What has a stronger visual association with Lag Ba’Omer than bonfires? I remember learning as a child that we celebrate the 33rd day of the Omer because that is when the plague that killed scores of Rabbi Akiva’s students, a punishment for “not treating each other with respect,” finally abated. As an adult, I read that the blazing fire is supposed to remind us of the light of mystical knowledge revealed in this world through Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, whose spiritual zeal endowed him with a burning gaze and whose yahrzeit is celebrated on Lag Ba’Omer.
This year, however, I can’t help but think of less popular, disputed explanations: that Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students either died as participants during the Bar Kochba Rebellion or during Roman reprisals after its failure; that whether they died of literal illness or by the sword, the real plague that killed them was the sinat chinam, the infighting of Jew versus Jew, that characterized the end of the Second Temple era.
I fear that I won’t see a symbol of celebration when I look into the leaping flames of this year’s bonfires, but an echo of the conflagrations of the past – the heat and destructive potential all too present and real.
My prayer is that we as a people learn from the errors of our national past. With compassion, humility, and strength, may we work together toward an era of ahavat chinam.
