On Sunday morning, October 17, Congregation Beth Aaron of Teaneck, for the second time, hosted the Tefillin Awareness Project/Hanacha K’Halacha (TAP) at its morning minyanim.
A chronicle of faith, hope, survival, and blessings against all odds: letters of hope and faith from Rav Zalman Sorotzkin s children
Photos: Family archives
The central train station in Vilna was eerily quiet on that chilly day toward the end of 1940, in the early days of World War II. The city, along with the rest of eastern Poland, was occupied by Soviet forces, and for the time being, the 55,000 Jews living in the city, in addition to another 15,000 Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland, were safe. In a few months, Germany would attack Soviet forces in Eastern Europe and occupy Vilna, creating a ghetto and sealing the fate of its Jews. But, then, there was still a possibility of escape.
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].