Many years ago, I sat in my zaide’s sukkah and he was visibly disturbed. A talmid chochom, a brilliant orator and scholar, had cast aspersions on the sanctity of Hoshanah Rabbah, postulating that he had a problem with the fact that it was considered to be a Yom Hadin. He had posed what seemed, on the surface, to be a perfectly reasonable question: If Hoshanah Rabbah is such a profound Yom Hadin, a day whose sanctity arguably transcends even Chol Hamoed, why is there virtually no mention of it in the Shulchan Aruch?

My zaide was not merely troubled by the question itself. He was troubled by who had heard it. Young men had been listening. Impressionable young men. And he feared, perhaps rightly so, that a question posed cleverly enough, without a satisfying answer, can lodge itself in the heart and quietly erode what generations of Yidden had accepted as sacred. He devoted enormous energy to formulating a response, ultimately offering what I can only describe as a masterful explanation for why the depth and power of Hoshanah Rabbah had been preserved in the writings of Chazal in the Mishnah, the Gemara, and the Medrash rather than codified openly in the later halachic literature. The details of his answer are not for this column and are found in his sefer, Emes L’Yaakov. But the lesson of his consternation with the supposition most certainly is.

That memory came rushing back to me when I recalled my only trip to Meron on Lag Ba’omer some fifty years ago. Before boarding that bus out of Ponovezh — sneaking out, really, probably along with scores of other bochurim who quietly ignored the protestations of the roshei yeshiva — (half) Litvak that I am, I had searched, at least half searched, for a source for this great pilgrimage.

A Mishnah. A Gemara. A Gaon. A Rishon. Even a line in the Shulchan Aruch or the Rama that would explain why hundreds of thousands of Yidden make a pilgrimage to the kever of Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai on this day. The only reference I could find in the Shulchan Aruch was an offhand mention that “they say,” omrim, that the talmidim of Rabi Akiva stopped dying on Lag Ba’omer, and that we therefore increase “ketzas simcha,” a bit of joy, on that day.

Ketzas simcha. A bit of joy. That’s all.

And yet.

My chavrusa, who had Chassidishe leanings and was practically levitating with anticipation, and I found ourselves on a school bus with neither air conditioning nor functioning shock absorbers, bouncing over unpaved roads in the dark. (Remember, 50 years ago, coach buses were not the standard fare, and the roads to Meron were hardly paved.) I felt, at certain points, like someone being escorted by Meron prison authority to a holding facility somewhere in northern Israel. By the time we arrived — more than four hours later, thoroughly battered — hundreds, perhaps thousands, had already come before us, many with animals in tow and musical instruments of every variety, tents already pitched, bonfires already blazing. (I do not think that it was the tens of thousands who would ultimately fill the landscape decades later, but even in 1976, the numbers were staggering.)

The culture shock was real. This was not Bnei Brak. It certainly was not Long Island. This was not anything I had grown up with in America. And yet, I will never forget it.

When I made it to the top of that mountain, I saw tzaddikim huddled near the tziyun, reciting Tehillim, immersed in the sacred words of the Zohar. And below were children with angelic faces about to receive their first haircuts from men with long white beards and equally angelic countenances. Whatever confusion I felt about the halachic underpinnings of the event dissolved in that glow. There are moments that speak to something deeper than clear written sources. This was one of them.

I have not returned to Meron on Lag Ba’omer since. But I know that whatever I witnessed then has grown geometrically in the decades since in holiness, in numbers, in the sheer spiritual weight of so many Yidden gathering in one place.

And then came the tragedy.

On Lag Ba’omer of 5781, forty-five Yidden, precious neshamos, fathers and sons, bochurim and young men, were killed in a crush on that very mountain. The world was stunned. Klal Yisroel was devastated. How does one process such a thing? How does one reconcile the sacred with the shattering?

I do not pretend to have the answers. I do not know why the Ribbono Shel Olam allowed such a thing to happen on such a day at such a place. But I will say this: The tragedy did not diminish the holiness. It deepened the weight of our obligation to approach it with the gravity it deserves.

And now, this year, we face yet another dimension of pain. The celebration at Meron has been significantly curtailed, not because of bureaucratic indifference, and not because of any diminished reverence for Rabi Shimon, but because of missiles. Because enemies of the Jewish people are once again threatening our lives, and gathering hundreds of thousands on a mountaintop in the north of Eretz Yisroel presents a genuine danger that cannot be dismissed. For those who have made this pilgrimage every year, for whom Lag Ba’omer at Meron is a spiritual lifeline, this restriction is painful in ways that are genuinely hard to articulate.

I understand that pain. I share it. Maybe the greater the holiness, the more attempts there are to impede, even diminish it.

Indeed, there are those who pondered, like I once did: Where is the source? Where is it in the Shulchan Aruch? If it isn’t cited clearly, can it truly be sacred — assuming that what cannot be footnoted cannot be holy?

My zaide taught me otherwise. Klal Yisroel does not fabricate kedusha. When millions of Yidden across centuries converge on a single place with tears and fire and song and tefillah, something real is happening. Just as there is no rational explanation for the survival of the Jewish people — a tiny nation that has outlasted every empire that sought to destroy it — there is no rational explanation for how Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai and his son, hiding for years in a cave, emerged not broken but luminous, pouring forth the sacred secrets of creation that sustain us to this day.

Rational explanations are not always the currency of eternity.

The period of Sefiras Ha’omer carries within it a particular grief that has echoed across our history. The deaths of twenty-four thousand talmidim of Rabi Akiva. The Crusades. The pogroms. The Inquisition. The Holocaust. This period has been drenched in Jewish blood and Jewish sorrow for two thousand years. Lag Ba’omer is the moment within that darkness when the dying stopped, when five remaining talmidim went on to transmit the Torah that sustains us. It is not a footnote in history. It was the footsteps of our future. It is a lifeline.

Perhaps that is precisely why Klal Yisroel, across centuries and continents and cultures, has clung to it. Not because of a clear articulation in Torah Shebiksav. Not even in Torah Shebaal Peh. Without an open Gemara or a Shulchan Aruch, they come. And if they can’t come, they yearn. Even cry. Because the Jewish soul recognizes something that the Jewish mind cannot always articulate.

This year, the bonfire at Meron will burn smaller. The crowds will be thinner. The music will be quieter. And somewhere in the distance, there may be the sound of sirens.

But Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai is still there. And Klal Yisroel, in whatever way it can, will find a way to connect. I may not be able to explain it. But I most certainly revere it. And I cherish all those who long for it.

Just saying.