What kind of people light bonfires in a season of mourning?
Our people.
It’s the 33rd day of the Omer. A day tucked in the quiet crease between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation. A day nestled deep within a period traditionally marked by semi-mourning—no weddings, no live music, no haircuts. And yet, on this day, Lag Ba’Omer, we gather with guitars and laughter. We roast marshmallows. Children run through fields with bows and arrows. Some of us dance around flames that lick the edge of heaven. It feels almost defiant.
It is.
Lag Ba’Omer doesn’t make rational sense. And perhaps that is its power.
We do not know exactly what we are celebrating. The Talmud offers only hints—24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students died during the Omer “because they did not treat each other with respect,” and on Lag Ba’Omer, the deaths ceased. In later centuries, the day became associated with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the great mystic and purported author of the Zohar, who is said to have died on this day. Before his death, according to legend, he revealed the deepest secrets of Torah, and asked that his yahrzeit be a day of joy, not grief.
So what do we do with this joy, when it feels at odds with the calendar around it? How do we light fires during a time meant for reflection and restraint?
The answer lies in the very contradiction.
Judaism does not eliminate contradictions. It elevates them.
We are a tradition that says “Zachor v’shamor”—remember and keep—the Sabbath, even though those two words appeared simultaneously in the commandments, which no human ear could possibly have heard. We are a people who blow a ram’s horn on Rosh Hashanah, even though we are taught it is the Day of Judgment, when we should tremble. We are a people whose holiest moment of the year—Yom Kippur—is defined by both our confession and our clean slate, by both our failures and our forgiveness.
We are a tradition that doesn’t choose between fire and silence. It holds them both.
Lag Ba’Omer is the embodiment of that complexity. It teaches us that the pathway to revelation is not linear. The counting of the Omer is not a steady climb up a spiritual staircase. It is jagged. There is loss. There is love. There is silence. And there is fire.
If we’re being honest, this is what spiritual life actually looks like.
It is rarely orderly. It rarely follows a script. There are days when you are sure of the path and days when you lose your footing entirely. There are days when you keep the count. And there are days when you forget—only to begin again.
Lag Ba’Omer is a liturgical exhale. But it is not escapism. It is a holy interruption—a reminder that even in the valley of shadow, even when the wounds are not yet healed, joy is still allowed. In fact, joy is demanded.
This year, that message hits differently.
For many Jews, the Omer feels particularly weighted this spring. We are still reeling. From the horror of October 7. From the loss, the anger, the resurgence of antisemitism in places we thought we were safe. From the complexity of loving a Jewish state that is not always at peace. From the loneliness of being misunderstood, misrepresented, or erased.
There is a part of us that wants to stay in mourning. It feels more honest. More loyal. Like if we allow ourselves to rejoice, even for a moment, we are abandoning the pain.
Lag Ba’Omer says otherwise.
Lag Ba’Omer says: you can carry grief and still light a fire.
You can hold the memory of Rabbi Akiva’s lost students and still teach your own. You can stand in the ashes and still raise your children to dance. You can believe in a broken world and still believe in Torah.
It is not denial. It is discipline. It is resistance.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the mystic most associated with this day, knew something about resistance. Persecuted by the Romans for teaching Torah, he fled to a cave with his son, living there for twelve years, immersed in study. When he finally emerged, the world had changed—but so had he. His first reaction was judgment. He could not understand how people were plowing their fields while the Torah existed. According to the legend, his gaze burned whatever he saw. God sent him back into the cave, essentially saying: “You’re not ready to return.”
Only after another year—soaking in the lessons of patience and imperfection—did he come back able to live among people, to see holiness not just in the heavens, but in the world.
That is Lag Ba’Omer.
It is the fire that doesn’t consume. It is the mysticism that meets reality. It is the spiritual high tempered by human limitation. It is not the end of mourning—but it is a refusal to be defined by it.
I’ve often wondered why the Omer is counted day by day. Why not just skip from liberation at Passover to revelation at Sinai? Why wade through the uncertainty in between?
Because this is where the work happens.
This is where the soul stretches.
This is where joy becomes more than a passing feeling—it becomes a discipline.
To be Jewish is to count every single day of the journey. Even the ones that blur. Even the ones that ache. Even the ones that defy explanation.
Especially those.
And in the middle of that long, uneven climb—we are commanded to stop. To sing. To roast hot dogs. To build bonfires that laugh in the face of despair.
Because we know where this journey is headed.
Because we know that Sinai is coming.
And because we believe in a Torah that doesn’t wait until the world is perfect to be revealed.
On Lag Ba’Omer, we are invited to take joy seriously.
To hold it not in opposition to our grief, but alongside it.
To light a fire—not to forget the darkness, but to insist it will not win.
That is our contradiction.
And that is our calling.
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