Q&A: How did Lag BaOmer become a Jewish holiday on which believers light fires in honor of a righteous saint and believe that his merits can provide them with salvation?
How did Lag BaOmer become a Jewish holiday on which believers light fires in honor of a righteous saint and believe that his merits can provide them with salvation?
Question
Things I wrote about this holy day—what do you think, our teacher and rabbi?
I am reminded of the laws of idolatry in Maimonides. Maimonides explained that idolatry began with a crooked idea. People thought that since God had given the stars an important role and supposedly accorded them honor, therefore they too should glorify them and give them honor. By way of analogy: if the king honors his associates, then surely we should honor and esteem them as well. And so… people began to build temples for the stars, offer them sacrifices, and praise them. The believers, of course, knew that the stars were not gods. Over time, the "religious operatives" (= false prophets) came and told the public that God had commanded them to build temples for the stars and offer them sacrifices, and they promised that if they did so they would see salvations. And over time the public began to believe that those stars were themselves gods.
And then I look at the celebrations for righteous figures, and especially that of Rashbi… and I identify similar processes. This is the same Rabbi Akiva who expounded, "You shall fear the Lord your God"—the word "et" comes to include Torah scholars. That is, a sage expounds a verse from the Torah and claims on that basis that God wants people to fear Torah scholars just as they fear God. Ostensibly this is for a good purpose, so that the public will listen to the sages and religion can endure, but from here begins the breach that leads to the slippery slope. After all, already here one can identify something problematic in a Torah scholar saying that God commands us to fear Torah scholars. This is not just my own reasoning; the Pele Yoetz already wrote this under the entry "Preacher":
"He should beware of arousing suspicion, lest the listener suspect that he is preaching for his own benefit; therefore he should not frequently preach about the obligation to give charity to Torah scholars, or the honor due to Torah scholars and fear of them, and the like."
It sounds bad when a rabbi commands that rabbis must be honored and feared, and even claims that the Torah commands this.
The Talmud itself greatly glorifies Torah scholars, to the point that some of them are turned into complete righteous saints, miracle workers, raisers of the dead, healers of the sick, seers into the upper worlds, exorcists of demons, and so on. The Talmud’s purpose in this is to magnify the greatness of the sages, so that the public will listen to them and not stray from their words.
One of man’s impulses is the impulse toward idolatry. This is a relatively primitive impulse in which a person feels the need to worship some entity in the hope that it will reward him with something. Already in the period of the Sages, the impulse toward idolatry had weakened significantly. Philosophy and the maturation of faith, and all the more so secularization, pretty much erased its remnants.
But Kabbalah, which emerged at the end of the thirteenth century, further amplified the power of the righteous, and succeeded in rekindling the fire of idolatry. Stories about righteous figures who can heal, grant children to the barren, send livelihood and a proper match—all these belong to kabbalistic mysticism, and a few centuries later also to the Hasidic movement.
Kabbalah and Hasidism glorified the righteous and attributed genuinely divine powers to them. They even encouraged believers to go receive blessings from miracle workers like them. Moreover, they turned the graves of the righteous into places of prayer, and of connection through the souls of deceased righteous figures. People go up to graves in order to ask for salvations. The righteous figure mediates between them and God.
And that is exactly the original mechanism of idolatry that we mentioned at the beginning. Instead of turning directly to God, one turns to the mediating righteous figure (who is no longer even among the living) to bring about salvation in heaven.
It is interesting that the Torah states that no one knew the burial place of Moses our teacher, the greatest of the prophets: "So Moses the servant of the Lord died there… and no man knows his burial place to this day."
Why was it important for the Torah to note that no one knew his burial place? Why was his burial place unknown? Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah (known as the Hizkuni, 1250–1310) suggested: "So that necromancers would not seek him out."
Nadab and Abihu were great holy men who were engaged in the service of the Tabernacle. The entire Temple service and the sacrifices, according to some of our sages, were a substitute for idolatry—a kind of occupational therapy, so that the Jewish people would not go and worship idols. Therefore God created meticulous laws with many details intended to occupy the Jewish people with ritual, in order to channel its impulse into the holiness of God and not into idolatry.
Nadab and Abihu decided on their own initiative to offer a strange fire that they had not been commanded to offer. And the punishment was that they were consumed by fire from heaven. Why was the punishment so severe? Because they completely broke through the ritual framework that was meant to fence the Jewish people within holy worship. The moment they deviated from it with a strange fire, they could come to idolatry.
And this is what brings us to prostrating oneself on the graves of the righteous, and the bonfires and candles lit in honor of righteous figures or "for the elevation" of their souls. Rabbi Yosef Messas already demonstrated and showed that there is no point at all in these things, and he reached a clear conclusion:
"It is explained very clearly that there is no commandment and no honor to the righteous either in prostration [= on the graves of the righteous] or in lighting [= memorial candles] whatsoever…" (Rabbi Yosef Messas, Mayim Chayim responsa)
The Hatam Sofer came out against the lighting at Meron and challenged this custom, which has no reasonable basis whatsoever. People dance, drink alcohol and eat meat, burn clothes, and pray for salvations from Rashbi. And this they call Judaism… Judaism, whose whole essence is a war against idolatry. The Hasidim and kabbalists, of course, will explain with learned argumentation that they are not inquiring of the dead, and that they pray only to God, by means of Rashbi’s merits.
Many people do not know this, but Rashbi apparently did not die on Lag BaOmer at all. We do not know when he died. Even the Chida, who was a great kabbalist, wrote that it is a mistake to say that Rashbi died on that date. It was a copyist’s error in the transmission of books. Instead of "the joy of Rashbi," they copied "the death of Rashbi," because the author had written it in abbreviation.
And even if it was a joy, about that joy itself one must ask: "What does joy accomplish?" (Ecclesiastes 2:2)
Many ask why Lag BaOmer is such a popular holiday. The explanation is quite simple. Most believers sustain their faith by means of experiences, excitement, anticipation, and hopes for salvation. "Popular religion," as it seems fitting to call it. They are not looking to deepen their Torah study; rather, they are looking to celebrate and connect with the righteous figure who will help them with their problems. This saves the believer personal responsibility, and he also gets an impressive "spiritual" experience.
Answer
There are a few comments here.
First, in tractate Pesachim we find a dispute between Shimon HaAmsuni and Rabbi Akiva precisely about the exposition of "You shall fear the Lord your God" as including Torah scholars. Shimon HaAmsuni recoiled precisely from equating the Torah scholar with the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas Rabbi Akiva nevertheless expounded it that way.
Second, the Hatam Sofer writes that clearly their intentions are good, but that there is a concern here of adding to the commandments, and he cites the Pri Chadash. He did not speak of a concern for idolatry.
Third, one should distinguish between the celebration itself and what people make of it. One need not necessarily invalidate the practice because some people take it in problematic directions. It is clear that quite a few people do take it to problematic places, even close to idolatry. So too in Hasidism, especially in Chabad. But that does not make it inherently invalid. And certainly one should not invalidate Kabbalah because of charlatans who abuse it as they please.
Discussion on Answer
With synthetic pork there is no prohibition at all.
As for Lag BaOmer, see here (and in the link brought at the end):
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%9C%D7%92-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A8-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%99
Begging forgiveness, if I may add something even though you asked for the Rabbi’s opinion…
Maimonides himself, whom you mentioned at the outset, writes (see Iggerot HaRambam, Shilat edition, p. 225): "On the first day of the week, the ninth of the month, I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the graves of my forefathers in the cave, and on that day I stood in the cave and prayed, praise be to God for everything."
And similarly there is the midrash about Caleb son of Jephunneh, who slipped away and went to prostrate himself on the graves of the forefathers.
P.S. I’m not trying to challenge your conclusion; I’m only adding that apparently there are other ways to look at the custom regarding graves.
With God’s help, Lag BaOmer 5780
The Maharal asks about the tradition brought by the Geonim that on Lag BaOmer Rabbi Akiva’s students stopped dying in the plague. After all, the Talmud says that Rabbi Akiva’s students died between Passover and Shavuot, which implies that the plague lasted until Shavuot.
And Maharatz answers that from Lag BaOmer onward there were no new infections in the plague. Those who had been infected before then continued to die until Shavuot, but from Lag BaOmer onward there were no new infections.
Which is to say, Lag BaOmer was the "day the curve was flattened" 🙂
Best regards, Shatz
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The Maharal notes that Lag BaOmer marks the division of the forty-nine days of the Omer count into two parts: "thirty-two" + "fifteen," teaching us that the remedy for the sin of "they did not treat one another with respect" comes through a "good heart."
In the easing of the decree on Lag BaOmer, after two-thirds of the days of judgment of "between Passover and Shavuot" had already passed (as mentioned in the words of Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri in tractate Eduyot), there may perhaps be a hint to the custom of the "earthly kingdom" to deduct a third of the punishment for good behavior.
Best regards, Shatz
Link to an article on the history of the Meron hilula:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23590969?seq=1
Even though the Hatam Sofer did not speak about the issue of idolatry, perhaps he would have said so had he seen what people do today:
A) On the Sabbath before Lag BaOmer they sing "Bar Yochai" in the synagogue in the middle of the prayers! Can you imagine anything closer to idolatry than that?
B) They make bonfires in every town and city, and sing to Bar Yochai. Where do we ever find among the Jewish people songs and praises being sung to a human being—even a supremely holy one—and all the more so when he passed away nearly two thousand years ago?
C) See the book Beit Aharon (Karlin, died 1872): "Whoever has faith in Rashbi… just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is for all, so Rashbi is for all." Can the people of Israel hear such things and not recoil? Does this not sound like dualism and idolatry?
Thank you very much, our rabbi.
As for Shimon HaAmsuni, I’m aware of that, and his reasoning is appealing. I addressed it in the comments on the post.
I’m not claiming that this is actual idolatry, but the mechanism is very similar. It’s like eating synthetic pork—maybe formally there is no prohibition here, but it completely has the taste, smell, and appearance of pork.
As for invalidating the practice: what virtue is there in this celebration? What good is there in Rashbi’s hilula, and in hilulot for righteous figures generally?
As for Kabbalah, of course the good ideas in it should be taken, but there’s also a lot of garbage there.