Noam: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam. I’m Noam, and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack those big questions being asked about the Jewish people, by Jewish people. We don’t have it all figured out, but we love this opportunity to figure some things out together. Whether we figure them out or not, we explore them. We wonder out loud.
And as we say every single week, our absolute favorite part of this show is hearing from you, our listeners. So please continue to share your questions, your suggestions, your feedback, whatever’s on your mind by emailing us at WonderingJews@unpacked.media. And find us, of course, on Instagram at WonderingJews.
So listen, here’s the deal. There are lots of holidays in Judaism. And many of them are really incredibly easy to access, generally. Like Passover, okay, it’s about the liberation of the Jewish people. Chanukah, it’s about finding the cruse of oil, or it’s about sovereignty of the Jewish people, or the military victory. Whether you grew up in a traditional Jewish home or you found it for yourself, you kind of were able to access it. They exist in the culture, in the popular Jewish imagination.
And most importantly, there are songs to go with each of them. They’re so fun, these songs. And then there are the holidays that are more difficult to access. Shavuot, okay, we say it’s about the giving of the Torah. Sukkot, it’s about the wandering in the wilderness. There’s wandering, not wondering, wandering in the wilderness and God providing a canopy over us, whatever that means.
And then there’s this holiday that we’re about to explore the holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, So even if you grew up in the strictest of Orthodox Jewish homes, you may really not have any real relationship to or understanding of this very strange and mysterious holiday when it comes to Lag Ba’Omer.
And if you ask me what I could tell you about Lag Ba’Omer, maybe there’s not so much, but there are people out there who really do get it. They really do get it.
And my guest today is one of those people. And she’s here to share her wisdom, her understanding, her experience of this special day with us, Lag Ba’Omer, and help us connect to it a bit more.
Yael Dworkin has been a Judaic Studies teacher for three decades and currently teaches at Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo in Nachlaot, Jerusalem. Yael, welcome to Wondering Jews.
Yael Dworkin: Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Noam: I’m really, really excited for this conversation because it’s really, you know, I’m happy if people are listening, it’s awesome to all of our listeners, but it’s a little bit of selfish conversation. I just want to understand the Lag Ba’Omer, a lot better. Could you just in, in like a snapshot, what is Lag Ba’Omer? What is this?
Yael Dworkin: Lag Ba’Omer is a special day that happens somewhere in between Passover and Shavuos, the holiday that we celebrate receiving of the Torah.
What happens on Passover is that heaven’s open with the tremendous light of revelation, that reveals God’s presence to the world really. Passover is the physical liberation of the body out of Egypt, but now you have to get the Egypt out of the body, out of the Jew. And what that means is we have to work on our character traits and our worthiness of being privileged with divine light and living a wholesome, truly wholesome life lived in the presence of Hashem, with the consciousness of Hashem leading the way and not our ego. And that’s true liberation, that’s spiritual freedom. And that we got on Shavuos when we got the Torah.
And somewhere in between that, in those 49 days, on the 33rd day of the Omer, Lag Ba’Omer, Lag is made up of two Hebrew letters, the Lamed and the Gimel. And numerically they represent the number 33. So it’s the 33rd day of the Omer of the counting that we do between Passover and Shavuos.
Now something happens on the 33rd day that transforms the whole experience. We go from out of 32 days of deep introspection, examining our Midot, that means our character traits, where we’re not aligned with the spiritual light, where we’re not aligned with our own soul, trying to mend our ways one day at a time, examining ourselves very carefully. But on the 33rd day, something happens, a lifting of the heavy work that we’ve been engaged with, and we enter into a phase of pure goodness and pure love. That’s what Lag Ba’Omer is to me.
If we’d have to borrow a song from the culture that we know of today to represent this holiday is, all you need is love. That’s it. It’s all you need is love. And that’s what this day is about.
Noam: So Lag Ba’Omer is about love. That’s what it’s about.
Yael Dworkin: It’s about discovering that God created the world and beyond the mechanics of creating the world and having a creation, what God wants more than anything else is a relationship with the world that He created. And what would define the relationship more than anything else is love.
it’s not… you know, Judaism has a rule book called the Shulchan Aruch, what we do, what we don’t do. We have to keep kosher, have to keep Shabbos, we have to do lots of other, you know, all kinds of stuff. We have a lot of mitzvot. And what this day reveals to us is that the whole point of it is really getting into a relationship of love, deep spirituality based on love, and unifying all parts of creation.
Noam: This is fascinating, you said words like unifying, creation, cosmic, I wrote this down, gates in heaven. These are terms that I just, on the real, I don’t use very often. And I think it’s really, really interesting because you’re speaking a very mystical sort of language.
And that kind of goes hand in hand with the way I think about Lag Ba’Omer, which is, if you want to understand Lag Ba’Omer, you have to understand mysticism. You have to understand the Zohar. And so I want to know if there’s a truth to that. And for you to share with me, what is the Zohar? And what makes this Jewish mysticism that you’re speaking of different from other forms of mysticism?
Yael Dworkin: Okay, great questions. I’ll just tell you what it means to me, how this fits into my understanding of Judaism and why this is a legitimate form of Judaism and why it’s so crucial and why more and more people these days in our generation are gravitating more and more to the teachings of the Zohar.
Yael Dworkin: So first, what is the Zohar? The Zohar reveals the deep secrets, the internal secrets of Torah. We can understand Torah in all kinds of ways. We open up the Bible and we read the stories and we understand it on the very simple level. And then we can open up the books of Midrash and we can fill in the gaps of what seems to be missing in the stories, what’s implied there and not exactly written there. And we can have a good time studying all of these things and it’s beautiful and it’s very heartwarming and it’s uplifting and it’s instructive and it’s fantastic. And then you have another level of Torah learning that learns deep secrets also from comparing one parts of the Torah to another parts of the Torah.
And we get all kinds of other interesting teachings that we learn. But then there’s what’s called the Sod of Torah. Sod means secret, the secrets of the Torah. And the secrets of the Torah is really the whole point of all of the other levels of Torah that we learn. The Sod, what is the secret of it all? What’s the purpose of it all? Why are we going through this human experience here. Why is God making us go through this life that He gave us here, that He created and then He kind of says, go figure it out, you humans. We have to go through a lot of trials. We have to go through a lot of real human experiences until we find what the truth is.
It’s true in our own life. We go through all kinds of situations. Some good and some very painful and unfortunately maybe there’s a lot of pain in our human experience. The big question is what’s this for? The biggest teaching of the Zohar which was revealed by Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai who lived about 2500 years ago and he was here to
Noam: Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai lived a little bit less than that, right? Didn’t he live like 2,000 years? He was this…
Yael Dworkin: Less than two thousand years ago. was yeah, it was around the it was after the destruction of the temple by the Romans
Noam: Right, so he was one of the top students of Rabbi Akiva, as my understanding, correct?
Yael Dworkin: He was one of the foremost students of Rabbi Akiva, whose Torah carries us till today. If it would not be for Akiva, we would not have the Judaism that we have today, or at all.
Noam: By the way, people really forget that point about Rabbi Akiva.
Yael Dworkin Which point?
Noam: He was so important. One of his top students, not his top student, was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. And he also did something quite unique that I want to get into with you. What did Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, what did he do that was so unique that we still today carry from him? What did he do?
Yael Dworkin: Okay, so to answer that, I’m going to address my deep love and appreciation for Rabbi Akiva as an introduction to understanding what Rabbi Shimon is. So Rabbi Akiva also lived through the destruction of the temple in the Roman period. And he had 24,000 students. All the Judaism that existed at that time were his students going all over up and down Israel and they were the teachers of Torah.
And during this time period between Passover and Shavuot there was a horrible situation that happened that all of his 24,000 students died. Very conspicuous because if you hear about another Rabbi’s death, another Torah teacher’s death in the Jewish community you realize, my gosh, it’s another one of Rabbi Akiva’s students. And all of them died.
And Rabbi Akiva is an incredible person because I don’t know about you and I never want to experience this, God forbid. No one should. But if God forbid, I would be implicated in the death of 24,000 of my students because they’re my students, I would want to go hide under a rock. I would never want to be seen. I’d think I’m a complete failure and I wouldn’t show up my face anywhere. I would be, you could imagine.
Noam: Right, become a tailor or something, switch professions, I don’t know.
Yael Dworkin: Switch profession. You wouldn’t want to show up. You’d just hide under a rock and just take me away. But what did he do? We learned from Rabbi Akiva that by continuing and then after the 24,000 students died that he went in search of other students and he got five fabulous students, that the Torah of today really is based on all of them is the foundation of the Judaism we have today is founded on the teachings of these five students and he’s their Rabbi.
Now, what did we learn from that that he didn’t give up? You know, Rabbi Nachman’s big saying, There’s no such thing as despair. Rabbi Akiva represented hope that when something horrible happens to you, you can pick yourself up and do it over again and do it better. And you don’t let that horrible situation drown you, bury you, kill you, whatever it is.
Now another thing we know about Rabbi Akiva is the big statement that we read about in the Mishnah of Pirkei Avot and the ethics of our fathers. Rabbi Akiva said, you should love your fellow as yourself and this is a great rule of the Torah. Right? So he understood by him saying this, it means that he understood that this is something that he has to live by. That it’s actually a verse in the Torah that tells us we have to love our fellow humans as ourselves, fellow people as ourselves. And this is the great rule.
Now, what he understood from the death of his 24,000 students is that as brilliant and sharp-minded as they were, and everyone was a genius in Torah, and they went out and taught this Torah, but they were missing a key component, which was respect for one another, because each one held to their own understanding of Torah, and they lacked respect for their friends giving over Torah in their own way. Now, we can compare Rabbi Akiva to Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu was a leader, Moses, Moses was a leader that had to teach the Jewish people to go from exile to redemption. From slavery in Egypt, to living freely on their land, and answering to God only, right? Like really free from all other considerations. So he had to take the Mitzrayim, the Egypt out of the Jew and teach them what it is really truly to be free. Not just free that you’re freed in your body leaving Egypt, that you’re not trapped in jail, but that the spirit is free.
Now the comparison to Rabbi Akiva is that he was another great leader that lived in an important transitional time but not like Moses. Moses had to teach us to go from exile to freedom. The Torah that Rabbi Akiva understood he has to teach the Jewish people to survive the 2,000 years of exile is how to survive an exile as Jews, leaving the Land of Israel, the freedom of being a sovereign nation in their own land, and somehow surviving who knows how many years.
Now we know it’s 2000 years plus of exile and what’s going to keep us together? What’s going to keep the integrity of the Jewish people together? What’s going to keep Judaism alive? What’s going to keep the relationship with God alive? And he discovered that the answer is love. We have to be unified and loving each other. Now the 24,000 died Why did they die? because Judaism wouldn’t have survived based on the Torah that they were teaching because each one was teaching Torah as they understood it without any room for another person’s opinion there was no breath and No concept of unifying all the different opinions that were all right if your intention is good be and the end goal is to connect to Hashem then you have your way and I have my way and we’re doing Torah but they held on that my way was better. Now Rabbi Shimon, he took this lesson of Rabbi Akiva, his Rabbi, of his teacher and took it to the next level of it really is all about love.
Noam: So the idea is that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who’s a student of the Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was the one who authored the Zohar. That is what tradition says, correct? Okay, so I just wanted to…
Yael Dworkin: Yeah. I mean, there’s different, you know, it was discovered later, after, generally speaking, it’s ascribed to him.
Noam: Right, It’s ascribed, that’s why I said it’s ascribed to him.
Yael Dworkin: Yes, it’s ascribed to him.
Noam: just as you’re about to explain Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and its relationship to Lag Ba’Omer, can you just, I always wondered, when Rabbi Akiva said that love your neighbor as you love yourself is the general principle of the, yeah, when Rabbi Akiva said that, did Rabbi Akiva say that after his students were killed or before? Was he known to say that?
Yael Dworkin: I don’t know. But I imagine that this is after that whole affair. That whole horrible, heartbreaking story.
Noam: Right. That’s what I imagined too.
Yael Dworkin: And then he understood that this is what’s going to survive. And if Judaism is going to survive, then this has to be the principle. And in Judaism it’s called Achdut. It’s the unity of the Jewish people. We have to have each other back.
And we don’t look at each other’s faults. We look at what to love in the person and not what to bring them down. And we uplift through positive finding good points in them and connecting through the soul connections that we have and not get stuck on the external faults that we have. Because internally we’re all holy. Now Rabi Shimon took this point very very seriously.
And what’s the Zohar? The Zohar is basically a commentary on Torah. It follows the books, the five books of Moses. And it gives interpretations of what’s written in the Torah. And every interpretation he gives shows how, from beginning, from Genesis, when God created the world, how it really is a cosmic love affair between the Creator and His creation. That we’re meant to bring about unifications.
What’s a unification? To unify lower worlds and upper worlds, all the spiritual realms and all the hearts and souls that exist amongst men.
Noam: What does it mean to unify the upper world and the lower world?
Yael Dworkin: Beautiful question. Thank you. What it means is that we’re living in space and time called planet Earth, creation. The world of asiya, of doing, of physical matter. We live a physical existence in a physical world. The Zohar and Jewish Mysticism teaches, that’s just a reflection of a deeper truth that has spiritual roots. That nothing exists in the physical world without a spiritual root. And if we see something in the physical world, there is a spiritual root up there. And we need to unify the physical world with the spiritual worlds from which it came from. When that happens, it means we’re opening up our vessels, we’re opening up our neshamas, we’re opening up our souls to receive divine light from above. And we’re hoping that that spiritual light from above that is the spiritual root of everything down here will reach us and when it reaches us, we’re lit up with inspiration, with divinity, with godliness, we become holy people. Because if the Divine Light reaches us, if we do this unification of connecting the upper worlds with the lower worlds, we are in the lower world and the upper worlds are the spiritual realms that it’s perfection up there.
Here’s where we get messy because we have what’s called inclinations that take us in all kinds of directions. And through free choice we have to create the situation within ourselves to bring blessing into the world through making ourselves channels and vessels for deep spirituality, divinity, love. And when we do that, that’s a unification. Because we’re bringing the light of the upper worlds into the presence of this world. And when that happens, see blessing in the world, there’s peace and prosperity and health and all of the other stuff that is not peace and health and prosperity, etc., etc., etc., is because we’re not accessing that divine light enough. We’re not making those unifications.
Noam: Okay, all right. I think I understand it better. So what’s the connection between, just help me understand this better. What’s the relationship between, I’m gonna say words, the words that come to mind. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, fire, bows and arrows, Lag Ba’Omer, Meron. What are these things? What’s the connection?
Yael Dworkin: Okay, so why is Lag Ba’Omer Rabbi Shimon’s day? Okay, it’s going to be strange maybe to your listeners to hear but it’s the day that he died. This is the anniversary of his death. So why are we celebrating
Noam: Okay, so like, well, wow, that’s interesting. It’s the day he died. Okay.
Yael Dworkin: is the day he died. what’s called the yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. And we celebrate it by celebrating his life. Now in the Zohar itself, the experience of his last day, he gathers up his students. Wait, I have to say, before I answer you, I really want to answer you, but this is just coming to me, so I’m going to go with the flow and the monkeys in my brain, okay?
Noam: Go for it. Go for it. Yeah.
Yael Dworkin: So you open up the Zohar and you’re reading about all these very deep concepts, mysticism and really it’s awesome and wondrous things. And you really need a teacher to teach it to you. If you just open up the book and try to make sense of it, it’s very hard. But there’s some things that you can get even without knowing, without having any mystical background of Jewish mysticism.
And that’s that the whole book…The teachings that are given over are always given over. They’re framed in stories of when these Torahs were revealed. When these teachings were revealed. It was when Rabbi Yossi was walking on the… taking a walk with Rabbi Yehuda and they came across a tree or a river or they sat by the cave or they sat under a tree and there are many all kinds of interesting people along the way.
And they say, wow, I feel the divine presence here. Let’s talk some Torah. And then they share the Torah. And then they’re like flying all over themselves. They’re kissing each other on their head and saying, wow, if I only came to this world just to hear that bit of Torah, it would have been enough. This whole experience of me coming into this world. And they’re always encouraging each other and they’re complimenting each other and really flying with each other, like just loving. Every bit of moment, the whole frame of every story written in the Zohar is framed in friendship and in love and a lot of nature. There’s a lot of walking in nature. There’s a lot of walking through forests but also even even deserts and all kinds of experiences happen to them along the way as when they were walking now there’s even deep spiritual understandings of what that way is some say it’s we can understand it like physically they’re in the land of Israel and they’re walking the land and this is what happened there and and they’re visiting the one person decided to visit his father-in-law he says come along I’m visiting my father-in-law come let’s go.
And all of these Torahs are revealed in this, in all of these fantastic, framed in friendship and love and nature. So we can understand that on the simple level, that’s what happened. The deep mystics explain it when they’re about the pathways, they’re talking, walking along the path, they’re talking about pathways in shamayim, in heaven, and they’re revealing, and all kinds of secrets of Torah, of mystical secrets are revealed to them, and they’re really they’re walking in this physical world but they’re traveling in the upper realms and receiving all these secrets from heavenly beings and chariots of glory and all kinds of things like that that we may understand or not understand but they understood it and then they gave it over and it’s it’s like that so Rabbi Shimon he has a statement that here I actually I have it here let me quote the the exact wording of his, anan b’chavrut atalia milta. That’s Aramaic, because the Zohar was written in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Anan b’chavrut atalia milta. Everything about us, everything about the Torah that we teach, it’s resting on, it’s dependent on, it hinges on, it’s…
Noam: And friendship. And friendship, it’s dependent on friendship, right?
Yael Dworkin: It’s all dependent on friendship. Because when… If your heart is not open to receive from another, to see the beauty of another, then you’re closing yourself off from secrets of God that he wants to reveal to you. Another beautiful statement is, God wants the heart. Hashem wants the God wants the heart. This represented him. This is the Torah that he gave over. This is the deep secrets of Torah. If you want to know what the deep secrets of Torah is, it’s that. It’s friendship. It’s love. It’s open heart. It’s acceptance. It’s lifting up another. It’s encouraging. Now, on the day of his death, Lag Ba’Omer actually, he gathered up his closest students and he revealed secrets of the Torah that he was not allowed to reveal until then. But now that he’s about to pass on to the other realms, he revealed all these great secrets. It’s called the Idra Zuta, the small gathering. Doesn’t matter. We’re not going to go into that right now.
Noam: So that’s the story is he gathered, but the Idra Zuta is that he gathered a small group of his top students.
Yael Dworkin: Top students, were seven at that time remaining and he was top student and he revealed tremendous deep secrets and he said you’re not allowed to be sad. As a matter of fact, he commanded his students, this day is going to be the happiest day ever. You make sure that every anniversary of my death, you’re going to get together.
You’re going to build bonfires. You’re going to dance. None of this morning stuff. And why? Because finally he’s going to get to what he worked for all his life which is to be part of ein sof. Of this infinite light of God’s presence. Infinite light. We’re finite. God is infinite.
And he’s going into that, but it’s not sad that he’s leaving the world because as long as he’s in the world in a physical body, he can only teach in physical time and space to people who are in his presence. But now that he’s dying and he’s going to leave his body behind and his soul is just going to soar and is going to be able to be all over.
Everywhere because the limiting body won’t limit his presence in this world so even more of the light of Rabbi Shimon is accessible after his death. I remember being in Montreal. That’s where I come from and it was Lag Ba’Omer and I really wanted to be in Meron. That’s where the cave is where he’s buried and next to his… Yes, in Meiron.
Noam: That’s where Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is buried, right in Meron, in the north. Okay. Yeah.
Yael Dworkin: And his holy son, Rabbi Eliezer, is right there next to him. A son that’s a student that’s such a big light on his own. And I want to be with all the celebrations in Meron. And I’m in Montreal, and I’m feeling like I’m missing out. You heard of FOMO? I was like really having a big one at that point.
And then I thought, well maybe I’ll go to some Hasidic community where they’re going to have a big bonfire and I’ll go there. And then I realized, do I really want to do that? And started raining and I really didn’t want to do that anyway in the rain. But I really want to do that because if I go there, I’d just be a spectator of seeing other people working on the bonfire. would just like be a spectator. And I thought, wait a second, Yael. This is Rabbi Shimon. And what did he teach? That we can access his light, his death even more than when he was living. And so in my kitchen in Montreal on a rainy night I gather my kids around and I took a Pyrex and I put it on the floor in the middle of the kitchen and I did a little bonfire of my own there gathered up matches and lights and all kinds of things like that and and I put on music and I started dancing with my kids and I told them stories about Rabbi Shimon and I had the best Lag Ba’Omer of of life really, honestly speaking. It was the best, sweetest thing because I understood that the light of love, the light of connection, the light of unity, of feeling close, is not limited is is accessible anywhere if you’re just open up your heart you can plug into it and so Lag Ba’Omer is the anniversary of his death, but it’s the biggest celebration because with his passing even more of the secrets of Torah were revealed and the biggest secrets of the Torah as I said is like You know, it’s it’s it’s all about love. Moving away from ego, choosing kindness over ego, forgiving, opening our hearts to another, helping someone, making the world better. Tikkun Olam is a big buzzword that fits in beautifully to Lag Ba’Omer. This is what it’s all about. If we don’t get that point, you might be doing Judaism, but you’re missing a lot of the point. You’re still wearing, like, you’re using training wheels on your way to really getting what the point is.
Noam: That’s so interesting. Yeah, I want to double-click on that for a second. I heard this idea recently from a Jewish theologian that Orthodox Jews in the world very often, and specifically in the United States of America, they’ve replaced God with halacha, with Shulhan Arukh. Reform Jews have replaced God with tikkun olam and social justice, and conservative Jews have replaced God with like an academic intellectual approach. And what this theologian was saying is that everyone is running away from God and plugging something else in, in the way of a relationship. Like this is their way, every movement’s way of dealing with running away from by serving something else. do you, like, Bag Ba’Omer feels like it’s a remedy for that–
Yael Dworkin: It’s a day of healing. Beautiful. It’s a tremendous day of healing because more than anything else, you know, if you’re going to love, if you’ve experienced love, you know that you have full presence in the experience of love. can’t love and parts of you are somewhere else. To love means to be completely present and engaged completely. For me to be completely engaged and present, I have to heal all the broken and painful parts of myself. It’s healing because I understand that I’m only a vessel to channel God’s light. And everything that God’s put me through is to discover my inner self-worth through all of the things that I go through. Through the pains, through the… You know, it’s discovering self-love, self-respect. And when I discover self-love and self-respect, I’m likely to be loving and respectful of others. That’s how it works. You can’t give what you don’t have. So it’s a tremendous day of healing because the focus is God.
But it’s not the God of obedience that we’re worshipping, it’s the God of love that we’re worshipping. You mentioned gurus and mysticism and Buddhism. And what’s the difference between other forms of mysticism and Judaism? The biggest…
To the extent that I know to speak about these things. If you look at the, the Eastern religions, okay, they have a tremendous spirituality, but for them to access spirituality, they speak about denying the physical. Eat less, speak less, engage less, and then you’ll be more of a vessel of holiness. Judaism is completely different. You want to be holy, you have to be engaged in the world. You want to uplift the world? You live in this world with all of your physical needs and desires. You don’t deny them, but you live them out in a holy way. Not from a place of ego. So you eat, you get married, you have all kinds of business interactions with people.
You live your life as living it as life as we know it, but then with a mindfulness of what are my intentions when I engage, when I’m engaging in the world? What are my thoughts? What’s my speech? What are my actions? Am I mindful of that? I am a divine soul and therefore I’m not allowed to lie. And there’s no way it’s not like I’m not allowed to lie. There’s no way I can bring myself to lie. Cause that would be corrupting my own soul, or cheating or anything like that. have to be honest and authentic and real.
Noam: Yeah, authentic is the key word there. I have two more questions for you. wait, we didn’t answer the bow and arrow. No, you didn’t. The bonfires are great. Bringing light to the world. But what about the bow and arrow? You didn’t answer the bow and arrow thing yet. What’s it Is that just playfulness? Is that the idea? Is it playfulness?Yael Dworkin: The bow and arrow. Okay, so there’s a teaching about Rabbi Shimon. The bow and arrow, it’s keshet. In Hebrew it means keshet. Now the first time we read about, we come across the concept of keshet, of a bow in creation, is with the story of Noah and the flood. That after the flood, God brings about the rainbow and it’s a symbol that he won’t destroy the world anymore. And they say about Rabbi Shimon that as long as he was alive no rainbow was seen. What is the significance of that? Because the rainbow, when we see the rainbow in Jewish tradition, we’re supposed to come to a thoughts of repentance. This is a sign that we’re living in a time where if God would examine our ways, and he’s always examining our ways, we would be worthy of another flood, but he promised not to, so he’s giving us a pass. But it’s meant to trigger a reflection of where do I need to mend my ways?
And in Rabbi Shimon’s time, the purity that he brought into the world and the love that he spoke of and brought into the world and taught redeemed the world from needing the reflection of repentance brought about by a rainbow. that’s, maybe there are other answers, but that’s my answer tonight.
Noam: So that’s your bow and that’s a play on words, so that’s where the bow and arrows come from and that’s where the archery, the color war. Okay, and the joy, and the joy of this day, just joy. So two more questions for you to just wrap this conversation. I’m so interested in this and your take on this. You use the word authenticity a lot, like you spoke about being authentic, love, authentic, love. It sounds a lot, by the way, like a certain type of hasidut that emerged in the late 18th or 19th century is about Simcha Bunim of Peshischa and the like, it sounds like that kind of Judaism in some ways, this quest for authenticity that goes back a few thousand years.
I’m wondering two things. One is, do you think that this generation, this younger generation, I’m seeing more young Jews being attracted to the type of Judaism that you’re talking about right now compared to a previous generation? Is that right?
And my second question is, Sephardic Judaism. Now, Mijal’s not here, my co-host isn’t here, but she’s a proud Sephardic Jew. I feel like, and I’m not basing this on statistics, that Sephardic Jews just connect to Lag Ba’Omer more instinctively than Ashkenazi Jews. And do you agree with that assessment or not? So two questions there.
Yael Dworkin: Whoa, okay. I don’t know how much time we have left, but it’s a loaded question. So let’s see what will flow.
Sephardic Jews have a tradition to read the Zohar regularly. And they do it regularly. There’s something called, there’s a book called Chokli Yisrael, and it’s part of their daily menu of learning. And so from very young, Sphardic Jews see their fathers, their uncles, their older brothers, whatever it is, the community leaders, they go to synagogue and they hear the Zohar being read. Whether they understand it or not, just to read the words of the Zohar is said to have a purifying effect on the soul, even if you don’t understand what’s written there because so much love was infused there, so much intention of divinity and closeness to God that your soul somehow gets it even without you understanding the words.
So, Sephardim are more connected to it because it’s in their practice just to read it on a daily basis more than Ashkenazi Jews. Hasidic Jews picked up that practice. Hasidim are normally started in Eastern Europe and so they have it.
What was the other question?
Noam: This generation, do you feel like this younger generation?
Yael Dworkin: This generation needs this language because it’s…Because, you know, especially in the era of the internet that so many answers can be accessed so quickly. Information is not what they want. Obedience to rules that they don’t understand why doesn’t speak to them. And what they need is love and connection and pulling them in from the alienation that the internet brings up and the separation from souls. It’s all pretend social media. Like what’s social about this media? I don’t know, except that it acts as it gets to a lot of people. But what’s social about it? And with all of this social media, there’s more and more lonely people in this world because they’re just busy on their phones or whatever it is. And the soul yearns for connection.
People want to be seen. The biggest gift you can give to someone is seeing them and relating to them as a soul, as a human being, not as just function. Somebody that functions and needs to function a certain way according to a rule book. And kids of this generation are very wise to that. And I think it’s happening in our generation more than previous generations is because I really do believe that we are working towards redemption of the world, of healing of the world. Now you could say, you’re crazy, look at this world, it’s such a mess. We still have captives in Gaza for heaven’s sake. Like why is that happening? There’s so much antisemitism. What are you talking about redemption? Where is the redemption? What redemption?
But something that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yichai is that light comes from darkness. And we know from our own personal experience when we go through a very hard experience and we don’t allow it to break us and we grapple with it and we look for the inner resources within ourselves. If this isn’t meant to break me, to kill me, then how else am I supposed to relate to this horrible thing? And what usually happens, what breaks through is hope and another new way of understanding the events that happened to us to the point that when we look back at the horrible situations that happened to us, we thank them that it brought us to greater enlightenment. I’m going to use that word here. Greater understanding, greater depth. And the generation that we’re living in, and believe all of this mess that we’re living through now, is just the darkness that precedes the light. But we’re seeing a lot of light also. It’s not just all dark.
Noam: I love it.
Yael Dworkin: The kids of this generation are very real, they’re very authentic, they’re very smart. And they’re very resourceful and that’s what they need. Talk to my soul. Stop telling me what to do. Do you see me? Do you hear me?
Noam: Love it. Yeah. The number one thing that people care about is being cared about. And I hear you loud and clear. Yael, you are such a phenomenal teacher. I feel very lucky to have spent the past hour having this conversation with you and thinking deeply about the topic of LAg Ba’Omer, about light, about connectivity, about relationships. Because what you’re saying is all of Judaism really boils down to this one word, which is love, which is connectivity, which is dependent on friendship, which is dependent on giving up of our hearts. And what Lag Ba’Omer is about is enjoying that, appreciating that, connecting with being in that kitchen that you’re talking about, making that fire with your children, with your family. You could be with the wrongs of people and you could be with a few people, but what matters is that feeling, that expression of love. And so thank you so much for teaching me a lot more about Lag Ba’Omer than I ever knew about at all. And thank you so much for joining me and in absence, Mijal, on our Wondering Judaism. Thanks so much.
Yael Dworkin: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Can I just say that I want to welcome everybody as visitors to Israel. We have a yeshiva called Yeshiva Simchat Shlomo. It’s open to everyone to come. It’s a very loving place. I happen to run the women’s branch of that program, which is a Torah and art program. We combine Torah and all kinds of expressions of art. And you’re all welcome. Look us up, Yeshiva Simchat Shlomo in Israel, welcome. Looking forward to meeting everybody.
Noam: I’m going to take you up on that. And thanks so much. Really, really incredible.
Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Subscribe wherever you’re listening to this pod and follow Unpacked on all the regular social media channels. Just search for it on Unpacked Media. And if you enjoy wondering with us, please share this and other episodes with your friends. Give us that five-star rating thing. Share it with your family. Let’s get this connectivity, this love out to as many people as possible. So be in touch with us by writing us at WonderingJews@unpacked.media. That’s WonderingJews@unpacked.media. Follow us on Instagram at WonderingJews.
This episode was hosted by me, Noam. Please check out Yael’s Yeshiva Simchat Shlomo in Jerusalem at YSSTorah.org. Rob Perra is our audio editor and we are produced by Michael Weber.