Lag BaOmer - April 30, 2002

Editor's note:

This week we bring you two first-hand reports from Israel, from two perspectives: In Esther's Smile, Jay Litvin experiences grief, anger, vengeance, faith, commitment and determination in a heavily armed afternoon on a rugged hillside in the beautiful Samarian countryside...

...and in Jenin War Diary, Sergeant Major Rami Meir gives us a participant's account of the effort to capture Esther's murderer and the murderers of hundreds of other Jews in recent months, and tells the truth of what really happened in the Jenin refugee camp...

Also in this week's issue: Tzvi Freeman is asked: If G-d knows best, what's the point of praying? ... Yanki Tauber tells a story involving a king, a peasant, and a nightingale... Father of 14 Yaakov Lieder offers some parenting advice... Lag BaOmer, which celebrates the emergence of Jewish Mysticism from the womb of secrecy and exclusivity, is celebrated with bonfires, bows and arrows, and studies of the lives and teachings of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai...

We also take a look at the week's double Torah reading of Behar-Bechukotai (Leviticus 25:1-27:34), browse through the commentary on its chapters from sages and mystics from Moses to today, and explore the writings of the Chassidic Masters on the Shemittah and Jubilee cycles, the cosmic meaning of "usury", the dynamics of reward and punishment, the evolution of evil and the evaluation of value.