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Through the year
Forty-nine days counted one at a time, kept as a mourning period for reasons the Talmud states bluntly — and one day in the middle of them with bonfires on it.
This year
The Omer count begins the night of
Thursday, April 22, 2027
The second night of Passover. Forty-nine nights, one count each.
Lag BaOmer — the thirty-third day
Tuesday, May 25, 2027
The count ends the night before Shavuot
Thursday, June 10, 2027
The count is said after nightfall, so each numbered day begins the evening before its calendar date. Nightfall for San Jose is on the times page.
On the second night of Passover, a count begins. Every night for forty-nine nights, after dark, a blessing is said and then the day is named out loud: today is such a day, which is so many weeks and so many days of the Omer. On the fiftieth day, Shavuot.
The name comes from an offering. On the second day of Passover, a measure — an omer — of new barley was brought in the Temple, and from that day the wheat harvest was counted off until the first wheat was brought seven weeks later. So the count is agricultural in origin and has been read ever since as something else: the distance between being let out of Egypt and being given something to do about it.
Practically, it is a habit that is very easy to keep and very easy to break. The count must be said at night, and if a full day goes by with no count at all — not at night, not during the following day — the custom is to keep counting on the following nights but without the blessing, because the forty-nine are treated as one continuous unit. Most people who count seriously have lost the blessing at least once. It is not a reason to stop counting.
The Talmud, in Yevamot, records that Rabbi Akiva had twenty-four thousand students, and that they all died in a plague in the period between Passover and Shavuot. It gives the reason without softening it: because they did not treat one another with respect.
That is a startling thing for the tradition to say about the students of its greatest teacher, and it is the reason for the customs. Through the Omer, in most communities:
Which days are observed varies a great deal. Some communities keep the mourning from Passover until Lag BaOmer; others from Rosh Chodesh Iyar until Shavuot; others in other combinations entirely. Chabad custom keeps the mourning through the whole period until the eve of Shavuot, with one exception: haircuts are permitted on Lag BaOmer itself, and the practices resume the day after. If your neighbour is at a wedding on a day you are not, neither of you is wrong.
The historical background most scholars point to is the Bar Kochba revolt, which Rabbi Akiva supported and which was crushed by Rome in the same decades. Whether the students died of a plague or in a war is not something the sources settle. What the tradition chose to remember is the character flaw, not the legionaries.
Lag is not a word. It is the two Hebrew letters lamed and gimmel, thirty and three, read as a syllable. Lag BaOmer is simply the thirty-third day — the eighteenth of Iyar.
On it the mourning lifts. There is no tachanun, no fasting, and no eulogies. Haircuts are permitted. Weddings are held. In Chabad, as noted, the lift is for the day only.
Two traditions account for the day:
A student of Rabbi Akiva, and one of the most quoted voices in the Mishnah. The Talmud tells his story at length: he criticised Roman rule, was sentenced to death, and hid with his son in a cave for thirteen years, buried in sand to the neck, sustained by a carob tree and a spring, studying continuously.
The story does not end where you would expect. When they emerged, their gaze burned up everything ordinary they looked at, and a voice sent them back into the cave for another year to learn how to live with people who plant fields. It is an unusually self-aware story about the cost of pure devotion, and the tradition keeps it.
The Zohar — the central text of Kabbalah — is attributed to him, and its account of his last day describes him revealing the deepest secrets of the Torah while the house filled with light and fire, and the sun refusing to set until he was finished. That is the day Lag BaOmer marks.
In candour: the identification of Lag BaOmer with Rabbi Shimon, and the whole complex of customs around it, is attested in the sources from the sixteenth century onwards, out of the circle of the Arizal in Safed. Saying so does not diminish it. Half of what any tradition consists of is what it decided, at some identifiable moment, to start doing.
It is worth stepping back, because the seven weeks are more coherent than they look. They begin the second night of Passover, when a people has just been let out. They end at Sinai. In between sits a mourning period for scholars who knew everything and did not manage to be decent to each other, and one day of fire in the middle for a man who spent thirteen years in a cave and had to be taught to come out of it.
Both of those are warnings about the same thing, aimed at people on their way to receive a Torah. That is not a coincidence of the calendar; it is the calendar making an argument.
Our Lag BaOmer event — the bonfire, the fire show, and a fair built for children — is on the Lag BaOmer page with the year’s date and park as soon as they are set, and on the calendar.
A count of forty-nine days, one each night, from the second night of Passover to the eve of Shavuot. A blessing is said and then the day is named — “today is the twenty-third day, which is three weeks and two days of the Omer.” The name comes from the omer of barley brought in the Temple on the first of those days.
If you remember during the following day, count then without a blessing and carry on with a blessing from the next night. If a whole day passes with no count at all, you continue counting on subsequent nights but without the blessing, because the count is held to be one continuous unit. Many people miss a day; it is not a reason to stop.
The Talmud records that twenty-four thousand students of Rabbi Akiva died in a plague between Passover and Shavuot, because they did not treat one another with respect. Weddings, haircuts and music are avoided through the period as a result. The specific dates observed vary widely between communities.
It depends on the custom you keep. In many Ashkenazi communities the mourning runs from Passover until Lag BaOmer and then ends. Chabad custom is different: haircuts are permitted on Lag BaOmer itself, and then the mourning practices resume until the eve of Shavuot. If your family does it one way and your neighbour another, both are likely correct.
A second-century sage, a student of Rabbi Akiva, and one of the most frequently quoted voices in the Mishnah. The Talmud tells that he and his son hid in a cave for thirteen years to escape a Roman death sentence, studying throughout. Tradition attributes the Zohar, the foundational text of Kabbalah, to him. He died on Lag BaOmer and asked that the day be marked with joy.
The tradition describes the day of his death as one on which he revealed the deepest secrets of Torah, and the house filled with fire. The bonfires stand for that light. In Meron, where he is buried, hundreds of thousands gather; everywhere else, communities light their own.
From a Talmudic statement that no rainbow appeared during Rabbi Shimon’s lifetime — the rainbow being the sign of God’s promise not to destroy the world, which a generation containing him did not need. The Hebrew word for rainbow and for bow is the same, and children have been handed toy bows on Lag BaOmer ever since.
The bonfire, the fire show and the family fair, when the date is set.
Where the forty-nine days are going, and what happens when they arrive.
The night the count starts.
Where to start with the material Rabbi Shimon is associated with.
Anything on this page that is a question about your situation — a fast you have been told not to keep, a kitchen you are not sure how to handle, a custom your family does differently — is a question for a person, not a page. Ask the Rabbi, or call the office. Nobody will think less of you for asking; the questions on this list are asked every single year.