Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Lag B'Omer & The VA Tech Massacre

כ"ט בניסן תשס"ז

Amazingly, a thread of connection exists between the Virginia Tech massacre and Lag B'Omer.

Lag B'Omer marks the 33rd day of the Omer, when R' Akiva's students stopped dying. The 32 days prior to Lag B'Omer are a time of judgment. Historically, following the time of judgment, when the students stopped dying, R' Akiva began building up a new student body from only 5 students who survived the dying time. 24,000 students of R' Akiva died.

There were 32 deaths, 33 deaths including the shooter, at VA Tech. One of those 32-33 deaths was an Israeli professor, Livui Librescu, a shoah survivor, who died protecting his students during the dying time - unlike R' Akiva, whose students died while he survived the dying time. The number of deaths ends at 33 - like Lag B'Omer.

Perhaps Livui Librescu, in some manner, is the tikun of R' Akiva. Thousands of Akiva's students died. Livui's students lived - all of them. Professor Librescu rescued all his students.

Tonight, Tuesday evening, April 17, we count fifteen days, which is two weeks and one day of the Omer.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Liorah,

This is an amazing connection. I found myself wondering what this incident meant - what did it signify? Thank you for shedding light on it.

Just A Question:
I've got several blog projects now that I'm pretty excited about. One of them is a personal study on the 72 names (which will probably take me the rest of my life to complete). I have a few hardcover sources, but the majority I've been using are online. I was wondering if you could give me the names of a few in-depth sources that you think might be useful.

Thanks, Liorah. And take care.

Lori said...

Shalom Tsefiya,

I'm sorry. I've not studied the 72 names. You might find some helpful information among my kabbalah links.

Anonymous said...

Come on. Are you kidding? Professor Librescu rescued all his students.

Fine look for things in the scripture and the text but finding none-scripture based none-lingually connected deeper meanings...please. Why can't this just be part of the evil that is in the world? More divine sparks to pick up? Wow.

Lori said...

No, I'm not kidding. The data is real and the hypothesis possible.

Dare to be true to yourself.