[Avodah] Um,...Hello?! RaShB"I Didn't Die on Lag b'Omer

[Zev Sero]

On 7/05/2012 10:55 PM, T613K at aol.com wrote:
> Rabi Ovadyah of Bartinora writes in a letter to his brother in the year 5149 (1389):  "On the eighteenth of Iyar, the day of his death, people come from all the surrounding areas and they kindle large torches...."

Apparently this is a mis-transcription, and the original says the 28th,
and refers to Kever Shmuel Hanavi north of Yerushalayim, not Kever Rashbi
in Meron, which was unknown in the Bartenura's day.


On 8/05/2012 3:27 AM, Ezra Chwat wrote:
> BIH: in Rav Paalim 11.
> Casts doubt on printed version of Pri Etz Haim "yom Shemet". Doubts are
> substantiated by ms Oxford 1760 and NLI 6720: "Yom simhat".

Yes, but what is that simcha?

> The life-changing, ecstatic experience Hilulah D'Rashbi (Idra Zuta,
> Talmud Bavli Ktuvot 62b) has no date attached to it.

But the PEH (the correct version) says that Lag Ba'omer is "yom simchat
Rashbi", and that he was angry when someone said Nachem on it.  Therefore
we now know when the Hilulah took place.  Unless you want to posit some
other event in his life, which is completely unknown to us, but that was
*more* significant to him than this one.  Occam's razor is enough to pour
cold water on that idea.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon