Each of the seven weeks of the Omer is associated with a particular sefira, as is each day within the week, so that the first day of the first week of the Omer is spoken of as “Chesed (lovingkindness) of or within Chesed ,” and the second day is called Gevura (strength) of Chesed, and so on. Kabbalists and, later, Hasidim correlated the entire seven-week period of the counting of the Omer with the lower seven sefirot, the divine qualities or emanations revealed in the Zohar. Rabbi Chaim Vital, the disciple of the 16 th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, is said to have recorded a tradition that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Akiva’s great student and the purported author of the Zohar, died on Lag BaOmer. The calculation, but they amount to the same thing: The end of the plague isĬelebrated on the 33 rd day of the counting of the Omer.) Respect one another, and a later tradition set the date on which the plague endedĪs the 33 rd day of the Omer. Students died during the Omer from a plague brought on by their failure to According to the Talmud, 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s But first, a littleīegan to celebrate Lag BaOmer as an outdoor spring holiday, eventuallyįeaturing bows and arrows. Omer counted between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot. Aleksander (1853–1910), the second Aleksander Rebbe, had a quite literallyīeautiful teaching about Lag BaOmer, the 33 rd of the 49 days of the
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