Lag Ba'Omer On Fire - Igniting The Holiday You Thought You Knew

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Hidabroot - Torah & Judaism’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

I want to present to you a historical perspective that I think will forever change the way you look at Lag Baomer and might even have you yourself asking, "What was I thinking this whole time?" But first let's ask some pretty obvious and glaring questions about Sefirah and Lag Baomer. The period between Pesach and Shavuos for almost 2,000 years was an extremely joyous time in the Jewish calendar. It was the time of year that we excitedly and joyously prepared ourselves for re-accepting the Torah on Shavuos. It was a time of sort of springing forward and renewal and optimism, a time we looked forward to infusing this renewed spiritual energy we got on Pesach with the upcoming Torah that we were going to get on Shavuos. In fact, the Sfas Emes amongst many others writes that the reason why the counting of the Omer is found in the Torah in the middle of the parsha discussing the Mayadeem is because Sefiras Omer is really one big Chola Moed between Pesach and Shavuos and much like Chola Moed it's supposed to be filled with happiness and joy and song. And yet nowadays it's not. Nowadays it's a time of mourning. We don't listen to music. We don't shave. We're filled with sadness. We mourn because 1,800 years ago 24,000 talmidim of Rabbi Akiva died and we remember them till today. Now, let's ask some pretty obvious questions. In the long history of the Jewish people there have been many horrible, tragic, and almost unthinkable things that have happened to us throughout our journey. And yet none of them, aside for the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, get more than one day of mourning if they get any day at all. There was the tragedy of the Chet Haegel. There was the loss of the entire 10 Shevatim from Klal Yisrael. In 722 BCE, there was the horrific

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00I want to present to you a historical perspective that I think will forever change the…
2. 2:02battle of Aphek in which the Plishtim slaughtered 34,000 righteous Jewish soldiers and then captured and…
3. 4:36Kabbalah in a cave gets thrown into all of this. How does he fit into this…
4. 7:08re-energized Yidden wherever he went. He organized an army that was determined to rid the land…
5. 9:41There were even members of the Roman Senate who converted to Judais- to Jewish to Judaism…
6. 12:16Tveria at the time, the one in Yerushalayim and the one in Megiddo, were both completely…
7. 14:18TRAGEDY HAPPEN? How could they have possibly What could they possibly have done at one of…
8. 16:54We were inches from the finish line. Perhaps closer to Mashiach than we've ever been. And…
9. 19:30Yochai who realized that just go right back to teaching Torah the way it was taught…
10. 22:06the night and we say kiddush levanah. We look up at the moon and we hope…

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