Editor's Notebook
Community Views
Gut Check?
Gimme Lag B'Omer
A Christian View
Of Yom Hashoah
PHIL JACOBS EDITOR -
THE REV. JAMES R. LYONS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Can we talk Lag God gave the Torah to the Jew-
The rabbi presents goals de-
B'Omer here?
ish people.
rived from the seven aspects of
Please, don't
That day is called Shavuot, or God outlined in the Kabbalah,
turn the page yet the Feast of Weeks. In between, the Jewish mystical tradition.
— I know this isn't many Jews say a prayer for each The seven aspects are then mul-
our favorite sub- day, and it's called the counting tiplied by each other for a total of
ject.
of the omer.
49 combinations, which is, again,
Sometimes I
OK, are we square on all of the number of days between
wish Lag B'Omer this? Good. Lag B'Omer is the Passover and Shavuot. The idea
meant that we had 33rd day of the counting of the is that we should be mentally
to change our dishes over, search omer, and this year begins at sun- prepared through these seven as-
for bread crumbs and spend hun- down, Tuesday, May 6. The pects to receive the Torah on
dreds of dollars on kosher for Lag Wings could be up 2-0 over the Shavuot.
B'Omer foods at the grocery store. Blues by then, and the Tigers will
Check out these seven aspects,
Maybe then, this Jewish obser- have given up another 50 home one for each week of the counting
vance would have more credibil- runs.
of the omer. They include: chesed,
ity.
The word lag is an acronym for lovingkindness; gevurah, justice
Or maybe, maybe, we should the Hebrew letters lamed and or discipline; tiferet, beauty, har-
give Lag B'Omer gelt out to the gimel. In Jewish numerology or mony or compassion; netzach, en-
children and light candles.
gematria, lamed equals 30, and durance or ambition; hod,
Have you ever had a time in gimel equals 3.
humility or splendor; yesod, bond-
your life when you needed a gut
Some history is important ing or foundation; and malchut,
check? You know what
nobility or leadership.
I mean. When you
,(7 . ) , Lag B'Omer falls on
looked in the mirror
3 the fifth day of the fifth
beyond the zits, crow's
week, or "Hod of Hod."
feet and stray
This, according to Rab-
whiskers to find out
bi Elimelich Silberberg
what's really going on
of Bais Chabad of West
inside. You know
Bloomfield, is the day
you've done it. And
of ultimate humility for
sometimes, it's difficult
all Jews.
to look in that mirror.
`The message of Lag
Sometimes, though, it's
B'Omer is that we
the very thing you
have to be prepared to
need to do.
receive the Torah,"
There. You haven't
said Rabbi Silberberg.
spent a penny on special
"You have to strive for
foods. You haven't had
a level of humility. We
to buy a present for any-
need to be a mentsh
one. You aren't fasting.
before we receive the
You aren't saying spe-
Torah. It is a day when
cial prayers. Did that
we are humbled, be-
hurt? Of course not. Tag
cause we recognize the
B'Omer for Jews is the
ultimate splendor in
ultimate gut check. But,
God. Some believe that
let's be more formal.
we receive the Torah,
In Israel, bonfires and archery commemorate the Lag B'Omer
This is a day of obser- battles of Shimon Bar Kochba.
then we become hum-
vance after all. Let's call
ble. It's really the op-
it a day for character building.
here. It was on this day that the posite. The Torah once received,
Doug Collins and Scotty Bow- plague killing Rabbi Akiva's stu- catapults us to a level of spiritu-
man don't own the trademark on dents was lifted. Scholars tell us ality."
this aspect of life. But Scotty is that they died, because although
So, go back a paragraph and
hoping that his players have done they learned about loving their read those seven aspects again.
enough character building so that fellow man, they really did not in- Do you have to know how to read
they can skate around with a sil- ternalize that message. On Lag Hebrew fluently to act in a spirit
ver cup in several weeks.
B'Omer, Rabbi Akiva's students of lovingkindness toward some-
What our character building is reached a level of respect and hu- one else? Of course not. Do you
about is preparation to receive the mility toward God.
have to be a scholar to be com-
Torah. Now I know for some of us,
It was also on this day that Rab- passionate? Again, no way.
that's not exactly the Stanley bi Shimon bar Yochai, the author
By working on ourselves and
Cup. But still, if we agree that the of the mystical book the Zohar, becoming more humble and
Torah was given to us as a peo- died. Scholars said that Rabbi bar showing more humility, we ob-
ple — whether we pray at a tem- Yochai didn't see his death as an serve Lag B'Omer. By striving to
ple or at the Kollel — Jews have end, but instead as a "marriage" be better people, better Jews, we
an equal opportunity to accept the to the spirit of Godliness.
become better leaders for our fam-
Torah's'teachings in their lives.
There is a book out there called ilies and our communities.
Hold it right there. I'm getting A Spiritual Guide to the Count-
Maybe you've been observing
preachy again.
ing Of The Omer. No, I don't Lag B'Omer all along and you just
I forgot something important. think you are all going to run out didn't know it.
What is Lag B'Omer and when is and get it tomorrow. In it, author
You don't have to go spend
it? First, what is an omer? No, it's Rabbi Simon Jacobson writes money, invite the neighbors over
not a home run said with a Cock- about 49 steps for a person to bet- and hold a service to want to
ney accent. It's a measure of bar- ter himself.
grow. That comes from within.
ley that Jews brought as an
Wait, wait. Come back here. It's a drive to build or in some
offering to the First and the Sec- Put that remote control down. sense rebuild character.
ond Temples, beginning the sec- These steps aren't from biblical
That's what Lag B'Omer is all
ond night of Passover all the way outer space. They are aspects of about. And you thought you didn't
through, 49 days later, to the day life all of us should try to emulate. know this holiday. O
Yom Hashoah is
always a quiet
day for me. That
doesn't mean that
the normal activ-
ities of my life
don't go on. In
fact, on some oc-
casions I'm busier
than ever. But it's
still a quiet day. Everything that
happens has the peculiar tinge
of the events Yom Hashoah
forces us to constantly rethink.
My day began this last Yom
Hashoah with a visit to Hillel
Day School, where each year I
meet with the eighth-graders
who are heading out to high
school. I discuss and answer
their questions about Christians
and Christianity.
When I arrived, the students
were in a service reflecting the
day. They had questions like we
all do. How did this happen?
Why did this happen? Can it
happen again? What should we
do about it?
Having been in Israel for the
two minutes of silence, where
the entire country seems to
come to a halt on Yom Hashoah,
has been a remarkable experi-
ence for me. To see the Israelis
who love to talk standing qui-
etly by their cars, buses and out-
side the shops was a deeply
moving experience for me and
remains one to this day.
I watched the German news
on the international channel. In
Berlin, in a period of 24 hours,
Christians and Jews read
names of 60,000 murdered vic-
tims. One of the spokespeople,
who emphasized that it was
Christians and Jews working
together, pointed out that
60,000 names read at a steady
pace for 24 hours was 1 percent
of those murdered.
It would take 100 days of con-
stant reading to list the known
victims. A staggering thought.
Later that evening, I made
my annual visit to Lincoln Tow-
ers where I spoke with some of
our older citizens, both Chris-
tians and Jews. A number of
them are survivors and I always
take time to listen to them and
their stories. Like the young
people at Hillel earlier that day,
they had the same questions.
How? Why? Is there any
progress in fighting the hatred
the Shoah represents? What
have we learned?
Let me take the last two
questions for just a moment.
When the Ecumenical Institute
held its annual church-syna-
James Lyons is the director of
the Ecumenical Institute for
Jewish-Christian Studies in
Southfield.
gogue tour, we visited Holy
Spirit Lutheran Church where
the pastor, the Rev. Bruce Quat-
man, in essence said that many
Jews and Catholics are con-
cerned about the impact of Mar-
tin Luther today. The Lutheran
church has repudiated Martin
Luther's anti-Semitism in
church statements and in prac-
tice.
At the Ecumenical Institute's
Dove Dinner, Bishop Alex
Brunett spoke of the post-Vati-
can II Catholic Church and the
changes that have taken place
in liturgy, teaching materials,
preaching and the catechisms
which prepare young people for
church membership.
The vast majority of major
Christian denominations have
repudiated the anti-Semitism
of the past. That does not mean
that there aren't still people who
carry what the French philoso-
pher and resistance leader
Claude Bourdet has called "the
gangrene of anti-Semitism."
What it does mean is that the
students in the churches are be-
coming actively involved in
broader interfaith dialogues
with greater understanding of
both themselves and the other.
In the second place, we speak
blithely about learning the
lessons of the Holocaust. Quite
frankly, I have heard the phrase
used hundreds of times with al-
most no thought about what
those lessons might be.
When I've taught at univer-
sities, students would offer
things like "love your neighbor,"
which, of course, is a basic con-
cept of created living going back
to Torah. Is it really a lesson of
the Holocaust? If you're asked
that question, how would you
answer? The mass murder
around the world, the torture
and ruthless killing of civilians
in Bosnia and that whole area
and the ongoing violence
against those who are different
make me wonder if the real les-
son of the Holocaust hasn't
been, "You can kill without fear
of being held accountable."
If I stopped my reflections
there, I would probably enter
into all of the negativism that
is so much a part of our world.
For me, the real lesson of the
Holocaust, of war, of hatred to-
ward others is not that politics
will make the difference or that
economics are the essential
question.
These things show our moral
failure to practice what we all
believe. The Holocaust and oth-
er ugly events happen when we
don't love our neighbors as our-
selves, or perhaps more im-
portantly, don't even love
ourselves. CI
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