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I had two wonderful “virtual conversations” hosted by our shul in the past few weeks with two talented individuals about two completely unrelated topics, but I found that there was one particular topic that came up in both conversations and I found myself agreeing with one of my colleagues and not the other one.
However, the 33
rd day of the Omer (Lag B’Omer[iii]) is an exception, because the dying stopped on that day[iv]. Lag B’Omer is also said to be the Yahrzeit[v] of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, an illustrious figure in the Talmud. He was one of Rabbi Akiva’s latter set of students, during the penultimate part of his life, who carried on with the mission of upholding[vi] and filling the Land of Israel[vii] with Torah. For these reasons, it is customary to observe Lag B’Omer as a semi-festival[viii].
What, though, was so special about these twenty-for thousand students and what did they do that was so egregiously wrong? There were so many others who died during the period of the Hadrianic persecutions and Bar Kochba rebellion against the oppressive Roman rule over Israel[ix]; why was this group so noteworthy? Indeed, consider, the Ten Martyrs, who included Rabbi Akiva himself, were not accorded a similar annual extended semi-mourning period[x].
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