It’s one of our favorite clichés: “Two Jews, three opinions.” It highlights the penchant – some would say the obsession – that we have for always taking the other side of the argument.
It has its good points, of course; it has heightened our diversity and made us all into junior Talmudic masters, producing some of history’s greatest lawyers and jurists. But it has also served to make us hyper-antagonistic and continually divided into disparate camps.
I think we could make a solid case that the crisis in which we now find ourselves began not on Oct. 7 but months before, when we fought one another – literally, as well as figuratively – over the judicial reform issue. It seems that virtually everyone, like it or not, was drawn into that caustic conflict. The ugly scenes it generated were broadcast worldwide, well beyond Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Among the most diligent watchers, we now know, were the leaders of Hamas, who saw our disunity and concluded that this was the perfect time to storm the barriers and attack us.
While the judicial reform question has been shoved to the back burner, its destructive rancor and intensity have simply been transferred to the hostage crisis.
Can anything be done to change this Jew vs. Jew paradigm?
WE ARE now in the midst of the period we call Sefirat Ha’omer. While it technically connects to the ancient bringing of the barley offering, today it is more of a linkage between Passover and Shavuot. Our journey from physical redemption on Passover leads ultimately to our spiritual awakening when, 50 days later, we receive the Torah on Mount Sinai. This is a calibrated, calculated process of gradual growth as we steadily forge together our national and religious identities.
One of the unusual aspects of the Sefira law is that while one person leads the counting, the entire congregation not only answers “Amen,” but each person then counts separately for himself or herself. The message is strikingly clear: While we are one united entity, each one of us also has an individual identity. Put another way, we first declare our togetherness, and only then may we express our otherness.
This time period also focuses on two of the greatest rabbinic figures in Jewish history: Rabbi Akiva and his greatest disciple, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, known widely by his initials, Rashbi.
Akiva has one of the most fascinating, eclectic careers. Simple and uninitiated in Jewish knowledge, he falls in love with Rahel, the daughter of one of Jerusalem’s richest citizens. Rahel is ordered by her father to leave Akiva, but she holds her ground and marries him, resulting in banishment from her home. The couple live in abject poverty, as Rahel slowly introduces Akiva to Jewish life, ultimately encouraging him at age 40 to go off and study Torah.
After 24 years of study, he returns with no less than 24,000 students of his own. Tragically, these same students will perish in an epidemic. Akiva will later join forces with Bar-Kochba in an ill-fated rebellion against Rome and will be executed.
Rabbi Akiva held that the entire Torah could be codified in just one commandment, from last week’s Torah reading: “You shall love your fellow as yourself.” It seems ironic that this was Akiva’s mantra, since his students had perished, says the Talmud, because “they did not show sufficient honor to one another.” How did Akiva fail to inculcate his love for the other in his students?
I suggest that it is precisely the varied life that Akiva lived that enabled him to bridge the societal gap. He grew up poor and unobservant, eking out a living as a shepherd; he would ultimately gain fame and riches, but he never forgot his humble beginnings. The Talmud says, “The place where repentant Jews stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.” He could relate to everyone on their own level; he saw the “bigger picture” and allied himself with the Jewish army to fight for our freedom.
Honest work, Torah, the military – Akiva fused them all into one inclusive definition of a Jew. Perhaps his students, in their one-dimensional pursuit of knowledge, were unable to see beyond their open Gemara.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai – in whose honor we traditionally shine a light on Lag Ba’omer, the 33rd day of counting the Omer – had to struggle to reach his master’s prominence and worldview.
Like Akiva, he, too, railed against the Romans and was forced to flee. The Talmud records that he hid for 12 years with his son in a cave, where he wrote the Kabbalistic tome, the Zohar. Elijah the Prophet then comes and informs them that the Roman emperor has died; it is now safe to emerge.
Stepping out of their cave, they see men plowing their fields and angrily declare: “These people forsake eternal life [i.e., Torah study] and embrace mundane, temporal life!” Whatever they look at is burned up in fire. Seeing this, God orders Rashbi and his son back into the cave for one more year.
When they emerge once again, they see a man running late on Friday afternoon with two bundles of myrtle. “What are those for?” they ask. “To light on Shabbat,” says the man. “One light for Zachor/Remember, and one for Shamor/Observe.” Rashbi is overwhelmed by the man’s genuine love for Judaism and says: “How precious the commandments are to all of Israel!” and his spirit is finally eased.
We are told – as a way of indicating the righteousness of Bar Yochai – that in Rashbi’s generation, no rainbow was ever seen. The rainbow is a post-flood, visible sign of God’s promise to protect us; but when a generation has a tzaddik like Rashbi in it, he protects the nation, and so no rainbow is needed.
But Rashbi needed to learn that not everyone in this world can be a righteous hermit who studies Torah in a cave all day; most people need to work and lead varied, normal lives. “Regular” people make lots of mistakes, but they have redeeming qualities, too. And when they do even the simplest mitzvah, such as lighting Shabbat candles, they are precious in God’s sight.
Rashbi’s eyes are illuminated when he understands that humanity itself is a rainbow; we come in all colors of the spectrum, and each human being has his own spark of holiness. The fact that all different segments of Israel light fires (hopefully supervised!) on Lag Ba’omer in keeping with tradition is a symbol of our collective holiness.
Perhaps Lag Ba’omer even represents a tikkun, a repair for the actions of individuals like Rabbi Akiva’s students, They did not honor one other enough; but by our respecting each other and joining together in one giant blaze of glory, we can shine a beacon of unity into the heavens that can dispel any plague, any war, any crisis, and lead us to lasting peace.
The writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana. rabbistewart@gmail.com