Lag B’Omer is tonight’s counting. We all know that Lag B’Omer is a day of celebration. But interestingly, the Sephardic world has the custom that we don’t take haircuts, shave or the like, until the next morning, the morning of the 34th day of the Omer ( לד בבקר ) which falls out on Tues night/Wed.
Seemingly, the students didn’t stop dying on the 33rd day, so why celebrate on the 33rd day? What exactly are we celebrating?
The question is asked on the custom that the Shulhan Aruch brings down, namely that on one hand we don’t say Tahanun, but on the other hand we don’t make weddings until the next day.
The answer is that there are really two separate tracks. On one track are the students Rabbi Akiva, who, in truth, continued dying until the 34th day, and that is why we continue to mourn until then.
On a separate track, there is the passing of Rav Shimon Bar Yochai, who passed away on Lag B’Omer, and the celebrations of the day are related to that.
It seems to be an odd coincidence that the last day of the passing of Rabbi Akiva’s students just happens to fall out on the day that Rav Shimon Bar Yochai passed away.
But furthermore, why are celebrating the passing of Rav Shimon Bar Yochai? Normally when a Sadik passes away, it’s a day of mourning, so why celebrate?
In order to understand this, we have to go back a bit.
Rabbi Akiva was a student of a Rabbi known as Nachum Ish Gam Zu, who earned that title because of his famous saying “Gam zu LeTova- This too is for the best.” He said this under all sorts of trying circumstances. And it truly was LeTova/for Good.
The Tomar Devorah says that by saying “Gam Zu LeTova”, he was able to turn “even this, which is seemingly bad” into good.
Nachum Ish Gam Zu was Rabbi Akiva’s rebbe, whom he learned by for 22 years, as the Gemarah Hagigah (יב (עמודtells us. So, Rabbi Akiva definitely learned tremendous lessons from him. And Rabbi Akiva, on his own, was know for the (Aramaic) statement
כל מה דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד
“What ever G-d does, He does for the good.”
So that was the second generation of this outlook.
The third generation of this was that of Rabbi Akiva’s student, Rav Shimon Bar Yochai, who was raised with this same approach. It says in the Gemarah in Masechet Shabbat that when he came out of the cave after 13 years, his father-in-law greeted him and cried when he noticed that Rav Shimon had cracks all over his body and was in such a painful situation. “Oy, Woe to me to see you in such a state,” he said.
To which Rav Shimon Bar Yochai answered,
“Fortunate that you see me like this, for if you were not to see me in this state of suffering, you wouldn’t find the amount of Torah that is inside of me now.” It goes on to describe the tremendous heights in Torah learning that Rav Shimon reached while in the cave.
So Rav Shimon Bar Yochai continued with the theme of understanding that everything that Hashem does is for the good, so much so, that he instructed his students not to mourn his passing. Rav Shimon had reached such a high level of understanding that he even considered his death a cause for celebration. He told people not to mourn his passing because he had reached such heights on the day of his death, and he was able to appreciate where he was going afterwards.
These are tremendous levels in the understanding of Gam Zu LeTova. The Hida says that Hashem worked it out that something else happened on the day of Lag B’Omer: After losing his 24,000 students, Rabbi Akiva restarted his Yeshiva on Lag B’Omer with five students, and he met those five new students on Lag B’Omer as well. Hashem worked it out this way in order to show him that now was the time to start again.
So Lag B’Omer is what we call a turning point, where everything turns around. If you take the number 50 (what we are counting to) and subtract 33, you’re left with 17, which is the numerical equivalent of טוב- Tov, good
As this point, what was seemingly bad (all those students passing away) turned around to good. At this point, Rabbi Akiva started again for the good. This too is for the good.
How could it possibly be good that 24,000 students passed away? That’s hard for us to understand, and we won’t go into it now. The main point for us is that Rabbi Akiva understood Gam Zu LeTova, and passed it on to his student, Rav Shimon Bar Yochai.
That’s the essence of the day of Lag B’Omer, to understand that even the things that we can’t necessarily comprehend how they can be good for us, are good for us.
That’s the Rabbi Akiva attitude. We should be inspired by him. After all that he went through- being an ignorant man at age 40, being disowned by his father-in- law, rising to greatness, and then losing his students, instead of being dejected, and giving up, he started again. Everything we have within our oral law, comes from Rabbi Akiva’s students!
So let us take the lesson that regardless of the situations we are in, and regardless of whether we understand these situations, let’s understand the lesson of Gam Zu LeTova; And the time will come when we will understand why all of this was also for the good.
Have a wonderful day.