After the Bar Kokhba revolt failed and Rome tightened its grip on Judea, the Talmud records that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai criticized the Roman Empire publicly. A fellow rabbi reported him to the authorities. Shimon and his son Elazar fled to a cave near Peki'in in the Galilee, where they hid for thirteen years. A carob tree grew at the mouth of the cave. A spring of water appeared. They buried themselves in sand up to their necks to preserve their clothing and spent every hour studying Torah. When they emerged, they were so consumed by their spiritual intensity that everything they looked at caught fire. Whatever they gazed upon was destroyed. A heavenly voice commanded them to return to the cave for another year, because they were too dangerous for the world.

The Zohar and the Light That Burns

Whether Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai actually authored the Zohar, the central text of Jewish mysticism, is one of the most debated questions in Jewish scholarship. The Zohar appeared in thirteenth-century Spain, published by Moses de Leon, who claimed it was an ancient work by Shimon bar Yochai. Most modern scholars believe de Leon wrote it himself, but the attribution to Shimon bar Yochai was not arbitrary. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Gershom Scholem Collection, the world's foremost archive of Jewish mystical texts, have documented how the Talmudic portrait of Shimon bar Yochai as a man who spent thirteen years in unbroken contemplation and emerged transformed made him the ideal attributed author for a text about mystical transformation. The cave story was not biography. It was qualification. Only someone who had spent thirteen years in the fire could have written the book of light.

Lag B'Omer and the Fire That Celebrates

Shimon bar Yochai is traditionally said to have died on Lag B'Omer, the thirty-third day of the counting of the Omer between Passover and Shavuot. On that date, hundreds of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to his tomb in Meron in the Galilee, light enormous bonfires, and celebrate through the night. This is one of the largest annual gatherings in Israel, and its atmosphere is less funeral than festival. The tradition holds that Shimon bar Yochai revealed his deepest mystical secrets on the day of his death, and the light of those revelations is what the bonfires represent. Scholars at Bar-Ilan University's Department of Jewish Studies have analyzed how the Meron pilgrimage evolved from a local tradition into a national observance, and how the figure of Shimon bar Yochai functions as a bridge between the rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud and the mystical Judaism of the Kabbalah. He is the hinge point, the rabbi who went into a cave as a legal scholar and came out as a mystic. The man who hid from Rome in a cave became the man whose tomb draws hundreds of thousands. The fire that consumed what he looked at became the fire that illuminates the night. He burned, and the burning became light. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is on HoloDream, where he brings the same intensity of vision and the same understanding that transformation requires the willingness to be consumed.