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Tikkunin for Lag Ba-Omer arranged by R. Jacob ben Joseph Anhori. The title page has a decorative frame with text outlining the benefits of this volume. The title page is dated “And she saw ותרא (607=1847) that he was good” (Exodus 2:2). The text is in a single column in rabbinic type, excepting headers and initial words. It is followed by a page warning against reprinting the volume for five years. Several names, presumably of a prior owner (s), are written in block letters on this page. Next is a very brief rendition of the order of prayers for Lag Ba-Omer. The text on 3a opens with the praise of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, who is a spark of our teacher Moses, from the Zohar Hodesh Midrash Ruth and discusses related subjects. From 18a begins additional material on the praise of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai in a serious of brief paragraphs beginning either Rabbi Shimon, Shimon, or Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. From 23b are piyyutum, beginning with the piyyut Bar Yohai.
Hillula (festivity), originally referring to a wedding celebration (cf. Ber. 30b–31a), now most often refers to the anniversary of the death of famous rabbis and scholars, occasions often celebrated by popular pilgrimages and rejoicings. According to a late homiletic interpretation (Moses Alsheikh on Job 30:23) the death of a saintly man is a kind of mystical marriage of his soul with God. The most famous of these public hillula celebrations take place on Lag ba-Omer, the traditional anniversary of the death of R. Shimon bar Yohai, in Meron. It originated in the 16th–17th centuries. As early as in the time of R. Isaac Luria (16th century) Jews went on Lag ba-Omer to the traditional graves of R. Shimon bar Yohai and his son R. Eleazar, where they would eat, drink, and be merry. Even R. Luria himself “brought his small son there together with his whole family and they cut his hair there according to the well-known custom and they spent a day of feasting and celebration” (R. Hayyim Vital, Sha'ar ha-Kavvanot, 2 (1963), 191). The “kindling” is characteristic of the hillula in Meron, where the celebrants threw costly garments and money into the burning oil. At the end of the 19th century the rabbis were still strongly protesting the burning of clothes, which they saw as a transgression against the prohibition of purposeless waste, but to no avail. The “kindling” is accompanied by singing and ecstatic dancing. On the next day is the ceremony in which young boys are given their first haircut. The locks of hair are also thrown in the fire. In Israel great numbers from the various communities make the pilgrimage to Meron. |
