Lag Ba’Omer on Fire

[Music] the time period between pesak and shuis for literally a thousand years was an extremely joyous time it was the time of year that we were excitedly and joyously preparing ourselves for re accepting the Tyra it was a time of springing forward and renewal and optimism and infusing the renewed spiritual energy we got from pesak with the upcoming Tyra we were going to get onu in fact thisas EMS amongst others writes that the reason why the counting of the OM is found in the T in the middle of the par of the May is because is really one big between and and like a it should be filled with happiness and joy and song and yet nowadays it's not it's a time of mourning we don't listen to music we don't shave we're filled with sadness we're mourning because 1,00 years ago 24,000 of rasum died and we haven't forgotten until today now let's ask some pretty obvious questions there have been many horrible almost Unthinkable things that have happened to the Jewish people throughout our history and yet they don't get more than one day of mourning there was the destruction of the bik the breaking of the after Theo there was the Spanish Inquisition which had far more deaths than the t Vera as did the Crusades as did Ki massacres as did the Holocaust in the year 1298 in Franconia and Bavaria there were a 100,000 Jews killed in 1915 the Russian army killed 100,000 Jews in 1917 ukrainians killed 200,000 Jews in 1918 and 1919 120,000 Jews were killed and close to 500 Pags yet we don't give these days not only do we not give these days tragedies of their own day we just lump them together with Tish and many of us don't even know that they happened so why do the deaths of rikas T not only not get not only get their own day but they get 30 3 days and not only any 33 days but 33 days which are Kaya days which are festive days which should have otherwise been celebrating celebratory days of happiness and joy why don't we mourn for Thea an Tish like we do every other hundreds of horrible things that happened to the Jewish people another glaring question that any thinking person needs to ask is what exactly are we celebrating on LBA what that the tomam stopped dying the only reason they stopped dying was because there was no one left to die we shouldn't celebrate that day we should just turn that day into a very sad day of remembrance for those that died why are we celebrating so the only way to properly understand the power and significance and meaning of LBA is to understand the history surrounding the tum of Rika in the year 70 CE the Romans destroyed the B mikdash and the Jewish people were decimated thousands were killed and thousands more died in Starvation yam was a wasteland thousands sold into slavery wean for our lives so crushing was the blow to the Jewish people as a whole both physically and in morale that Titus erected his now famous Victory arch in Rome which on it he proudly wrote in Judea capita or Judaism is kaput the Jews are finished and at least he thought so he thought the annoying Jews who were one of the only groups on Earth that refused to give into the Roman society the only group that refused to be subsumed much like almost the entirety of the Civilized world at the time he thought those Jews who were now running literally for their lives would be gone forever crushed and subsequently absorbed by the countries they fled to and vanish into the pages of history and he proudly thought to himself that although many have tried before him it was tius I tetus who succeeded in finally ridding the world of its Jews and quite honestly he was pretty close to being right far too close to being right but he was wrong he was dead wrong because the Jews never give up because the Jews never give and they slowly but surely kept on building back a SCH here a saer there a Mikvah here a bris there and before long in the year 135 CE a man named bar came along and aroused and inspired yiden wherever he went he organized an army that was determined to read the land of the Romans and to recommit to living a life of Tyra and a and rebuild mik once and for all and at first he got tens of followers then he got hundreds of followers then thousands then tens and tens of thousands of followers who were so inspired and encouraged to keep holding up the torch of rnas and Tyra that they galvanized themselves to take on the notorious Roman army arguably the most effective and strongest army in world history and Bara was so inspiring that even ribeka the greatest Sage at the time rallied behind him he encouraged Baraka he was deeply impressed and captivated by the dedication of and his soldiers and although the Tam of Rika were hesitant that this was going to lead to Bloodshed and they would ultimately lose rubeka assured them that if they kept on learning and ding if they kept on holding up the torch of of Tyra clra would succeed Bara was so passionate to rid the land of the Romans and rebuild our so that he accumulated an army of 200,000 people and these people weren't just going along for the ride the garus peral D says that to physically take part in baraka's Army Baraka required that each Soldier cut off a finger to prove that he really believed in the cause eventually he switched the test to requiring each Soldier to uproot a young tree with one hand while riding on a horse that's how dedicated they were now there were people who disagreed with rika's stance with Baraka but rebika pointed to the crumbling Roman society in which hundreds of thousands of Romans were moving off of Roman paganism and finding alternative Lifestyles thousand thousands converted to UD and many more thousands proudly joined forces with Bara to rid the land of the evil Romans there were even members of the Roman senate that converted to Judaism schools open shs open Tyra was being learned from north to south reaka believed that if his tomim would learn and Domin and Inspire the yiden spread out throughout the Empire to stay strong and join in with Bara Hashem would ensure that they would be successful and Rika knew that if the revolts were in fact successful yiden from all over the world would return and a great shua would occur in the third B MDES could be rebuilt and the yid would live in peace says that believed so deeply in and the spiritual mission that bar was on that he publicly made known that bar was mhia the gar says that Rea switched Bar's name from Bara to Bara alluding to thebar which says a star Will Rise Up from yov and believed that was that star and he proclaimed him to be the long awaited Messiah and he would lead the Army while reab and and his 24,000 would be the spiritual ammunition fueling the war that Reika knew would bring the ultimate Redemption and quite frankly at the beginning everything seemed to be on a trajectory towards mashiah Bara and his army managed to unite and Inspire the Jews scattered around the Roman Empire hundreds of thousands of yiden were doing tuva tens of thousands of non-jews were rallying behind the Jews cause the time was certainly ripe to usher in mashiah and initially bar kaka's Army was massively successful many non-jews Who Saw The Light joined in with baraka's army and brought the total number of soldiers in his army to 350,000 which at the time was even larger than the Roman army Bara was so successful that hadrien was forced to call in his best troops were in who were in England and Gaul at the time but even those troops failed the Jewish Army was Unstoppable the two Roman Legions and er at the time the one in yam and the one in megiddo were both decimated by Bara and even the reinforcements that came in from trans Jordan and Syria and Egypt were destroyed Baraka and his army had so much momentum and strength that hendrian had to send in his best commander Julius seus who was at the time in battle in the hills of Wales and seus was told to import Legions from Britain and Switzerland and Austria and Hungaria and Bulgaria yet Bara kept on winning Victory after Victory Bara seemed to be an a way to bringing the final mashiah that the Jewish people desperately needed the pain of the two B Mikes that were destroyed seemed to be at its end the final light seemed to be arriving but then it didn't and suddenly the victories stopped something happened the spiritual energy protecting Bara and his army suddenly left and Mikus began to break out betrayal suspicion murder took place within the Army and the soldiers were left in utter confusion what happened what was going on what changed and now the G's famous words carry so much more weight 24,000 died why of course it's sad when people die but these weren't any old people these tamid were the ones supporting the Army these tamid were the spiritual ammunition to Bar's miraculous War these T they were supposed to Galvanize the Jews of the world and Usher and Messiah that was inches away of coming in yet they died they were killed in a plague Sent From Heaven why how how could such a tragedy happen What could they have possibly done one of the most auspicious times in all Jewish history to have stopped msia from coming because they wer in one another because they didn't respect each other because their interpersonal relationships were flawed because of their lack of respect for one another Hashem determined that they no longer were fit to be the spiritual Protectors of Cl Isel and their deaths brought about the end of the spiritual fuel to Bar's Army and with baraka's army missing its spiritual ammunition this single greatest tra tra in Jewish history other than Tish of took place and that was what happened in the city of betar betar was The Fortress in which Bara and his army were stationed betar was the epicenter of the Jewish chuva movement a city that the gar says at the time had 500 Jewish schools in it and the smallest of those schools had 500 kids in it and Bara was sure this would be the last battle the knockout punch that would crush the Romans once and for all but it wasn't the Yen didn't just lose the battle in betar they were incinerated they were dismantled they were decimated in way is too gruesome to mention 580,000 Jews died 580,000 the gar and Tinus says there was so much blood coming out of betar that despite being 40 mil from the ocean it managed to flow into the ocean and colored the ocean red four mil into the water we were butchered we were Slaughter we were burnt to a crisp and the survivors were all enslaved never to be heard from again bar was killed and his army was dismantled and crushed asler writes Bara wasn't a false mssiah he was a failed mssiah an unsuccessful Messiah the death of rebas brought the death of our hopes and of our dreams of our Messianic aspirations it extended the gullas thousands of years and it's not because they didn't learn enough it's not because they didn't didn't do enough but because we were inches from the Finish Line perhaps closer to mashia than we've ever been and it was all stopped because it was stopped that we were forced to endure thousands of years of Exile of running for our lives of murder of inquisitions of pgrs of lials of ghettos of suicide bombers of car ramming of dose after dose after dose of zyon B all because sh we weren't merely mourning the deaths of 24,000 T we are mourning the death of mashiah the death of our hopes to rebuild the mikdash the death of the utopian world we could have had if you think the level of Despair after the B mdash was destroyed was bad the Jews at the time of the defeat of bar were crushed they were broken where do we go what do we do it was all over hadrien had a Vineyard that was 18 mil by 18 mil and he took the Corp from betar and tied their outstretched hands to form a fence surrounding his Vineyard hundreds of thousands of Jewish corpses strung together for miles and the surviving Jews could do nothing but watch we were crushed our spirit not only broken but broken and then sped on and then trampled on and then burned alive the Jewish people should have been finished Jewish history should have been over with but it wasn't because they were there was one Man still alive there was one man who didn't die there was one man who saw it all and knew the secret to moving on and that man was Riva and he would never give up rip off his skin burn him alive it made no difference he would hold the torch of yudish gu for all to see no matter what you do to him and he knew the secret he stood up and he screamed it loud and he screamed it proud this is the only way forward this is the only way we can ever bring Messiah back so he got right back to work and a man accustomed to Leading 24,000 students began again from scratch and he taught five new students the legacy of Tyra and one of those five was a man named shim bayai who wanted more than the raw Tyra in its outer casing The Superficial layer he wanted the py he wanted the inner meaning the inner spark because he came to the realization that it's time for cl to learn how to internalize the Tyra and inject it into such a deep part of its that it affects your every cell and makes you an ishes and is Aid on fire who is filled with nothing but covered Z and Hashem took notice of his remarkable dedication to the pemus of Ty and he therefore Hashem revealed to what is now referred to as the Z the mystical underw workking of and with the hopes that he would Infuse more people with Tyra depth and make them wholesome and make them pure and harmonious people who can carry on the torch of Hashem down the Twisted Road of history and this tah that Rim got he began to teach one person at a time and he breathed New Hope into the Jewish people that although we were crushed and mashiah didn't come but we don't Despair and we don't give up and therefore on L we dance and we sing and we scream with all our might to rimai the man who taught us to never give up and to never Despair and to let the tyus seep into our souls and make us the most loving group of people on Earth because that's the only way we're going to have another shot at Mia and is what sent it away and Kel is what's going to bring it back every month of every year for thousands of years Jews go outside in the dark of the night and we say Kish Lana and we look up at the moon and we hope that this will be the month we hope that this will be the time when Messiah will finally come and our sarus will go away and hashem's name will finally get the glory it rightfully deserves and right at the end of we say a little Foria to arrive we say we declare that is on his way this should be the month when he finally arrives and what do we say immediately after we di from messiah's arrival we turn to our friend we turn to our neighbor we turn to our schmate and we say shalom shom shom shom shom because that's the only way because that's the only way we're going to have another shot at Masia sent it away COV it's going to bring it back because how ridiculous it would be to ask for mhia while still entrenched entrenched in and the only way to bring Mia is is shom shom shalom shalom and when we turn back to our sitter we whisper under our breath is coming we could feel it and we say every single person in CL every boy every girl every mother every father every every lak every every ashkanazi every Jewish Backpacker in India every Jewish soul from the four corners of the globe amen [Music]