"Humankind has to embrace the art of balanced spiritual living, and it has to learn to get along as one global family."
Back Counting The Days
Lag B’Omer
By Tamara Lowen
Wood crates, branches, stumps and discarded brooms suddenly become important. For all night long, along the coast, in open fields and near mountain caves, bonfires must burn. Celebrated on the thirty-third day after the last day of Passover (thirty-three is the sum of the numerical value of the letters), L and G (Lamed and Gimmel), the culmination of the counting of the “Omer” (a measure of barely used to count the days) takes place. The story of rebellion against Roman rule, however, serves as a serious symbol.
After three long years of suffering and revolt, after three long years of plague that raged among the soldiers and tainted the food-supply, Bar Kokhba was slain, but all was not lost. As a signal to the people that Hope survived, the bonfires burned and burned. Finally, in the third year, on the thirty-third day after Passover, Manna, a kind of food the Israelites ate in the dessert, dropped from heaven, the plague disappeared and the people were spared.
Two thousand years later, wrapped in sleeping bags on a cold spring night near the seashore, hundreds of young men and women gather about dozens of bonfires. Potatoes are roasted. Meat is grilled. Songs are sung.
Gazing at the fire, they eye the danger in its cozy warmth, see the full power of its light and share the strength of its message, “We are here.”
