Saturday, May 17, 2014

The Fire Burns


A melody thumps through the speakers that teeter unevenly with the bass, the sound is old and new, a mix of the past and the present, like the participants in the dance, traditional garments blending with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur.

It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday even to  those who come to the fires. The  Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire is remembered through days of deprivation for the thousands of students who died in the war, until the thirty-third day of the Biblical Omer, the day when Jerusalem was liberated.


The fires and bows have remained a part of Lag BaOmer even when hardly anyone remembers the true reason.

The new Yom Yerushalayim, the day of the liberation of the city, is coming up soon,  but the old Yom Yerushalaim, came thousands of years ago and a number of days before. Time is a wheel, and, like the circle of the dance, everything comes around again. Hands pulling on hands, years pulling on years, on and on like the orbits of planets and stars. The Divine Hand of G-d pulls us along, and we pull each other in the dance of life.


Lag BaOmer is not the first Jewish story of physical and spiritual heroism to become a hidden code. There is much that we know, without knowing what it truly means, messages from the past that exist only as echoes reminding us unknowingly of our purpose. Those in the circle around the flame may not know what they are truly commemorating and yet the act is its own commemoration. Thousands of years later the echo of a fierce joy, the pride of a people emerging out of darkness in a burst of wild energy, is still here.


In the darkness, there is nothing but the fire and the wild shapes racing around it, leaping with the guttering flames. A teenager pours oil on the flames and they rise higher. A new song begins but they are all the same song. Even the new songs are old. The music changes, but the words remain the same. Arms rise and fall, feet kick and the participants run around the fire only to end up right back where they began.




"Is not this man a brand plucked out of the fire," G-d asks Satan in the vision of the Prophet Zechariah. "But who may abide the day of his coming?" the Prophet Malachi asks."And who shall stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire."

A piece of heavy wood chars, bright sparks rising into the night air. It is cool outside the ring of fire, but here it is painfully hot, the air thick with waves of heat. The children gaze wonderingly at the sparks, flying up like tiny stars, their eyes recording the memory with a purer fidelity than any of the cameras outside the circle. Their minds capture the memory of the light, the feel of it on their skin and the awe of seeing something new for the first time. They will remember the circle and the fire.


The fire blazes up, tongues of flame darting toward us like burning lions. This is the race we run around the flames that always burn, whether we see them or not. Year after year, generation after generation, and century after century, the fire burns, but we go on and no matter how many of us burn, we continue running the race with the flames, outpacing, outlasting and outliving. No matter how many of us fall into the flames, we still live.


The men slow their steps, an ancient movement that the first wave of settlers to the Holy Land instinctively recreated. Dancing is a key that unlocks secret knowledge and opens up buried memories, turning the wheel of time back until it all becomes a circle that comes alive when it is closed.

Despite the tremendous variations in customs and appearances, they have unlocked the code of the circle, the hand to hand connection, the knowledge that whatever else we must go on. That the Jewish people must live.


Fresh from battle, the soldiers danced around the flames. They had defeated the legions of Rome,  they had beaten the greatest army in the world. They had survived the flames and in an explosion of joy, they raced around the celebratory fires, tasting the momentary immortality of the aftermath of battle. Their names are forgotten, lost to memory. Lag BaOmer is associated now with two of Rome's scholarly opponents, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who passed on the teachings and traditions that kept the circle intact even in the fire.






Anonymous said...

Swift is the booty speedy is the pray, and we shall rejoice in our portion, in our G-D. thank you for sharing this increadable dance through the flames of your writting, which ignites the spirit, in the remberance of truth and may we dance and dance and dance.

mindRider said...

Israeli society should heed the parsha Bechukotai of the past shabbat and the (repeated) content of your column on Lag-baOmer. The devision between left and right, secular and religious has deepened indeed, not ideologically, as as such the debate has always existed and conducted with theoretical fire and sword, but in the serious lessening of mutual respect after that fiery debate has been conducted. Too great a devise undermines the Jewish cohesion and because of being small in numbers that could cause weakening of the core structure which should be prevented at all cost.

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