The Kabbalistic Background of Some Lag Ba-omer Customs

Lag Ba-omer, the thirty-third day of the omer, is associated with two traditions. One is the end of the period of mourning for the disciples of Rabbi Akiva.¹ The second is the pilgrimage to Meron to mark the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai, a disciple of Rabbi Akiva and the purported author of the Zohar. Only the second of these traditions has kabbalistic associations, however. (There is an old tradition that Rabbi Shimon and his son Eleazar were buried in Meron. And the pilgrimage to Meron itself has a long history before the sixteenth century. The association of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai with Lag Ba-omer, however, is believed by some to have begun in the sixteenth century.) Several scholars, including Abraham Yaari, Meir Benayahu, and most recently Boaz Huss, have studied this issue. The following discussion is based on my analysis of their studies and reflects the conclusions I have drawn from the evidence presented by these authors.²

It is accepted by all scholars that Meron had been a place of pilgrimage since the period of the Crusades and the objects of these pilgrimages were the graves of Hillel and Shammai. These pilgrimages were timed to coincide with Pesaḥ Sheini, the fourteenth of Iyyar. And the graves of a number of their disciples and other talmudic figures also found in Meron, including those of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai and his son, were also among the pilgrims’ destinations. Yaari suggests that at some point in the middle of the sixteenth century, several changes took place in the pilgrimage to Meron. The date changed from Pesaḥ Sheini to Lag Ba-omer. Also, two new customs were introduced: the ritual of giving boys their first haircut during this pilgrimage and the lighting of bonfires. These changes also coincided with the kabbalistic renaissance in Safed and there is abundant evidence that the kabbalists of Safed, visited Meron to study at the grave of Rabbi Shimon and to engage in the kabbalistic practice of yiḥudim.³

Yaari, in his study, makes the argument that these new rituals were associated with an older tradition of pilgrimages to the grave of the prophet Samuel near Jerusalem. After the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516, the Ottoman governor seized a synagogue, called the synagogue of Samuel, and turned it into a mosque. He also forbade Jews from coming to visit the grave of the prophet Samuel. Yaari suggests that the pilgrimages then shifted to Meron, and the pilgrims brought the traditions of bonfires and haircutting—which had characterized the pilgrimage to Samuel’s grave—to Meron. Benayahu argues against Yaari’s conclusions by pointing to the kabbalistic visits to Meron as evidence that the new Lag Ba-omer rituals were related to the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai and not simply transferred from the practices the pilgrims to Samuel’s grave. It was customary for the Safed kabbalists to visit the grave of Rabbi Simeon bar Yoḥai to pray and study two or three times a year. The problem for Benayahu’s argument is that, with one exception to be discussed below, there is no evidence that these visits were connected to Lag Ba-omer. On the contrary, the preferred dates for visits by the Safed kabbalists were the ten days before Shavuot and during the month of Elul. Yaari also cites numerous statements to the effect that the kabbalists were opposed to the Lag Ba-omer pilgrimage because of what they saw as its vulgar nature. Not only the kabbalists, but also a long list of important rabbis, opposed the Lag Ba-omer pilgrimage for its carnival-like nature.⁴ Even today it is possible to find important rabbis who voice similar reservations.

Another significant difficulty of the association of the Lag Ba-omer pilgrimage with Rabbi Shimon is that the earliest published source that connects the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon with Lag Ba-omer is the Sefer Ḥemdat Yamim, first published in 1731. The tradition in Ḥemdat Yamim is...