Weeks of Semi-Mourning, and Their Lifting

The Omer period acquired over time a solemn, semi-mourning character. Jewish tradition records that a plague killed thousands of the disciples of the second-century sage Rabbi Akiva during these weeks, and in memory of this and other calamities the period is observed with restraint: many refrain from weddings, celebrations, haircuts and music for much or all of the count. The exact span of these restrictions varies by community and custom.

The mood lifts on the thirty-third day of the count, Lag BaOmer, on which the mourning practices are suspended and the day kept as a minor festival, associated in later tradition with the mystic Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and celebrated with bonfires, outings and weddings. The Kabbalistic tradition further enriched the counting by associating each of the forty-nine days with a particular combination of the divine emanations, the sefirot, turning the count into a daily meditation on the refinement of one's own qualities. In these layers, agricultural, historical, penitential and mystical, the simple nightly counting gathers much of the texture of Jewish spiritual life.