Audio Version Of The Blog – 5/25/25
Posted on May 25th, 2025
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Question: Lag Ba’Omer is mostly known as a holiday for children and teenagers who gather around bonfires in the evening. Aside from this, we know almost nothing about this day. What is the inner meaning of this holiday?
Answer: When I first heard about this holiday, I also thought it was just a tradition to gather around a bonfire, sit, talk, and sing. And mostly it seemed to be something for children, since adults do not typically sit around bonfires.
Lag Ba’Omer is also associated with Rabbi Akiva and his students, although this holiday is mentioned in sources that are over two thousand years old, meaning that they are more ancient than the time when Rabbi Akiva lived. This holiday represents a special spiritual state that was marked even before him.
Lag BaOmer also commemorates the passing of Rabbi Shimon, the author of The Book of Zohar who was a student of Rabbi Akiva. About 40 years ago, I used to go with my teacher Rabash and other students each year on this day to Mount Meron, where Rabbi Shimon is buried. At that time, about two hundred people would gather there to pray. Everything was very modest and quiet.
In the early 1980s, mass pilgrimages to Mount Meron suddenly began during this holiday with crowds of people, buses, and it became very crowded and noisy on that day. The inner uniqueness of the holiday was lost, and so we stopped going.
The essence of the holiday is reflected in its name: “Lag BaOmer,” meaning the 33rd (Lag) day of the Omer count, which begins right after the first day of the Passover holiday. What exactly are we counting?
The prayer book describes the order of the count and specifies the inner corrections made on each day in one of the Sefirot. Usually such strictly Kabbalistic terms as Sefirot are not used in the prayer book, except in the context of the Omer count.
We must count a total of 49 days, each of which is named after a specific Sefira: Chesed in Chesed, Gevura in Chesed, Tiferet in Chesed, and so on. In this way, we count seven times seven qualities that exist within our soul. These qualities were corrupted by us, and now we seek to correct them within ourselves.
A human being is a desire. If one wants to attain their true fulfillment, they must return to their source, that is, to become similar to the upper force of nature, the Creator.
The Creator is the quality of bestowal and love. This means we must correct ourselves from the egoism in which we currently exist, to love for others. This is the meaning behind the counting of the days of the Omer.
Our corrupted, egoistic desire is divided into 49 parts (seven times seven). Each day we correct one part starting from the lightest desire to the heaviest, that is, from a small hatred to the greatest hatred: 49 degrees of hatred in total. Each time, we correct one degree until we have corrected all of the hatred overall.
Hatred is corrected through light. As it is said: “I created the evil inclination and gave the Torah as a spice for the light in it reforms.” Small portions of light act upon us and correct each of our corrupted desires.
The 49 desires must receive 49 portions of light so that through them they may transform from evil into good from hatred into love. This light can only be drawn through the correct study of Kabbalah, which is called the wisdom of light, the true Torah, since it deals with the correction of the human being.
For this reason, the holiday of Lag BaOmer is connected with Rabbi Shimon, with The Book of Zohar, with Mount Meron, with everything that relates to the inner part of the Torah, to Kabbalah. Rabbi Shimon, through writing The Book of Zohar, passed down to us the method of correction.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 559 – Holidays And Festivals: Lag Ba’Omer,” 5/3/15
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Question: On the holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, bonfires are lit everywhere, children roast potatoes and celebrate. Yet on this same day, Rabbi Shimon passed away. I do not understand the connection. What are we celebrating?
Answer: A person remains in this world until they complete their mission, if they manage to complete it. Rabbi Shimon did.
As it is written in The Book of Zohar, he ascended with his students through all 125 spiritual degrees and reached the final correction of the soul (Gmar Tikkun). His students, together with him, attained those same upper degrees, from the height of which they wrote The Book of Zohar.
Therefore his departure from our world brings not sorrow, but on the contrary, joy. Because this person revealed the entire path to the final correction of the soul to us. He prepared the way for us and the upper lights that can come and correct us. That is why we celebrate the day when he completed his work and left this world.
If a person does not know what they are living for, then they cry when they die or when others die. But for the righteous, who spend their entire lives correcting their soul, there is no issue in transitioning from one world to another.
My teacher Rabash once answered my question about death by saying that just as you take off your shirt in the evening and throw it in the wash, so too when a person dies, they shed the wrapping of the soul called the body, and the soul remains. After all, the soul is what matters, and each time it clothes itself in a different body, just as the next day you put on a new shirt.
Question: Where does the soul remain?
Answer: The soul is a force that exists in the same space in which we live. You just do not feel those dimensions. Do you feel radio waves or TV signals? You do not perceive many phenomena with your senses. Only if, for example, you have a radio receiver can you catch the radio waves, but on your own you do not feel them.
It is the same with spiritual phenomena. You have no tools to detect them, and therefore you do not feel them.
The soul is a special kind of energy that exists here. If, through studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, you become similar to it in your qualities, then you will begin to feel it, you will start to reveal that you have a soul. Until you reveal it, you do not have it. If you have not revealed it, then it means it does not exist for you.
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From KabTV’s On the Radio Station 103FM
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If we attempt to unite, we discover that our nature is absolute evil, complete egoism that acts solely for its own benefit and to the detriment of others. Even if we think we have some good intentions toward others, these too ultimately turn out to be hidden egoism.
With the help of the light that returns to the source, we gradually reveal our egoistic qualities—from the lightest to increasingly heavier ones—and correct them. In this way, our evil egoistic desire is graded through 49 degrees.
Through special actions, we draw the light to ourselves; it is a special force of nature that corrects our egoistic qualities. We do not know how the light works on us; we only notice the result of its influence—the changes within ourselves.
We reveal 49 degrees of egoistic desire within ourselves, and transform them into 49 degrees of ascent toward bestowal and love for others. But the main thing is to correct the first 33 degrees within ourselves. According to the calculation, if we correct ourselves up to and including the 33rd degree, the remaining degrees will inevitably be corrected as well.
We will still need to demand corrections and work on them. But there is already a guarantee, a certain additional force that ensures the correction of the remaining degrees.
After all, the final degrees are the most difficult. They are at the very end of correction, and the process proceeds from the easier to the increasingly more difficult. The last desires are very heavy, but we already have confidence that we will be able to correct them.
Moreover, we can ignite these last desires. They are so heavy that they ignite upon contact with the light that returns to the source. Inside them rages such powerful egoism that they begin to burn and radiate light. These most egoistic desires, directed solely toward self-receiving, undergo the most difficult correction—to receive for the sake of bestowal.
Therefore, Lag BaOmer (the 33rd day of the Omer) is a special holiday that signifies our inevitable attainment of the special day of global correction, which is called Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah.
This holiday is called Shavuot because it comes after seven weeks (shavuot) of counting the Omer. Moreover, it is the festival of the giving of the Torah, through which we corrected our egoistic desire into a desire for bestowal and love for others. This corrected desire shines entirely with its bestowal, love, and the connection of all into one nation.
The holiday of Shavuot symbolizes the possibility of our connection into one single nation.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 559 – Holidays And Festivals: Lag Ba’Omer,” 5/3/15
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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 124
How Can We Want to Be Male, to Bestow, Without Knowing What It Is?
The male desire is given from above. It is as a “half” or a “half shekel.” We need to do the first half of the work on our own, and afterward, to the extent we are ready, the light comes from above and completes the work, that is, it creates the vessel. Of course, we must equip ourselves with the desire that these corrections be performed within us. We prepare ourselves for these corrections through the surrounding light.
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