Sunday is Lag B’Omer, a special holiday which is usually celebrated by building bonfires, having parades and singing songs. Lag B’Omer is the 33rd day in the Omer period, the days in the Jewish calendar which fall between the second day of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, and which commemorate the daily grain offerings in the Holy Temple. It is customary to count every night from Pesach until Shavuos. What makes Lag B’Omer unique is that it is celebrated in honor of two great Torah scholars: Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.
Rabbi Akiva was a simple, uneducated Jew who eventually became the greatest Torah scholar in his generation. He had 24,000 disciples who were also brilliant Torah scholars, but tended to disagree hotly. While it is normal for people to disagree over concepts, among these disciples, the controversies were personal, and there arose great hatred between them. When a plague broke out, all 24,000 disciples died, and one of the reasons given for the fact that Rabbi Akiva lost so many of his students was that they were too critical each other. On Lag B’Omer, the plague abated, and Rabbi Akvia’s students stopped dying. Therefore, the day is a break from the partial mourning that takes place during this period. Unlike other days of the Omer, haircuts are allowed and weddings are performed.
The day is the yarzheit, or the anniversary of the day Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai died. He was the author of the Zohar, which is the seminal work on Kabbala and Jewish mysticism. He and his son, Elezar, composed the book while hiding in a cave after the Romans threatened his life. They learned the secrets of the Torah of Elijah the Prophet for 12 years, and lived only from the fruit of a carob tree that was located outside of the cave. When they emerged, they saw people working in the fields. Since they had spent twelve years immersed in mysticism, they asked how it could be that people could be so involved in the material world. Their holy eyes were so intense, that they burned everything around them. G-d told them to go back into the cave and learn for another year, because their level of holiness was too intense for ordinary creation. After learning another year, and making peace with the material world, they exited the cave in peace.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai declared his yarzheit should be celebrated as a holiday, and bonfires are lit to symbolize the flame that rose after he died. Many people have parades and say verses of Torah. This was a popular tradition in the Lubavitch neighborhood in Crown Heights, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, made the day a special day to celebrate the education of children