Rabbi Zvika Krieger, Chochmat HaLev

May 16, 2025

Today we are celebrating the waning hours of Lag B’Omer, a Jewish holiday that has many layers of historical and spiritual meaning. The name references the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, the 49-day journey from slavery in Egypt to the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. The Jewish mystics see these 49 days as a journey of spiritual ascent for us today, of deep inner work to move from a place of oppression and constriction to a place where we are open and ready for direct experience of the Divine. Today is the 33rd day of that journey – in Hebrew numerology, Lamed Gimel, pronounced Lag. Hence Lag B’Omer.

There are a number of historical events that our tradition claims occurred on Lag B’Omer. One feels particularly relevant to our current historical moment.

Based on a passage in the Talmud, the medieval sages teach that today, Lag B’Omer, marked the end of a plague that killed 12,000 pairs of students of Rabbi Akiva, an illiterate shepherd who started studying Torah at age 40 and eventually became the leading sage of his generation. The Talmud, the corpus of early rabbinic wisdom, reports that all of his students died “mipnei she-lo nahagu kavod zeh la-zeh – because they did not treat each other with respect.”

Many traditional commentators posit theories or traditions for why Rebbe Akiva’s students were punished: They were jealous of each other and cast the evil eye. They were arrogant and haughty. They sought power and influence. They were mean-spirited in their critiques. They refused to have empathy for other perspectives.

It feels uncomfortably familiar to the world in which we are currently living, where civil discourse has all but disappeared. Where every statement is interpreted in the most uncharitable light. Where different parts of America seem to be different planets, let alone the same country. Where families and dinner tables are torn apart over the faintest discussion of politics. Where condemning the starvation of children in Gaza is seen as betrayal of our siblings in Israel. “שלא נהגו כבוד זה בזה” ”they did not treat each other with respect” – we know what that’s like.

I could offer a teaching tonight about how we need to find common ground, how we all need to be nicer to each other and get along, less arguing, less fighting, kumbaya. But let’s look a little deeper into this story to see if it might have something else to teach us.

This Talmud’s explanation for the death of Rebbe Akiva’s students is particularly unsettling when we consider they were students of the very teacher who declared:
“ואהבת לרעך כמוך – זה כלל גדול בתורה”
“Love your neighbor as yourself—that is the great principle of Torah.”

How could students of such a master fail in this foundational spiritual ethic? We’ve certainly seen great Torah scholars or spiritual leaders fall short when it comes to practicing what they preach. But all 24,000 of them?

Rabbi Shmuel Borenstein, the Hassidic mystic known as the Sochatchover Rebbe, offers a seemingly counterintuitive answer. He argues that actually Rebbe Akiva’s students were the paradigm of unity – כאיש אחד בלב, like one person with one heart. And you might think this kind of uniformity is the utmost sign of kavod, of respect. But the Sochatchover Rebbe argues the opposite:

אבל באמת אינו כן
This is not the truth
שהרי כל צדיק וצדיק יש לו מדור בפני עצמו
Rather, each and every righteous person has their own place,
ואינו דומה לאדם אחד
and they are not like one person.

According to the Sochatchover Rebbe, papering over our differences or submitting to ideological uniformity was what defined these students as לא נהגו כבוד, this was their behavior of disrespect.

Rebbe Akiva is perhaps Judaism’s greatest champion of love – but the Sochatchover Rebbe differentiates between love and respect. Love, he argues, is about commonality – something that makes individuals feel connected to each other. Rebbe Akiva’s students followed his example – but perhaps to a fault.

Respect, on the other hand, emerges not from commonality, but the reverse; as Rabbi Benjamin Yudin teaches, it’s when we notice the unique features that mark someone’s individuality and admire these positive traits. In order for respect to emerge and prevail, we have to note how a person is different. The students of Rabbi Akiva over-indexed on their teacher’s love, but at the cost of the respect that comes from generative disagreement.

Throughout Jewish tradition, we are reminded that disagreement – when done with the right intention – is a sacred act, even an obligation. Through conflict, we’re able to continue the Divine act of creation. As taught by Rebbe Nahman of Breslov, the radical Hassidic mystic and great grandson of Hassidism’s founder, the Baal Shem Tov: “Know that conflict is a kind of Creation. For if all people agreed about everything, there would be no space for new worlds to be created. However, as a result of their disputes, with each one withdrawing to a different side [of an issue], space is opened between them. In this space new worlds can come into being.”

Pirkei Avot, the compendium of ancient rabbinic wisdom known as Ethics of our Ancestors, introduces the concept of Makhloket l’ Shaim Shamayim – disagreement for the sake of heaven. The prime example of this, according to Pirkei Avot, is Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, two dueling study houses who argued vociferously about basically everything, but from a place of friendship and mutual respect. The Talmud specifies that they showed restraint when affronted and assumed the best intentions in each other – נּוֹחִין וַעֲלוּבִין הָיוּ. They always engaged with the most compelling version of the other’s argument. And even when they disagreed about marriage laws, they still considered each other’s marriages to be valid and allowed their families to marry each other.

I love this quote from the Tosefta, one of the earliest collections of rabbinic teachings, which says, עשה לבך חדרי חדרים, “Make for yourself a heart of many rooms, and enter into it the words of Beit Shammai and the words of Beit Hillel.”

The Talmud offers another paradigm of this generative disagreement: Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, who would offer twenty-four challenges to every point made by his study partner, Reb Yochanan. After Rabbi Shimon died, Reb Yochanan found a new study partner who only affirmed his opinions. Reb Yochanan became so distraught by this unhelpful uniformity that he would walk the study hall tearing his clothes, shouting, “Where are you Rabbi Shimon? Where are you Rabbi Shimon?”

So if we listen to Sochatchover Rebbe, and Hillel and Shammai, and Reb Yochanan, what we need is not less arguing – we need more arguing. Or perhaps more accurately, we need better arguing.

I honor the Chochmat members who have been in our Israel-Palestine dialogue groups over the past year and a half, led by our wise-hearted Community Weaver Brittany Berman, who have been doing the hard work of sitting in circle specifically with those who you disagree with, sitting with your discomfort, your pain, your outrage, your despair. Noticing your judgements, your projections, your wounds, your stories. And choosing to stay in connection.

I honor all of you who have been doing that in your own way over the past year and a half. Who have been with us on this journey since October 7. A handful of people have left Chochmat because they want to be in community only with those who agree with them. I understand that instinct, especially when just walking down the street here in Berkeley can feel like an ideological battlefield. This spiritual practice of noheg kavod, showing respect through disagreement, is not for everyone. But I’m grateful for those of you who have chosen to stay and make Chochmat HaLev a לב חדרי חדרים – a heart of many chambers.

Disagreement is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. We respect each other enough to be real, to share our differences. If you see a respectful argument happening on our list-serve or on the sidelines of an oneg, I invite you to smile and take pride in knowing that you are part of a community that engages in this essential Jewish spiritual practice. As Rebbe Nahman teaches, conflict creates the space of possibility, and in that space, new worlds can be born.

I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and think of a time when you felt truly seen by someone else, not because they agreed with you, but because they recognized and respected how you were different. Think of a time when someone disagreed with you, and it made you feel more respected by them, perhaps even more connected to them. And if you can’t think of a story like that, notice how it feels to have not had that experience, and what that brings up for you.

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After Rebbe Akiva’s students died, he retreated to the south of Israel and started all over again with five new students. Among them was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the famous protagonist of the Zohar, the core text of Jewish mysticism, known as Rashbi by his acronym.

The Zohar shares this seminal teaching from Rashbi:

“ברחמים יתנהג עלמא”
“The world is sustained by compassion.”

Rashbi introduces a third ingredient into this balance between love and respect – compassion. This work can be hard. There may be times when you get so fed up or triggered or frustrated, when you just want to retreat to places of comfort and affinity and familiarity. That’s okay. You don’t have to be in the churn all the time. Find compassion – for others, and for yourself.

Rashbi is said to have died on Lag B’Omer – and we light bonfires in his memory to symbolize the light he brought into the world. So as we sit around the bonfire tonight in the courtyard, singing songs and sharing stories led by Rabbi Dan, let’s remember Rashbi’s teaching about compassion, and honor the ways in which we are all showing up the best that we can. “ברחמים יתנהג עלמא, Our world is sustained by compassion.”

Let’s end with a poem by the Israeli writer Yehuda Amichai, which I share as a prayer for all of us:

Listen
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.