Lag B'Omer -

The Thirty third day of the Omer Count

What is Lag B'Omer?

Hebrew letters may be used to express numbers. The word "Lag" is an acronym for 33 - derived from Lamed (30) and Gimmel (3). The phrase "Lag B'Omer" indicates the 33rd day of the Omer Count, which falls on Iyyar 18 on the Jewish calendar.

Lag B'Omer
Bonfire

In modern Israel Lag B'Omer is a school holiday. Families go on picnics and outings. Special family games are played outdoors. During the previous evening, bonfires are lit in open spaces in cities and towns throughout the country. Among traditional Jews, the custom called Upsherin - giving a boy his first haircut (at age 3, when he begins the study of Torah) is also performed on this day.

According to Jewish tradition, the bonfires are lit to remember 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died while fighting the Romans during the tragic Bar Kochba Revolt, which occurred during the Omer Count (in c.132 AD).  For this reason, during the 49 days of the Omer Count it is customary to observe a period of semi-mourning: weddings are not held, hair is not cut, and music is not heard. On Lag B'Omer, however, this ban is lifted, since the fighting is said to have ceased on that day.

According to Kabbalistic legend, after all his students died, Rabbi Akiva "started over" with a new batch of students. Of these, his foremost student was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the purported author of the Zohar (Zohar means "Splendor," and is considered the basis of the Kabbalistic teachings of the Torah).

Lag B'Omer is remembered as the Yahrtzeit (anniversary of the death) of Shimon Bar Yochai, who told his followers to rejoice - not mourn - after his death. Therefore, special celebrations are held in the village of Meron (near Safed, Israel), where he is said to have been buried. Every year, thousands of Jews celebrate late-night revelry at Mt. Meron in Israel.

The Talmud (Yevamot 62b) recalls the tragedy of Bar Kochba and commemorates it as a Scholar's Festival, in honor of Rabbi Akiva.


Should believers in Yeshua the Mashiach observe Lag B'Omer?

Lag B'Omer is a holiday that most Christians should be wary about celebrating, for the following reasons:

  1. The holiday is not commanded in the Torah but derives entirely from Rabbinic and occultic tradition.
  2. Rabbi Akiva's false belief that Bar Kochba was the Mashiach led to the needless death of thousands of Jews and incited great persecution among Jewish believers in Jesus. How could these Jewish believers in Jesus take up arms on behalf of a false Messiah? Since they protested, they were therefore considered traitors to the Jewish state and were ostracized by their fellow Jews. The split between Pharisaic Judaism and Messianic Judaism was now firmly in place, and this is surely as tragic an event for the followers of Yeshua as for the Jewish people.
  1. According to tradition, the Zohar was "revealed" (i.e., "channeled") to the Jewish world in the thirteenth century by Moses De Leon, who claimed that the book contained the mystical writings of the second-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai - a claim that now appears to be patently false.
  2. Even granting that the Zohar is the product of Bar Yochai, it is dubious that he should be revered as a "saint" or great sage. Bar Yochai does not acknowledge Yeshua as the Messiah and often speculates on matters that transcend or contradict clearly revealed truth given in the Jewish Scriptures. In fact, much of the Zohar and its teachings seems like half-rate Greek mysticism, repackaged for superstitious thinking of the Middle Ages.

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