Tov that comes from us. This is a tremendous thing.
The Zohar is For the Last Generation
As we mentioned before, it says in the Zohar, “They will thereby leave Galus.” Through Sefer Hazohar, we will leave Galus. This means that the Zohar was written for us, for the members of the last generation. It has a special word to say to the end of the generations.
There is a very interesting point here. The Zohar was hidden in the ground for a thousand years and was not revealed until the time of the Rashba. The Ramban, although he was the leading Mekubal of his time, and received the tradition of Kabbalah from the Raavad and from R. Yitzchak Sagi Nahor, who received it from Eliyahu Hanavi, did not have the Zohar. Rashi did not have the Zohar, and also Abaye and Rava did not have the Zohar. It was a hidden scroll until R. Yitzchak came along, who was a leading sage in his generation, and printed the Zohar. There was at first tremendous opposition to this – how could he do such a thing! – until the Arizal praised him for it.
You might ask: why didn’t Rashi have the Zohar? Why didn’t the Rambam and the other Rishonim have the Zohar?
I will tell you what I think about this, and this brings us right to the point that is pertinent to us.
It may be compared to a person who has a heart illness and his heart was beating very slowly. If they give him the wrong medicine it is liable to kill him. It is the same with someone who suffers heart arrest. He is administered an electric shock in his heart, and this can save his life, but you don’t give an electric shock to a healthy person, because it might make him die.
In the former generations, with their healthy, pure hearts, with their kedushah and chochmah, they didn’t need the Zohar. But at the end of generations, we will have such a heart attack that there will be no choice but to give us an “electric shock” that was not employed in all the previous generations. This is Sefer Hazohar.
What did R. Shimon bar Yochai accomplish by authoring the Zohar?
The secrets of the Torah are written in it, and in the end of all the generations, what connection do we have to the profound Torah secrets of the holy Tanna R. Shimon?
R. Shimon found a way to communicate these matters in a wondrous manner that on the one hand, all the secrets of the Torah are written there, and on the other hand, it is so hidden. He did it in a way that enables people of our generation to learn it.
Actually, the Chumash itself is like this. Let’s take for example Parshas Bereishis. Chazal say that one should not study the Work of Creation “unless one is wise and understands on one’s own.”
On the other hand, the Midrash says that King Adrianus asked Aquila:
“What do the Jews have, that you want to convert to Judaism?” He answered, “The youngest among them knows how Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world, what was created on the first day and what was created on the second day, how many years have passed since the creation of the world, and what the world stands on, and their Torah is true.”
Everyone, even children, study the story of Creation as recounted in the Chumash. Such a wondrous bridge, which connects every Jew with the deepest matters there are, could only be the work of Hashem.
R. Shimon took this fire and created with it something that can be transmitted all the way to the last of generations. On the one hand, the Zohar contains all the fire, and on the other hand, people in our generation can learn it and come away with some level of understanding of the fire. On the one hand, it remains an oral tradition, as hidden as can be, and on the other hand, it is written down as a readily available book.
Get Back to True Jewish Life
Now we will explain the deep message that the Zohar is communicating to us. I am not saying that people need to learn Zohar, this is not my subject, but we do need to understand what the Zohar is telling us, since it is for our generation.
“They will thereby leave Galus.” The teachings of the Zohar will take us out of Galus. What does this mean? We had Beis Hamikdash, we had the great Sages of the Mishnah. And in the middle of the period of the Mishnah, in the days of R. Shimon bar Yochai, Beis Hamikdash was destroyed. And then we went down and down and down.
When you go down so far, how do you get out of Galus?
I will now make a very subtle point. It is not about quantity or quality. It is about the very essence of the thing. At the end of the generations, we need to get back to the kind of life that once was. This is the meaning of, “They will thereby leave Galus.” R. Shimon wrote back then such an awesome work that at the end of Galus, people will use it, they will learn it, and it will connect them to the times that once were.
What does this mean?
Let’s talk about R. Shimon himself. Where did he author the Zohar? Inside a cave.
And what was the whole Jewish people once like? What was the first Jewish profession of our forefathers, way back?
The Torah clearly says:
Your servants are shepherds, both us and our fathers.
“Shepherds” means that if a Jew needs parnassah, what does he do? He doesn’t open a store; he goes out to the wilderness. Moshe Rabbeinu went way out, “past the wilderness,” when shepherding Yisro’s flock. A Jew takes sheep with him, holding a staff in his hand, and his head is in Heaven. This is a Jewish profession.
When Hakadosh Baruch Hu took our forefathers out of Mitzrayim, He needed to fashion the Jewish nation. How did He do it? He put them in the Midbar for forty years, enwrapped them in Ananei Kavod, fed them Man, which is bread from Heaven, gave them water from the miraculous Be’er to drink. This is how He shaped the Jewish people.
Then He uplifted them and brought them into Eretz Yisrael, and warned them many times not to leave any of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Land there. Because the non-Jewish inhabitants will just “poke them in the eye and jab them in the side.” They will be very detrimental to the Jews. Just seeing them is like thorns in the eye. There is a Biblical prohibition on allowing them to live in Eretz Yisrael: When the Jewish people was in control, if a non-Jew would live in Eretz Yisrael, even if he was in his own corner, it was a Biblical prohibition to allow him to be there. So writes the Rambam.
But over the course of the generations, we went through a process of disintegration. Our spiritual state declined.
R. Shimon bar Yochai came and put himself inside a cave and stayed there for twelve years without coming out, so the Romans would not kill him. Even his wife didn’t know where he was. He covered himself with earth, ate carobs, and that is how he composed the Zohar.
Please listen to what I am saying: R. Shimon composed a book whose message is that a time will come when the only way to live is like he did – inside a cave!
I say the following in a lighthearted way: Twenty years from now (surely Mashiach will have come by then) you will say that this Rabbi Pincus had ruach hakodesh and foresaw the future. The media, the means of communication, the computer, all these devices will bring us to a state where we will simply need to lock ourselves up inside our homes. The street will close us off to such an extent that we will have no choice, we will need to go inside caves.
And “caves” doesn’t necessarily mean underground. “Caves” can be inside every Jewish home. And if you won’t want to eat carobs, you can eat white challah with butter; it doesn’t matter. The point is what a Jew is supposed to be like. What was a Jew once like, and how does a Jew need to be at the end of the generations. This is the only way we can survive!
R. Shimon wrote a book for us. He informed us that at the end of the generations, if a person wants to live like he should, the prevailing state of the world will be such that a Jew cannot live in such a place unless he kindles inside himself the fire that once was, that he knows what the significance of lashon hara is, what the significance of a moment of bitul Torah is, what the value of a mitzvah is. These are things that the teachings of the Zohar reveal to us.
When Sefer Nefesh Hachayim wanted to write about Torah, in the fourth section, it just quoted one Zohar after another, in order to tell what the teachings of Kabbalah reveal to us. It says there that if a person is walking down the street, sees an immodest sight, and entertains an improper thought, this is worse than the evil Titus bringing a prostitute into the Kodesh Hakodoshim. It teaches us that our heart and our mind are Kodesh Kodoshim.
I am not going to repeat everything it says in Nefesh Hachayim. I am just pointing out that what it says is from the Zohar.
We need the fire of Torah that once was. We have gone through a thousand or two thousand years of decline in quantity, and millions of generations of decline in quality, and the day will come when we must reconnect to that fire. And we need to know that the world as we see it today, well, we can’t live in such a place. I am not talking about aveiros. I am talking about the essential nature of a Jewish life. The world we know today is impossible to live in.
And this is the special message that R. Shimon bar Yochai wishes to transmit to us, to we who live in the end of the generations.
So Much Information!
I think I have already spoken about this topic, but it seems to be the most pertinent topic of all to Lag Ba’omer.
I don’t need to tell you about the tremendous advancements in communication and media that have taken place. We may live with the Gemara, but we have a grasp on the entire world. I don’t know if we notice this phenomenon.
Today I met a certain rosh yeshivah who complained to me that he doesn’t understand what’s going on with the bachurim.
I told him as follows: I am not trying to criticize anyone, please don’t misunderstand me, but I want you to know that the amount of information that every yeshivah bachur has nowadays, the amount of knowledge about what is happening in the world, is tremendous. How will he be able to fit into his head also a pasuk from Chumash, or a daf Gemara? What can we expect of him? Every time he goes outside, and converses for five minutes, he gets so much information about what is happening in the world, what will be in the year 2000, what is new with computers, what is new with cars. It’s a ton of information and knowledge.
A person opens a newspaper (I am talking about the kind of newspaper free of avodah zarah, gilui arayos and shfichus damim). There is so much information there. And there are so many newspapers. They found a way how the Yetzer Hara will have a lot of parnassah. We live with everything that is happening in the world.
And we are informed by the Zohar: be aware that the day will come when you will need to remember what once was. You can’t get out of Galus with the kind of life lived today. It’s simply not possible.
Torah Without Foreign Matter
We, the Jewish people, did it on our own. No one taught us this, and Chazal did not enact it; we did it ourselves. When Lag Ba’omer comes, the day that R. Shimon bar Yochai passed away, who was the man with the ability to connect the original, beautiful way of Jewish life of yesteryear to today, we jump on this day and make bonfires, which allude to the light of Torah. As we mentioned before, it says in the Idra that when R. Shimon passed away, there was such a great fire, such a great light, that they did not know if he was alive or dead. It was a whole day that they could not lift their heads due to the power of the divrei Torah, due to the beauty of the divrei Torah.
A mitzvah is compared to a lamp, and Torah is compared to light – ki ner mitzvah v’Torah or.
