Why We Celebrate Lag Ba'omer With Rabbi Mintz

the reason for the joy of the day of black believer the cabalists have a special happiness on this day it's a special day for them who was one of the main authors of the holy zohar the book of kabbalah this is the day where he left the world thousand years ago and we know that the person every year site the day of his passing as it comes every year goes to higher levels of greatness every year that comes around and therefore all the kabbalah who are considered themselves disciples and students of shem yokai celebrate his higher levels of greatness and holiness and purely on this day for us little people not cavaliers i heard a nice reason why we celebrate this day and it has to do with the actually this is not a time of happiness since press up until now were days of mourning we didn't make any weddings and the music we don't listen to because of the great treasure tragedy of rabbi akiva who had 24 000 students who died during this period and we're told because they did not treat each other to proper respect they were great great people great scholars and god demands greatness from great people and according to their greatness they didn't have the right respect for each other and they died during this period 24 000 tell me the big tragedy and every year we remember that and we keep a certain amount of warning because of the tragedy that happened at that time so what we what are we celebrating today unlike weimer because afterwards reverend kievan the girl of akiva who lost all of his tomino's disciples his students 24 000 within a few weeks did he despair did he give up did he retire did he go around depressed no he went and he built up another yeshiva he went and get he got more tell me the great rabbis under his wing he taught them and torah again sprang up for the jewish people even those great scholars were lost but he went ahead and he taught for many years other great students made another great yeshiva and brought back the ground of torah back to the jewish people and this is to celebrate and for us to learn from if we go through difficult times whether as a nation or whether as a private person if we come against up against difficult times we can't despair and give up and say well i guess the god doesn't want me to do what i'm doing what's the use i might as well retire and forget about it no we learn from romney akiba that we have to go on and build whatever we have to go back and do over again to make sure that it happens we have to do that that's a great joy that we have in this day even though we were such a loss at those times but the fact that he was able to make a big comeback and and build back the greatness of jesus again the greatness of the torah the great scholars that's something to rejoice about and that's something that we uh celebrate every year in black believer and uh let's try to think of what rabbi kiva when he made us yeshiva again and taught his students again what was the first thing that he taught them it goes without saying he taught them respect have the right kind of honor for your fellow jew and treat them with the right respect and honor and love that god wants us to have between us he didn't want the same thing to happen again what happened the first time and therefore that was one of the main things that he taught something that we have to think about ourselves to uh have the right respect for each other for a fellow jew and treat him with the right kind of feeling and concern and it's very interesting that this week is called a week of height every week of sphere represents a different idea judaism corresponding to one of the great early greats of the jewish people this week corresponds to arunachalam iron the high priest in the time of the jews were in the desert in egypt and the desert afterwards they built the mishkan the minis holy temple and he was the high priest and arnaud cohen was a person who stood for peace man of peace iron the coin he always brought peace between man and man family matters a wife and a husband who were not on good terms he would go out of his way to make them love each other again be close to each other again one of the amazing stories of aaron cohen is that he found out that there's a couple who the husband got angry at his wife and said to his wife i'll never speak to you again unless you spit in the eye of the high priest you want to make sure it's not going to happen if you don't spit in this eye i'm not going to talk to you again i haven't quite found out about this so he went to the woman and said to you know i have a sore eye and i went to the doctor he told me i need a certain enzyme if i put in my eye i'll be able to have a cure from the eye and that enzyme is in the saliva of a woman so you can do me a big favor if you can take that saliva and spit my eye here get some of the enzyme in my eye and i'll be able to see good again according to doctor's instructions so well of course held help byron the coin the high priest so she went ahead and did it and that's what made peaceful so that's just one of the stories that he went all out to make peace between people man and friend man and woman and so on and this is the uh week of his memory this whole week of aaron cohen that he made men of peace and this is something that uh [Music] the theme that we're talking about things that seem impossible things that uh rabbi kiva went back and had built this whole yeshiva again it was so difficult to do so making peace between people seems that they're finished with each other it's impossible how can make peace with them this is the week of rabbi akiva we rejoicing that he went ahead and he did the impossible to bring back torah again to the jewish people it's a week of ahmed khan who didn't impossible to bring love between people who hated each other that would under out with each other this is something that we have to think to ourselves to learn from this holy day that whenever we're down we're having a problem where things are not going well don't give up don't give in don't throw in the towel hashem will help us we have to take the first step don't get depressed don't don't don't feel that there's no use anymore i tried that that's not going i did it and it didn't work we have to come back like did like and we have to be positive and uh and show hashem that we're going to try your best and he'll help us and we'll be able to accomplish what we we can't accomplish a person may be learning torah he might have feel that he didn't doesn't know that the jewish alphabet yet the older person i don't have how am i going to be able to ever read hebrew we have so many people like that torah mates they started when they were older and they learned the alabas and they're able to read hebrew fluently today even somebody learning a tractate and the gemara and verse and things wow this big book how am i going to be able to master this big book or how master this portion of the torah it sounds seems impossible no don't give up and don't feel disturbed this that it's impossible to accomplish because if god helps us we can overcome all obstacles this is what you have to learn these two uh important ideas number one let's keep strong and do what we have to do strive for the for the top strive to do to accomplish things may be impossible will hashem will make it possible and also to have the right respect for our for our for our fellow jews to respect to think about them with respect speak them with respect and act with them with respect those are two things that we could take from this lag by omar and uh live with and this is what sam wants us to learn from every holiday that we celebrate to walk away with something strong something new something we can accomplish and this is what we're uh some of the things of lag bomber if you're a big makubo big kabbalist well you can be happy with the fact that uh like burma is a day rap shiva ben yokai in case you're not being kabbalist then we could go walk away with let's do the impossible it'll become possible and let's make sure that we have the right respect for our fellow jews have a happy day have everybody and i hope you'll have a great enjoyable evening on the uh um party tonight and i hope everybody should stay healthy and happy hashem should help us that we should see the end of this uh time that we're going through and we should come out rejoicing and better people all the best