12. Preparing for Lag Ba’Omer’s Light | 7 minutes of Halacha and Pnimiyut

In just seven minutes, Rav Shlomo Katz weaves halacha and inner world—charting the shift from mourning to joy on Lag Ba’Omer. Why did the students of Rebbe Akiva stop dying? What changed on this day? With depth, warmth, and a nod to Rashbi’s eternal light, we explore the halachic roots and spiritual awakening that makes Lag Ba’Omer a gateway from gevurah to geulah.

What is Lag Ba'Omer: Shining the Light of Rashbi with Rav Shlomo Katz?

Rav Shlomo Katz brings Lag Ba'Omer to life with a soulful compilation of Torah teachings on Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi). Through niggunim and Chassidic wisdom, he explores Rashbi’s divine light, the joy of Torah revelation, and Am Yisrael’s unity. This series offers a transformative journey, celebrating Lag Ba'Omer’s bonfires and the eternal flame of Rashbi’s legacy.

Good morning everyone. בוקר טוב. עוד יום בארץ ישראל. Another day waking up in ארץ הקודש.

אשרינו. That's א. Every day that's א. ב.

I want to start doing today הלכות לג בעומר. I want to already go into לג בעומר today. Doing some of the, not just some of the הלכות and of course וכמובן גם כן את הפנימיות, the awesome inside. כמה דברים שאנחנו נראה בפנים להכין אותנו.

I feel like לג בעומר kind of this, so much there. Yesterday, two days ago I was in a ספרים store. I saw the fattest book I've seen in years just on לג בעומר. I'm like, it's one day.

It's one day and yet, there's so much in it. אז לאט לאט, I want us to go into it and try to try to take a few strong things with us to show up prepared for the light of רבי שמעון בר יוחאי, and the פנימיות of this awesome day of לג בעומר. As you all know, on לג בעומר, the אבלות, according to all of the דעות, stops. To what extent, we see different things.

We've learned already the differences between נוסח עדות מזרח and עדות אשכנז, where the עדות ספרד, they, it's wait, it waits till ל"ד because they go through the whole day of ל"ג, even though there is singing and dancing, but לעניין other things like marriages, וכולי, and stuff like that, and even shaving, the those things get pushed off till ל"ד to finish the whole day of the 33. The question is, why? Why do we stop on לג בעומר? A רב came up, I was I was sitting with Rav Tzaidi this week somewhere and a רב came up to us and said, do you know why the students of רבי עקיבא stopped dying on לג בעומר? So, that's usually a trick question. You know, okay, so what is it? So, Rav Tzaidi already started giving a whole מהלך, wow, before the, the guy said, and the רב said, no, פסקו למות כי לא נשאר אף אחד. They stopped dying because there was no one left.

They all died. Is that true? So, ממש לא ברור, probably not. יש מקום to think like that, אבל זה ממש לא ככה. Because what do we know about לג בעומר? If anything, it's the day that there was the initiation of the next five תלמידים of of רבי עקיבא, ובתוכם רבי שמעון בר יוחאי.

But the point over here is that the שמחה of לג בעומר can be that either the ones that really there was a מגיפה that stopped, or that there was a התחדשות of the מסורה of עם ישראל. And כמובן the other reason that we have today for the שמחה of לג בעומר has nothing to do so much with the תלמידים of רבי עקיבא, חוץ מאחד, one of them. And that's the הילולא, the light of רבי שמעון בר יוחאי, which we'll try to understand, it's a death. It's a יום פטירה.

How did he become the initiator of anniversaries of death bringing such big חפלות, being being like the biggest party, the biggest gathering that exists in ארץ ישראל today, bigger than both of the צדדים of pro-reform, anti-reform. Take both of them together, those numbers don't even reach the number of יהודים that come to מירון on לג בעומר. So we have to understand deeper inside what exactly is the about the light of רבי שמעון בר יוחאי, which we'll get to. But first, the מגן אברהם says, when it comes to, when it comes to לג בעומר, so obviously it's a day הלכתית, just we should know, I mean here I'm sure we do this already, we don't say תחנון.

But even the מנחה before לג בעומר, like on ערב יום טוב, we also don't say תחנון. And there's no fasting on that day, although the מגן אברהם says that if it's a חתן, which quite often it is a חתן because they're getting married on לג בעומר, you דווקא do fast. אבל אלו דברים, אלו דברים אפשר למצוא לכאן ולכאן. One more thing, so it's not שייך for this year, כשחג לג בעומר בערב שבת, even according to the מנהג of ספרדים that wait till ל"ד, even then they would also להסתפר ולהתגלח on ערב שבת.

And there is the שיטה that the כף החיים brings down, which really is, we see less and less people today that say, listen, because of that word, the גירסא in the גמרא that says 'מפסח עד פרוס עצרת'. That really it wasn't just till לג בעומר, but the אבלות really was throughout the whole time, and you see it less and less people that hold all of ספירה, besides לג בעומר of course, of the דינים of the שמחה of לג בעומר, שאין דבר כזה, that after לג בעומר you go to a world that end, there's no אבלות, from פסח to שבועות. I don't think I know anyone like that today personally. Maybe I do, they're just being very צנוע about it.

Most people that I know, maybe you do, I don't know anyone that holds like this. But this we see that the רוב, the רוב הדעות of רוב העם, באמת, that something changes, something shifts, and what I really want to get to into, which will be more tomorrow, is the light of רבי שמעון בר יוחאי that takes an עניין of אבלות and kind of just like says, stop, גמרנו עם זה. And one of the things to remember again is that in the time of the crusaders, and I talked about this with Rav Tzaidi a lot as well earlier this week. There really is testimony that in this, in this תקופה, the צלבנים really did, did like a chunk of their of going through crusaders of דם יהודי שנשפך.

So it seems that the אבלות of ספירת העומר really got more intense and was taken more seriously על רוב העם way after the תקופה of the מגיפה of the תלמידים of רבי עקיבא. זאת אומרת ממש, I mean, how many years is between the תלמידים of רבי עקיבא dying and the תקופה of the crusaders? Historians? בערך? About 900 years, משהו כזה, yeah, I mean ממש. As Leo pointed out last week in one of the videos he did for יום הזיכרון, מנהג ישראל דין הוא, נכון? תורה היא. מנהג ישראל תורה היא.

So even though, even though I got a long letter yesterday from someone that was listening to some of the ספירה אבלות stuff and he said you have to, I'm telling you, it's over, the you have to stop talking about the אבלות of ספירת העומר. We're back in ארץ ישראל. It's not שייך anymore. We fixed it.

I told him I don't know if the עניין again is the כבוד זה לזה that we're trying to fix during this תקופה. And even if you say it stops on לג בעומר, then at least those days till לג בעומר, that's what I wanted to say, which are about four or five more days, the עניין of שנהגו כבוד זה לזה between each other, I urge, I urge myself and I'm sure everyone else to try and ask השם, where can I improve in my כבוד that I give someone else? My עיניים, my שמירת עיניים doesn't just mean not looking at not צנועות things. It means how do I look at people? How do I listen to their opinions? ממש to seek out the good. וראית בטוב ירושלים כל ימי חייך.

We should be זוכה to be to be amongst those that בעזרת השם are really doing this תיקון. And then לג בעומר will come and the light will just shine on all of עם ישראל and we'll continue with this tomorrow.