A Whole Lotta Love…and Respect

By Hazzan Jenna Greenberg.

Tonight, we will belatedly celebrate the festive holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, as Beth El holds its Annual Event with our guest of honor, Michael Rapaport, Award-winning Jewish actor, comedian, and pro-Israel advocate. We will come together as a community two days after this holiday, as we take a break from the semi-mourning period that we are in during these 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot. But what is Lag Ba’Omer anyway?

The backstory in short is that Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 students who all died shortly after Pesach because they did not treat each other with respect. The plague that killed them stopped on the 33rd day of the Omer. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was one of the five remaining students of Rabbi Akiva, and on the day he died, prior to his death he taught his students some of the great secrets of the Torah. 

Therefore, today is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. Yahrzeits are days with mixed emotions, sadness over the death of the individual, but happiness as we recall memories and lessons learned from those whose lives we honor. In this case, we can look back to Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s teacher, from whom we learned the importance of respecting others.

And we can look to our weekly double Torah portion, Behar-Bechukotai, as well, for the lesson of respecting not only others, but God as well. Bechukotai contains the first of two sets of curses in the Torah, also known as the Tochecha, verses of rebuke and warning from God to B’nai Yisrael. This theme of divine reward and punishment for following or not following God’s commandments is a recurring theme throughout our Torah, and even makes its way into the second paragraph of the Shema in our twice daily liturgy.

Yet despite this litany of dire warnings, God will not utterly reject Israel, as God vows to remember the covenant made with Israel’s ancestors. This comes back to the theme of respecting one another. And this is the triangular relationship between ourselves, others and God: self respect, respecting the Divine, and respect of others. In Hebrew, the word for respect is Kavod, but it is rooted in love, Ahava, “a whole lotta love,” as we say these words in Hebrew every evening, Ahavat Olam, and every morning, Ahava Raba.

Love and respect of self, of others and of God are the lesson we can take from the confluence of Lag Ba’Omer and Bechukotai this week, turning these values into action each and every day of our lives.