I consider myself a traditionalist Jew who does his best to follow the halacha. I cannot pretend that I understand every practice under Jewish tradition. In his magnum opus, Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides says that we still look for the meaning behind mitzvahs when their meaning is immediately not apparent (III, xxvi). Each one of G-d's precepts has meaning and were not given for their own sake. That being said, there are some Jewish practices and beliefs that have made their way into the corpus of Jewish tradition that are counter to a more important Jewish practice, tradition, or value. A few that come to mind that have merited my comments and analysis over the years: kitniyot, shlissel challah, not allowing women to say kaddish, and kapparot. Today, I add another Jewish practice to that list: mourning on the Omer.
According to the Talmud (Yevamot 62b), 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's disciples died between Pesach and Shavuot. Because of these deaths, we take on a state of quasi-mourning: no haircuts, no weddings, no music, and no shaving. This state of mourning takes place from the beginning of Passover to Shavuot (It was later shortened to the thirty-third day of the Omer, known as Lag B'Omer). Traditionalists who continue to advocate for the practice use such phrasing as "from tragedy springs hope," as if it obfuscates the problems with such a mourning practice.
What issues are there with mourning on the Omer? One issue has to do with the act of mourning the loss of individuals, known as aveilut (אבלות). In Jewish mourning, the standard mourning for the loss of individuals is either a week, a month, or 11 months, depending on who is being mourned. However, there are times when we mourn the loss of a mass group of people. The Holocaust is a good example. Even in pre-modern times, there were some bad times that befell the Jewish people that merited a fast day. However, these fast days were only one day and fell into obscurity since the time between the loss of the individuals and now was large enough. And it's not as if the Jewish people don't have a day to celebrate calamity that has affected the Jewish people on the national level. We have Tisha B'Av.
Another fun fact is that the Talmudic passage describing the plague does not come to the conclusion that an annual mourning should be the response. In the first millennium after the fall of the Second Temple, there technically was a mourning practice between Passover and Shavuot, but that was in commemoration of soldiers that died during the Bar Kochba revolt, and even those mourning practices were uncommon. The first mentioning of a practice tied to R. Akiva's students was made in the eight century. Rabbi Yosef Karo included the mourning practice in the Shulchan Aruch, but it was not a binding halacha. It was a meant to be a footnote pointing out a practice, which was even contested by his contemporaries. Not allowing for music has even weaker legal precedence since R. Karo does not mention banning music during this period. A rabbi who I respect greatly, R. Hayim Ovadia, covers the historicity and halacha of the mourning practice in further detail here.
None of this gets into my biggest issue with the mourning practice. The mourning of R. Akiva's disciples detracts us from the mitzvah of the Omer, thereby diminishing a mitzvah d'oraiata. Jewish tradition teaches that the month of Nissan is a month of joy. It's why some Jews (myself included) had and have an issue with Holocaust Remembrance Day falling on the month of Nissan. The purpose of counting on the Omer, or at least what I have found to be the purpose of this counting, is to prepare ourselves spiritually so we can ascend enough to receive the Torah in a way that our ancestors did. The Omer is a great time to work on Mussar and our character traits (מידות). It is difficult to both mourn a distant loss and spiritually ascend.
This detraction ties in directly with the reason as to why G-d sent a plague onto R. Akiva's disciples: they were not respectful of one another. They did not follow the most basic of dicta within Jewish law: "love your neighbor as yourself." It was about spiritual one-upmanship and defaming others in a quest for religious fame. It was not about serving G-d for its own sake, but being the best, even if that meant knocking others down a peg. As remiss as I am to say it, this sort of mentality still permeates within the Jewish people. Orthodox Jews have a problem getting along with non-Orthodox Jews. In the Orthodox world, there is such in-fighting. The Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) look at the Orthodox Left with disdain. Hasidic sects cannot get along with one another.
If we want to commemorate the loss of R. Akiva's disciples, we should reflect on how such a tragedy took place, but more importantly, we should learn from history. We should look at the current state of the Jewish people. We should ask ourselves how we can show a greater sense of unity (אחדות) amongst the Jewish people, and how we can ultimately extend that to the world at large. If we have this much in-fighting, how can we be a light unto nations? Part of preparing during the Omer should be working on how we can love those who are different from us, how we can better reach across the aisle and connect with others. As Aristotle said, "We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions." It is in that vein that I figured out what I intend to do with my Omer: ask myself how I can be a better Jew and human being, how I can better connect with Jews and non-Jews alike, and how I can have a greater impact as a result. I don't expect to change the world, but as Lao Tzu puts it, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." I hope that we can all take that step this Omer!
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