L’aG B’Omer: Day 33, of 5784, and Hope via Language Learning

I’m usually not a big one for celebrating Lag BaOmer, just because it is not much of a holiday in the diaspora, although I am glad that the plague stopped, which is what I was taught is the cause of this celebration. I think it does help break up the count, just a little bit, and may give an excuse for singing/reading the full Hallel! 🙂

This Day starts on Motzei Shabbat, Saturday night, when we also start to think about diving into the week’s parashah. This week will be Parashat Bechukotai, which is usually doubled up with last week’s parashah, Parashat B’har, so at least this year (5784) will be a bit easier for Torah readers, as it must be a leap year. We finish up the reading, in six more days, of the book of VaYikra/Leviticus with blessings and curses, or the carrot and the stick, for following the Torah. In fact, once can almost see this day of the Omer in the same light. The ending of a plague among the students of a famous rabbi, R. Akiva. He was one of the famous ten rabbis killed hideously by the Romans after one of the numerous Jewish rebellions. I think it was the last one, the Bar Kochba rebellion. That doesn’t seem to leave much room for hope, but I think we need to look in a slightly different direction from mere obedience or punishment. The Rule of Law is not about punishment, to me, as that is not a sustainable way of upholding a society. When we have buy-in and agreement on the laws, which must be both passed and enforced in a just and equitable fashion, a society has a better chance of working more harmoniously. That is one of the benefits of a functioning republic, when a republic is run reasonably smoothly, such as the Nordic countries tend to show most years, on various measures of democracy and happiness reports. Those reports try, more and more, to measure both economic and social indicators of welfare in various nations around the world. That is where the importance of learning several languages ties in with hope for the future of humanity. Esperanto is one of the most promising languages, especially for the European Union, due to the ease of learning and specific design of Esperanto for speakers of all of the various Indo-European language families. Learning Esperanto is always free via the Lernu dot net website and phone app, and the Teoria Nakamura lesson set is very a pleasant way to learn a language while being a highly entertaining story, at the same time!

Give it a try and let us know here what you think, Fellow Language Learners!

In Hope,

ShiraDest