(1) Lag Baomer, like all other Jewish holidays, has many facets to it, it is interwoven with many historic events, numerous sacred traditions and a host of colorful observances. (2) But the one that is usually overlooked in Lag Baomer has specifically to do with the Kabbalah, with Jewish Mysticism, which to the average Jew remains the most thoroughly misunderstood stream of creative Jewish Thought. Today, when scholars of all shades of opinion have begun to take a second look and appreciate the sweep and the grandeur of Kabbalah, the laity – by and large – still think of it as something terribly mysterious or a magical abracadabra. Whatever may be the case, Kabbalah is a part of our Jewish lives, whether we know it or not. It has been incorporated into our traditions, into many expressions and above all into our prayers, and hence it shapes our thinking as Jews in many untold ways. And Lag Baomer is the day of the calendar devoted to Kabbalah. 

3.The source book of all the great Kabbalistic teachings is the Zohar –”Book of Splendor” – which tradition ascribes to R. Shimon Bar Yochai and which contains his teachings. And in the Zohar, we read that on the day R. Shimon Bar Yochai died, he called his students in and imparted to them the great secrets and traditions of the Kabbalah. The manner in which he imparted those teachings is indicative of the character of the Kabbalah, the personality of our sages, and is, as well, a message of terrific import for us here today. And that day, when he died and taught, was the 33rd day of the Omer – Lag Baomer. So that Tomorrow is the “Yahrzeit” of R. Shimon Bar Yochai as well as the anniversary of his teaching. 

4.In the Zohar ח”ג רפ”ז ע”ב, we read (using Hebrew transl.) B’oso yom she’rabba shimon amad le’histalek min ha’olam, בההיא יומא דר”ש  בעא לאסתלקא עלמא. On the Day R. Shimon was to die, he was preparing himself for the event, and his many colleagues and disciples came in to see him – ve’habayis haya malei, והוה מילא ביתא and the house, the room in which he stayed, was filled. And then, bacha Rabbi Shimon בכא ר”ש R. Shimon began to weep, and he cried out, once before when I was critically ill and on my deathbed, only one person was with me, R. Pinchas B. Yair, but at that time hikifah eish l’fanai אסחר אשא מקמאי, a great fire surrounded me...v’achshav raissi she’paskah – v’habayis nismalei eish lefanai, and now I see that the fire has left – and the house is full! והשתא  חמינא אאתפסק והא איתמלי ביתא

1. Here, friends, is the pithy teaching of a great Jewish attitude – that it is more important to develop fewer people who will be great and genuine, than to give a smattering to the many, it is better to have one person who will be afire with holiness than to have a packed house of cold and uninspired onlookers. When that great Jewish attitude breaks down, and Jews become more interested in a full house, in mere quantity and numbers, and not in the spark of G-dliness, then it is an occasion for bacha R. Shimon, an occasion for regret and mourning and sadness.
2. To Judaism, every individual is important. Numbers have some value too, it is true, and that is why the halacha demands a “minyan” for certain occasions. But numbers are only secondary to the warmth, the love, the holiness, the depth, the heights that each individual reaches and achieves. Without each individual’s hikifah eish, enthusiasm and genuineness and inspiration, the great multitude have no real value. Multitudes alone remain dormant unless a few inspired people are willing to share with them their eish and detonate them. 
3. Just look at Jewish History – there was one Abraham, and because he was afire with the discovery of G-d, he was able to change the course of human history. And his renown does not rest merely on the fact that he got many people to agree with him and say “amen” to what he preached. No, his fame rests not on the number of members he got – rather on v’hanefesh asher assah b’charan, on the number of souls he deepened, on the number of characters he enhanced, on the depth and sweep of his spiritual messages, on the lives he radically and irrevocably changed. There were 600,000 Jews who left Egypt, but without the fiery spirit of one Moses, they would have remained in a desert for a thousand, not forty years. All our prophets were people who raised lonely voices crying out in solitude, while multitudes of mute, cold men bowed to Molech and Baal. It was Maimonides who meant the same thing when he expressed himself in characteristic sharpness and wrote, in the introduction to the “Guide,” that “When I find the road narrow and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools, I prefer to address myself to the one man and take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude.” Big crowds, he wanted to say, are not half as important as a few good individuals.

And it is not only genius or extraordinary people we are referring to. Look over the history of the Jewish community in America, and you find, interestingly, that the greatest part of its growth stemmed from a few old yeshivas in Brooklyn and the East Side of N.Y. Without them, the greater institutions of Orthodoxy today and even the whole of the conservative movement, would never have stood a chance of success. And these small yeshivos, as will someday be recorded in a glorious history of American Jewry, were begun and sponsored by laymen and laywomen who were no different from you or me, but who were seized with an idea, who were obsessed with a genuine religious devotion, who were aflame with a creative dedication to Torah. There was no nismalei ha’bayis when they began – but we’d have nothing today if not for them. 

1. Well, what about us? I am afraid that if R. Shimon B. Yochai were alive today, he would show the same reactions – bacha R. Shimon, he would weep. How different is the attitude of American Jews from the classical Jewish Attitude! We here have begun to stress the nismalei ha’bayis, and to overlook the hikifah ha’eish. We are “getting the crowd down” but failing to warm the soul up. The temples are filling up and the services, at times, are well attended – but they are frozen, they are uninspired, they are cold, the fire has gone out. Statistics have replaced “kavanah,” and quality has been drowned by quantity. 
2. I have no desire for re-hashing what has been said from this pulpit many a time and what has become a well-documented sociological fact – that with increasing membership there has been no deepening of the religious experience, that with identification with a synagogue there has come more, not less, underlying secularism, that a membership card has not always meant a real commitment to a way of life. I do want to indulge in some self-criticism. I do want to blame us, laymen and Rabbis both, for going along with this flair for numbers and “packing them in,” which is perfectly alright by itself, but we have also gone along with the failure to stress quality, warmth, depth, and genuineness. In more than one case, Orthodox Leadership, both lay and Rabbinic, has faltered and has sacrificed principle, the spark of divinity, for the sake of greater numbers. We have practiced a completely non-Jewish method. We have scrapped tradition after tradition in the name of nismalei ha’bayis… And then have found that our conquest was a pyrrhic victory. We gained but lost. I think that it is time for us to come to our senses. It is time for us to realize that there is nothing immoral or shameful in being in the minority, though we assuredly believe that the day will come when all Jews will return to Torah and G-d. But there is nothing ignominious, nothing bad, about espousing an unpopular cause, provided that we have the fire, the warmth and depth. Throughout the ages, as history clearly proves, it was the few who were dedicated who kept up the tradition so that the many more would later have something to return to. If we will extinguish the flame in order to attract the crowds, we will be unfaithful to the future as well as the past. For there are unmistakable signs that things are changing. The dogmatism of early reform is beginning to vanish. I am not referring only to their revival of “Customs and Ceremonies,” to their new use of the yarmulke or mitzvos they once discarded. I am referring to their new attitude of respect for Jewish law, Halachah, which in many cases is more pronounced than that of the conservatives. I refer to a recent issue of a quarterly journal where a reform Rabbis says that he has come back to believe in resurrection and the personal Messiah – the very first Jewish ideas rejected by Reform. Of course, they still have a very long way to go. But they will come back, provided they have something to return to. If we will not keep the Torah tradition alive, if we will allow the fire to die out, then they will not return. And we will, therefore, be false to past, present and future. 
3. Let us remember that. Our task is to attract as many Jews as possible. But our first and most important duty is to ourselves – to see to it that we become better individuals, more learned and inspired Jews, and more loyal sons of G-d?
4. It was Hillel who said: im ein ani li mi li, if I will not be for myself, who will? But there is a finer translation of that phrase: If I will not be by myself, who will? If I will not exploit the innermost recesses of my soul and find that deeply ingrained Jewishness, that nitzitz eloka mimaal, that divine spark and flame, then no one will ever bring it out for me. 

(If Time permits: 12. Churban Eipora – loss of so many millions an unfathomable tragedy but greater yet is the tragedy of having lost that kind of people…

1. Israel was built by only a few straggling pioneers who hikifah eish…and now too, one fiery worker…more than a thousand silent onlookers who only sympathize with Krechtz.)
2. In the words of Moses to his people before he bade them farewell, words reechoed centuries later when R. Shimon Bar Yochai bade farewell to his people. 

Lo me’rubchem mi’kol ha’amim chashak Ha’shem Ba’Chem va’yivchar ba’chem…

Ki Atem Ha’me’at mi’kol ha’amim….Ki mei’ahavas Ha’shem es’chem,

U’mi’shomro es hashevuah asher nishba La’Avoseichem

God has given us His love and His care not because of our great numbers, because we are a perpetual minority but rather because of avoseichem, because of three solitary individuals who were faithful to the flame which raged in their breasts and with courage and with the courage of their convictions and the warmth of their characters were able to create an entire people loyal to G-d Almighty.