Lag BaOmer has come and gone.
The bonfires have burned out, the music has faded, and for a brief moment, the heavy customs of mourning that accompany the weeks of S’firas HaOmer lifted. Weddings resumed, haircuts were taken, and there was a palpable sense of relief.
And yet, for many communities, the mourning has now quietly returned.
Which raises a simple but surprisingly profound question: If Lag BaOmer marks the end of tragedy – if it commemorates the day when the talmidim of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying – then why do so many continue to observe mourning even after the day has passed?
The most straightforward answer is technical. Since the month of Nisan is a time of joy, during which mourning practices are avoided, some communities simply shift the 33 days of mourning to the period after Nisan. In that sense, what we are experiencing now is a kind of “make-up” period.
But that explanation, while correct, feels incomplete. It tells us how the calendar works, but not why this second custom took hold with such persistence and emotional weight, or why it was so important to have a full 33 days of mourning of those talmidim.
To understand that, we have to look beyond the familiar story of Rabbi Akiva’s students and consider another, less frequently discussed chapter of Jewish history – one that unfolded many centuries later, but left a mark deep enough to reshape our calendar.
During the First Crusade in 1096, Jewish communities across the Rhineland – cities like Speyer, Worms, and Mainz – were devastated. As the Crusaders made their way toward the Holy Land, they turned their fury on the Jewish populations they encountered along the way.
The choice they offered was brutally simple: Convert or die.
Entire communities chose to die. Families gathered in synagogues. Parents and children stood together. And rather than abandon their faith, they accepted being burned to death al kiddush Hashem. These massacres took place specifically during the weeks of Iyar – the very period we are now in.
Their memory did not remain confined to historical record. It entered our liturgy, most notably in the t’filah of Av HaRachamim, recited on Shabbos, and in the Kinos of Tish’ah B’Av. And in certain communities, it reshaped the observance of S’firas HaOmer itself, giving rise to the custom of continued mourning after Lag BaOmer.
This introduces a striking contrast.
The deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s talmidim, as they are commonly understood, are often associated – at least in some traditions – with a moment of national struggle, possibly connected to the Bar Kochba revolt. That was a story of visible heroism: Jews fighting for independence, attempting to reclaim their place in history, even at enormous cost. It was the last gasp of an attempt to fight for national independence, ending in a heroic but terrible disaster.
The Crusades tell a very different story.
There were no organized revolts, no armies rising in defiance. And yet, in their refusal to abandon their faith, those communities showed a courage no less real – only far less visible. It was the courage of endurance rather than action, of unwavering faith rather than open resistance.
People often celebrate one kind of heroism over another. Even in remembering the Holocaust, some chose to honor only those who fought back, while feeling embarrassed by those who “went like sheep to the slaughter.” They failed to see that many who did not resist made a conscious, heartbreaking choice: to avoid provoking even greater brutality, to stay with their terrified families rather than escape alone. Figures like Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy”d embodied this quiet heroism, returning from America to stand with his students and community, helping them find the strength to face their fate together.
The fighter, the rebel, the one who takes up arms: that image is vivid, dramatic, easy to recognize. But Jewish history has never rested on a single form of strength.
The quiet decision to remain, to endure, to hold fast to one’s identity even in the face of certain death – that, too, is heroism, expressed in a different but no less profound way.
The quiet decision to remain, to endure, to hold fast to one’s identity even in the face of certain death – that, too, is heroism, expressed in a different but no less profound way.
And it is here that the figure most closely associated with Lag BaOmer – Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai – offers a deeper lens through which to understand both forms of courage.
The Gemara describes how, after years of elevated, secluded immersion in the deepest secrets of Torah, Rabbi Shimon emerged from the cave unable to tolerate the ordinary world. People engaged in mundane work – plowing, planting, earning a living – seemed to him to be missing the point entirely. His instinctive response was rejection.
But after returning to the cave and emerging once more, he saw something he had not been able to see before.
A simple Jew, running just before Shabbos, carrying two small bundles of myrtle: one for Zachor and one for Shamor.
This time, Rabbi Shimon did not dismiss him. He marveled: “See how beloved the mitzvos are to Israel.”
Nothing in the world outside had changed. What changed was the ability to see beneath the surface – to recognize the holiness embedded in the ordinary, the devotion expressed not in dramatic acts but in simple, faithful gestures.
Nothing in the world outside had changed. What changed was the ability to see beneath the surface
Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of this extended period of mourning.
Lag BaOmer does mark a turning point, but not an ending. It reminds us that Jewish history contains multiple layers – moments of visible struggle and moments of hidden greatness, acts of defiance and acts of quiet faith.
When some communities continue mourning beyond Lag BaOmer, they are not ignoring its message; they are expanding it.
They are reminding us that the story of the Jewish people cannot be reduced to a single narrative of strength. It includes the battlefield and the synagogue, the public act and the private sacrifice, the heroism that makes history and the heroism that sustains identity.
And perhaps, in a world that so often measures strength only by what can be seen, that is a message we still need to hear.
Lag BaOmer may be behind us. But what it teaches – about how to see, how to remember, and how to understand courage – is very much still unfolding.
Published in the May 6 edition of the Queens Jewish Link
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