Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai is the master of Judaism who, after a unique interval in the history of his people, has brought back the practice of Shabbat, circumcision, and the counts of the lunar calendar of months, the Rosh Hodesh.
For 13 years they were banished by the Roman authorities, following the persecutions which lasted until the time of Lucius, when millions perished for the crime of practicing Shabbat, circumcising their sons, or counting the lunar months . Without these three axes, there was no authentic Judaism that could exist. Thirteen years of absence risked obliterating the memory and the meaning of this sacred ancestral heritage.
Through these prohibitions, the authority of Rome intended to destroy the foundations of the cultural independence of a whole people, whose presence already extended from Egypt to Syria, and all along the Mediterranean.
To bring back the practice of these laws which became banned by Rome on pain of death, Rabbi Shimon had to travel to Rome, to plead on behalf of his people before the new emperor, who succeeded power when the one who decreed anti-Semitic laws finally died at the end of the thirteen years.
Rabbi Shimon made the journey to reach Rome from the Middle East, passing through North Africa and Spain, as the Talmud Yeroushalmi relates.
During this historic and decisive journey, academies were established during the lifetime of the Master, whose essentially oral teaching surfaced in writing a few centuries later, when it was transcribed from various manuscripts under the name of Sefer haZohar, in Morocco.
(See the introduction to Or haHama by R. Abraham Azoulai.)
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai is also the central figure of “Nistarot haRashbi”, a Midrash which describes a prophecy revealed to the Master in the cellar where he was hiding, by the prophet Elijah.
Lag BaOmer commemorates two things. The declaration of peace after an extremely cruel long war, which killed millions of believers, among them 40,000 masters from different academies, all illustrious students of the great Rabbi Akiba, himself martyred during this war.
The same occasion of Peace celebrates Rabbi Shimon, one of the principal pupils of Rabbi Akiba. Rabbi Shimon was miraculously spared the tragic fate of his colleagues. Not only did Rabbi Shimon manage to resist and survive during the war years, but he succeeded in overturning the decrees of the Romans and thus in reversing the 3 main axes of Judaism for the practice of which millions had perished in wars of intolerance and persecution.
Rabbi Shimon was a valiant critic of Rome, who for his rebellious spirit was condemned to the death penalty, and to avoid this fate had to take refuge in a cellar of the mountains of Galilee for 13 years.
It was during these years that the Prophet Elijah revealed himself to Rabbi Shimon, and that the Master’s spirit was illuminated at the highest level accessible to the human soul, before it was transfigured into an archangel, according to Jewish tradition .
However, it was not the meditative tranquility that surrounded this cellar, where the Master found enlightenment.
Around this cellar, persecution, famine, injustice and the tears of misunderstanding by the thousands, resounded in the world.
It was the answer to a real human misery that the Master sought, and not the access to a selfish peace, insensitive to the other, in an elitist universe and reserved for the “first classes”.
Adhering to the path of Hillel, the founder of the school which Rabbi Akiba followed, Rabbi Shimon was close to the common people, and wanted first of all to ease their suffering.
As in his time the Prophet Elijah fleeing the persecutions of Jezebel, found silence in another cellar, before hearing the Prophetic Voice calling him, Rabbi Shimon in his cellar said to find in himself, in his inner universes, the answer to the mysteries of existence, not only to meet the needs of the souls of his time, but also for generations to come.
Lag BaOmer celebrates the priceless gift of the teachings of Sefer haZohar.
What Lag BaOmer Commemorates ?
