[Avodah] Why we mourn during the omer Model" in New Jersey: Rabbi Aaron Kotler

[Chana Luntz]

RMB writes:
The first two se'ifim in the Arukh haShulchan mention two reasons:
talmidei R' Aqiva and the Crusades.

But I think one can go earlier.
The omer is a special time in Avodas BHMQ. But unlike other times when there
are special qorbanos, there is no issur aveilus. The omer is the one time we
are permitted to mourn the loss of a special qorban.
And then, a generation after losing the BHMQ to sin'as chinam, R Aqiva
rebiulds talmud Torah. But we hadn't learned enough. The students aren't
guilty of outright sin'as chinam, but they still lacked kavod.
A period when people were already feeling the absence of the joy of the
qorban omer became a period when they had to face the truth that they
weren't ready yet.
The death of talmidei R Aqiva stirred all that up again.
It wasn't "just" the death of 24,000 of the best and the brightest. It was
the death of the hope they brought.>>

It depends on the extent to which you privilege the Shulchan Aruch (and the
Tur on which the Shulchan Aruch is based) over other sources, and your own
sense of things.  Because both the Shulchan Aruch and the Tur say explicitly
that the reason we do not marry between Pesach and Asseres until Lag B'Omer
is because of the death of Rabbi Akiva's students.   They do not discuss the
hope at all.

Regarding the other minhag mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch and the Tur, that
of abstaining from work from shkia during sefira - the Tur gives two reasons
(and the Shulchan Aruch does not give any).  The first because the talmidim
died close to shkia, and so they stopped work to bury them, and the second
because of counting the omer, but neither gives the cessation of the mitzvah
of the korban omer as a reason for the lack of weddings.

The Aruch HaShulchan, as you say, adds the crusades, and brings as his proof
text the piyutim that were added on the Shabbasim between Pesach and
Shavuos, and says there were other reasons why these days are to be
considered yamai din.

But still, surely it is fair to say that, given the prominence of this
reason in the Shulchan Aruch, that this is the ikar reason, and that what
the Aruch HaShulchan is doing is, as he says giving "v'od" reasons.  And
while that would not seem to discourage you giving yet further "v'od"
reasons, I do not think the Aruch HaShulchan was coming to undermine the
ikar reason, and it is noteworthy that he added in specifically that they
died of plague (not mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch or the Tur), but does
not mention the death of hope.  And, interestingly, the Aruch Hashulchan
attributes the minhag of not marrying during sefira to the period of the
Geonim.  Which has to be the case, as otherwise this minhag would be
mentioned in the Talmud itself, and might even be a halacha, not a minhag.
But the point that makes is that, at the time the minhag arose, we know the
rest of the story.  Rabbi Akiva renewed his efforts, and the Talmud we all
learn is the result.  By the time the minhag came into existence, they knew
that hope was not dead, and the Torah was not dead.  But nevertheless so
many talmidim dying was a huge tragedy.

And this is where, while not sure I understand  RJR's question regarding
minyanim - I do think regarding weddings his comment that "Those who view
halacha as primarily chukim(positivist?) and so any clever
"workaround/loophole" will do" is appropriate, when considering those who
are working so hard to find workarounds and loopholes to enable weddings in
the middle of a pandemic.  It is appropriate to diminish simcha during yamei
sefira due to the deaths of Rabbi Akiva's talmidim, as the Tur explains.  Is
it therefore not appropriate to diminish simcha when so many of our people
are dying?  I think somebody told me that in Brooklyn the week after Pesach
there were over a thousand aveilim sitting shiva.  I am not saying that this
is something that should be kept from year to year.  But when the yamei din
are playing out in front of our eyes, it seems to me inappropriate to be
working desperately hard to find workarounds and loopholes in the government
guidance to enable davka weddings.  Because again as the Tur puts it "davka
marriage as it is the ikar simcha"

>-Micha

Regards

Chana