The Lag B’omer we’re currently anticipating is nothing like the crowd scenes of the past
Whenever we plan our Lag B’Omer issues, we envision crowds. That’s the kind of day it is: a day of masses, of unity, of thousands swaying and singing, craving connection. The music of the day is the music of an ensemble. Along with the inevitable clarinet there’s always a keyboard, a darbouka, a bass guitar; it’s never a krechtz alone -- there’s always the chords and the rhythm and the twangs coloring in the spectrum of musical emotion.
This year started out as the year of the crowds. Together we thrilled in a round of grand mass celebrations of Torah learning and Torah commitment. We reveled in scene after scene of crowds swaying, praying, singing and dancing to a shared song. We imagined a Father looking down on all those faces and smiling along. We figured Lag B’omer would be another chapter in the same saga; another scene of thousands making their way to a common destination, to sing together and profess their shared goals once again.
But the Lag B’Omer we’re currently anticipating is nothing like the crowd scenes of the past. And the content in this magazine carries a different, much more solitary feeling. We tried to weave in the tempo and tenor of those yearly melodies – melodies throbbing with both vulnerability and joy – but this time they’re sung solo, as individual experiences.
Lately I've been thinking about the contrast between the Siyum Hashas – with its sweeping sense of the power of a group to achieve and conquer together -- and the isolated scenes of those earnest but not always grand attempts of lone individuals to keep to their learning commitments while shut inside their homes. Or the audio version: the contrast between that chain of thundering, resonant “amein yehei shmei rabbahs” in so many stadiums, and the muted sounds wafting up from minyanim cobbled together from porches or through windows. How does a lone soldier summon up the awe and grandeur of those moments of total submission when he can’t see the rest of the army – and a washing machine is churning in the background?
The contrast between the two is so dramatic, so painful, so immediate.
But – and this is what we tried to capture this week – the solitary song isn’t less valuable than the mass outpouring. The lonely struggle to conquer another daf or focus on another prayer isn’t less precious than the stadium full of people humming together. Torah was given to us with lightning and thunder, but revelation also comes in that still small voice: in the gritty struggle to keep to a commitment that’s no longer shiny and bright, in the trek through a desert so dry you can barely summon up the memory of the thunder.
This Lag B’Omer may not be a day of crowds. This year the krechtz will linger in the air without the richness of the full orchestra tempering its plaintive yearning. But we’ll all be singing the same songs from our isolated homes, trying to live up to the commitment we felt with such certainty when we stood shoulder to shoulder. May our Father smile down on our lonely, stubborn efforts — and may we find revelation and salvation in the still, small voice.
