A Poem for L'ag b'Omer

Dear Friends,
We've turned the corner in our Omer counting journey for 5780–away, we pray,  from the sorrows and oppressions of enslavement, and toward the gift of revelation, the space of spiritual intimacy that, in our ancient Torah tradition, is known, simply, as "Sinai." Last week, as I contemplated what I might present duringe ALEPH's L'ag b'Omer women-led extravaganza, organized and stewarded last night by Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael and her stellar team [available for viewing here], this poem emerged. May the energies of this season conduct us toward a time of less fear and urgency, more ease and peace and just distribution of the riches of our world–a deep integration of Torah wisdom.
Khag sameyakh,
Diane

The Thirty-Third Day
[L’ag B’Omer is the thirty-third day of the Omer, the seven-week period between the holidays of Passover and Shavu’ot. In ancient times, this was a period devoted to offering the first fruits of the winter barley crop (an omer measure of grain), ​while the priest counted the days and offered prayers to ensure the abundance of the summer wheat crop. The Sages identified the weeks of the Omer with the journey of the Israelite people from slavery in Egypt to the  foot of Mt. Sinai, where they received Divine revelation. In later times, mystics devoted themselves to spiritual refinement during the time of counting the Omer, cultivating the qualities of the seven lower sefirot or Divine emanations of the kabbalistic Tree of Life to prepare for the receiving Torah anew each year. The Talmud teaches that the first thirty-two days of this seven-week period are a time of mourning, in remembrance of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died then in a plague, brought on, so legend says, by their dishonoring of one another. The qualities of Divine emanation associated with the thirty-third day are hod sheh’b’hod, the humility within splendor, the splendor that unfolds only through surrender.]
 
They died in droves
twelve thousand pairs of them,
so they say--
died of contagious disrespect,
pernicious contention,
these zealous students, 
Rabbi Akiva’s boys.
Study buddies run amok,
they sank into backbiting
mud-slinging, one upsmanship;
arguing not for the sake of heaven
but on their own behalf.
Twenty-four thousand politicians of the soul,
ruthless competitors in
the marketplace of spirit,
forgot the untold grace 
of paradox, the beauty of
elu v’elu, that these and also these
are the Living words.
 
It brought a plague upon their heads,
or so the pundits said--
a plague that fell upon them
like poisoned rain,
killing thousands
(and whom have I  lately dissed, 
ignored, abandoned, 
labeled “less than,” 
in my mad rush up the mountain?),
until the thirty-third day
when the dying stopped, abruptly,
so they say,
on the same date that,
some years later,
the great bar Yokhai,
khai, khai, bar Yokhai
Rabban Shimon bar Yokhai,
Akiva’s brilliant student,
who came to him after the plague,
departed this world, prophet-like,
in a fiery chariot, luminous,
ecstatic as a bridegroom.
On this day of hod sheh’b’hod
this day of splendrous surrender,
mass dying stopped,
and the true death,
the mystical merging,
was revealed,
as it is taught: 
“Your term of exile is completed,”
yomar Kadosh.
 
Exhale! Go get a shave! 
Go home and marry 
your high school sweetheart!
She who has tended your garden,
go sit in her shade 
like the spreading shadow
of a lush fig tree,
and count your blessings.
 
And what do we know 
of those sweethearts,
those women--
the mothers, sisters, solitary brides,
waiting, patiently (or not),
for these twenty-four thousand
who would never return,
sitting in courtyards
or before humble hovels,
crushing grain into flour
on their grinding stones,
baking bread in clay ovens,
spinning flax threads and wool threads
day by day, making their own
silent offerings,
doing the unsung work, 
waiting eagerly (or not)
to greet their young men— 
each son, each brother, 
each husband--
not knowing they
have died in the wars of 
othering, of besting, 
of putting down--
not knowing they
did not live
to fight another day?
 
Hod sheh’b’hod,
surrender to the splendor!
Light a bonfire
on the hillside of your heart,
in the forest of your mind!
Burn through the fakery,
the stubbornness
that passes for
endurance, the
ephemeral victories
that call themselves “eternal.”
Soften stiff hips, aching knees,
as you sink into the deepest bow,
allying hips and legs
with heart and belly.
Groan with the earth,
sigh with the tides,
wave with the sheaves,
let pride and greed evaporate
and rise to cloud,
then fall as rain,
purified, gentle— 
a healing rain
of humble blessing.
 
​* with thanks to poet Susan Windle for the phrase, “the splendor of surrender”
 
 
©Diane Elliot 2020
www.whollypresent.org