For many, this has been a period of mourning. Whether you mourn collectively with the Jewish people acknowledging the first 33 days of the Omer—the season between Passover and Shavuot—or whether this has been, for you, a season marked by personal or communal grief, or by the ongoing suffering brought about by supremacy, violence, and militarism.
Those first 33 days of the Omer come to their culmination this coming week on Lag Ba’Omer—literally, the 33rd day of the Omer. It is, according to tradition, the day on which the plague that killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students came to an end. The Talmud tells us that this plague afflicted them because they did not show one another respect.
I don’t subscribe to theologies that blame victims for their suffering. But I do think the tradition is pointing us toward something essential: that the fabric of community is fragile, and that even those who share purpose, language, and learning can fail one another in ways that are devastating.
And then, almost jarringly, comes Lag Ba’Omer—a break in the mourning. A day of bonfires, of gathering, of joy and release.
This year, it arrives just after May Day, a day that calls us to a different kind of awareness: to the dignity of labor, to solidarity, to the ways we are bound up in one another’s lives not just spiritually, but materially. May Day insists that respect is not only a matter of interpersonal kindness, but of how we build a society—whose labor is honored, whose bodies are protected, whose lives are made livable.
And in Parashat Emor, we are given a calendar. A listing of sacred times, including the Omer itself—a command to count days, to mark time, to move deliberately from liberation toward revelation. But Emor is not only about marking time; it is also about sanctifying life in its rhythms—about who is included, who is excluded, and what it takes to create a community that can hold holiness.
Taken together, these threads ask something of us. If the students of Rabbi Akiva failed in their responsibility to one another, then the counting of the Omer becomes not just a measure of time, but a practice of repair. Each day a chance to rebuild respect—not as an abstract value, but as something enacted in how we speak, how we listen, how we share power, how we stand with and for one another.
Lag Ba’Omer reminds us that the plague can stop. May Day reminds us that it won’t stop on its own.
The work of getting there—that is ours.
Happy May Day and Shabbat Shalom,
R’ David
Those first 33 days of the Omer come to their culmination this coming week on Lag Ba’Omer—literally, the 33rd day of the Omer. It is, according to tradition, the day on which the plague that killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students came to an end. The Talmud tells us that this plague afflicted them because they did not show one another respect.
I don’t subscribe to theologies that blame victims for their suffering. But I do think the tradition is pointing us toward something essential: that the fabric of community is fragile, and that even those who share purpose, language, and learning can fail one another in ways that are devastating.
And then, almost jarringly, comes Lag Ba’Omer—a break in the mourning. A day of bonfires, of gathering, of joy and release.
This year, it arrives just after May Day, a day that calls us to a different kind of awareness: to the dignity of labor, to solidarity, to the ways we are bound up in one another’s lives not just spiritually, but materially. May Day insists that respect is not only a matter of interpersonal kindness, but of how we build a society—whose labor is honored, whose bodies are protected, whose lives are made livable.
And in Parashat Emor, we are given a calendar. A listing of sacred times, including the Omer itself—a command to count days, to mark time, to move deliberately from liberation toward revelation. But Emor is not only about marking time; it is also about sanctifying life in its rhythms—about who is included, who is excluded, and what it takes to create a community that can hold holiness.
Taken together, these threads ask something of us. If the students of Rabbi Akiva failed in their responsibility to one another, then the counting of the Omer becomes not just a measure of time, but a practice of repair. Each day a chance to rebuild respect—not as an abstract value, but as something enacted in how we speak, how we listen, how we share power, how we stand with and for one another.
Lag Ba’Omer reminds us that the plague can stop. May Day reminds us that it won’t stop on its own.
The work of getting there—that is ours.
Happy May Day and Shabbat Shalom,
R’ David
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