We can’t understand or control everything — and that’s good

Behar, Bechukotai

Leviticus 25:1-27:34

Jeremiah 16:19-17:14

Over the past month or so, kids all over Israel worked assiduously on the same project: gathering any piece of wood that wasn’t nailed down (and some that were) in order to make huge Lag B’Omer bonfires. And on May 11, they watched with satisfaction as their efforts literally went up in smoke.

But as impressive as these neighborhood celebrations are, they pale in comparison to the biggest Lag B’Omer celebration in Israel, the one in Meron. The town in the Upper Galilee  is home to the burial site of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who passed away on Lag B’Omer, according to tradition.

Jews from all over the world can be found there celebrating, offering haircuts to 3-year-old boys, dancing all night, saying prayers, and even slaughtering sheep and eating the meat.

A festive scene no doubt, but who was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai?

The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Shimon aroused the ire of the Roman authorities and was forced to go into hiding in a cave. For 12 years he sat in the cave with his son — nourished solely by a carob tree and a well that had miraculously materialized for them — and studied Torah.

Their study also focused on Kabbalah and mysticism (hence his association with the mystical work called the Zohar). This should come as no surprise; cutting oneself off from the world to seek a transcendental experience is one of the hallmarks of the mystic. Yet setting up Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as the embodiment of that model is striking, as mainstream Jewish thought through the millennia has eschewed asceticism. We are supposed to be a part of the world and benefit from it, and the pleasures that it has to offer.

I believe that resolution emerges from analysis of the latter half of Rabbi Shimon’s story. He ultimately emerged from hiding, looked around to see people engaged in earning a living and exclaimed, “These people are forsaking eternity for temporary pleasures!” He was so upset, says the Talmud, that every place he turned his intense gaze was suddenly burned by fire. This continued until a Divine voice bellowed, “Have you come to destroy my world? Go back into the cave!”

Why was the rabbi told to return to his seclusion? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient to ask him nicely to stop burning people with his gaze?

The answer might lie in a more refined understanding of how Jewish mysticism relates to the world. Rather than focus on denying the physical, Kabbalah focuses us on elevating the physical and letting go of our sense that we control everything. The very word “kabbalah” means “to receive,” implying that one receives this set of transcendent axioms rather than actively creating them.

Perhaps Rabbi Shimon was returned to the cave in order to learn to let go. Emerging from the cave with such defined ideas of how everything must run was contrary to a fundamental message that he was to have gained. He had to go back and study Torah with the realization that he didn’t, and wouldn’t, gain control or the answers to all the world’s mysteries.

We are enlightened, rational and intellectually sophisticated people. We live in an age in which we are offered unprecedented opportunities to control our lives. Through heating and A/C, a person can spend the bulk of his or her entire existence at an ambient temperature of 68 degrees. Advances in medicine let us control how we look and impact our moods. We can control the form of our food, how long it lasts, and eat fruits and vegetables completely out of season.

In a world such as this, it is not easy to know or come to terms with our limits. Lag B’Omer and the life of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai challenge us to realize and embrace the fact that sometimes we need to let go — that there are things we can’t control, concepts we won’t understand and answers we will never have. If we (including the non-mystics among us) are able to realize this, we will have learned a deeper lesson of this special day.

Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob in Oakland. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).