Emor
Leviticus 21:1–24.23
Ezekiel 44:15–44.31
Years ago I received a January phone call from a woman who wanted to know what day that week the matzah was to be eaten. I was baffled at first, as Passover wasn’t for three more months and I didn’t know too many people rushing to get a jump-start on eating matzah. Why was she calling now? After a minute’s discussion, the root of the misunderstanding emerged: She was participating in a weekly Torah study group, and the Torah reading calendar is such that in January we read the portions about the Exodus even though the holiday that commemorates those events isn’t until the spring.
Indeed, it is the norm that the Torah readings related to the holidays and when they occur in the year are separate in time. We read about Passover in winter and the High Holy Days in spring and summer, and we read about traveling through the desert several months before Sukkot. But the counting of the Omer is different. We read about this counting of the days between Passover and Shavuot this Shabbat, just as we are in its midst and are marking it daily.
This season looks like it should be a joyous time. We are counting up toward commemoration of receiving our precious Torah. It is also the time of year when the marketplace is flooded with food, as Jewish law permits fresh grain to be sold at this time. Sounds pretty joyous, both spiritually and materially!
And indeed it was, for many years. But then tragedy occurred. The Talmud teaches in tractate Yevamot (page 62B) that 12,000 study-pairs of students of the great Rabbi Akiva died in the course of 33 short days at this time of year, and what was once a time of jubilation became a time of mourning.
What a tragic loss — 24,000 pupils of one of the greatest teachers in Jewish history! Can you imagine ? Shortly after Pesach, there is suddenly nowhere to send your child to school, for the teachers are all dead. No preschool. No adult education. You walk from town to town, looking for someone to whom to address your Jewish questions, but there is no one. Desolation. A time for mourning, indeed.
So what are we left with — a happy time or a sad time? I believe the wording of the Talmud is instructive here. It doesn’t say “24,000 students,” but rather it says “12,000 pairs.” Why? Perhaps because Rabbi Akiva is teaching us something about relationships. He could have given into despair and thrown in the proverbial towel. But instead, as the Talmud continues, he tried again and found five students. He taught them, and they taught others, and Torah came back. It is this renaissance of Torah, the end of the dark time of loss and new beginning of learning, that we celebrate on Lag B’Omer (33rd day of the Omer count).
What is being conveyed is a fundamental point. Do you think that Rabbi Akiva felt less pain over his lost students because he had five new ones? Certainly not. The pain of that loss must have stayed with him forever. Yet, he continued on and rebuilt and had the joy of seeing Torah flourish once again.
Too often, we look at our relationships in terms of their “net” outcome. Canceling out the good with the bad, and vice versa. But this simply isn’t true: Pain and joy in a relationship do not cancel each other. Sometimes those whom we hold dearest, our spouses and children and parents and siblings and friends, hurt us. And they hurt us badly. It is almost crippling, as we are so close and vulnerable with them. They hurt us terribly, but that doesn’t cancel out the love and the good times, either. The two do not “net each other out.” The joy and the pain exist simultaneously.
Who knew this better than Rabbi Akiva? His joy and his pain were with him all at once. However, he did not let the pain make him give up on the relationship; he persevered and taught Torah once again.
What about us? The pain that we feel is at times excruciating. But if the relationship is fundamentally healthy, we cannot let ourselves be blinded to the good in it, to pursuing and cultivating the joy. Cutting off and going it alone would leave the world empty, and Rabbi Akiva’s courage reminds us in the Omer that we can still count upward toward celebration together.
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].