Bar Yohai

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was a tanna who lived and taught in the Land of Israel during the second century CE. He is classified within the fifth generation of the Tannaim and is generally dated to approximately 135–170 CE.[1] He is frequently cited in the Talmud under the names Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai or simply Rabbi Shimon.[2] Little is known about his life with certainty, and the Talmudic accounts of him are intertwined with legend.[3]

Shimon bar Yochai was one of Rabbi Akiva's five chief disciples who continued teaching Torah after the deaths of 24,000 of Akiva's students.[2] After Rabbi Akiva was martyred by the Romans, Shimon publicly opposed Roman rule in Judea.[3] The Talmudic narrative records that he criticized Roman marketplaces, bathhouses, and bridges as serving Roman self-interest — remarks that led the authorities to sentence him to death.[2][4] He then fled with his son Rabbi Elazar, taking shelter first in a study hall before retreating to a cave, where, according to tradition, a carob tree and a spring of water miraculously sustained them.[2]

Some sources summarize their time in hiding as thirteen years in all, while the Talmudic narrative recounts an initial twelve years followed by an additional year after they first emerged.[1][2] During the initial period, Shimon and his son devoted themselves to Torah study, immersing themselves in sand up to their necks as they learned.[4] When they emerged after Elijah the Prophet reportedly announced that the Roman emperor had died, Shimon's anger at people engaged in ordinary labor caused whatever he looked upon to burn. A heavenly voice instructed them to return to the cave, and they emerged again after another year with a changed outlook.[2][5] Shimon subsequently established an academy whose students included Judah ha-Nasi, the later redactor of the Mishnah.[3]

In Jewish law, Shimon bar Yochai rejected some methods of deriving laws from additional words in the Torah and favored interpretation based on the text's plain meaning and the reasons underlying the commandments.[1] He also understood the Torah as possessing a hidden, mystical dimension alongside its plain meaning.[1] Another tradition states that the Sanhedrin sent Shimon as an emissary to Rome, where he succeeded in having several restrictions on Jewish religious observance lifted.[3]

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's most consequential legacy is his traditional association with the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah.[2][6] The traditional view holds that he wrote the work during or shortly after his years of hiding in the cave.[7] His association with the Zohar and with Lag BaOmer has shaped Jewish mystical and devotional traditions for centuries.[1]

According to tradition, Shimon bar Yochai died on Lag BaOmer — the thirty-third day of the Omer — and instructed his students to mark the anniversary of his death as a day of joy.[8] He is traditionally said to be buried at Meron in the Galilee with his son Elazar.[1] The site became one of the largest Jewish pilgrimage destinations, drawing celebrants who light bonfires, dance, sing, and perform the upsheren ceremony of giving three-year-old boys their first haircuts.[2] In 2021, a stampede outside the tomb killed forty-five people.[9]

Lag BaOmer is also traditionally linked to the end of the deaths among Rabbi Akiva's 24,000 students. Some modern accounts connect it with the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt, although other reporting rejects a direct connection between that revolt and the observance associated with Rabbi Shimon.[10][11]

"Bar Yohai" is also the name of a celebrated liturgical poem, or piyyut, attributed to Rabbi Shimon Lavi, also called Rabbi Shimon ibn Lavi.[12] The poem praises the tanna Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, with its stanzas organized around the mystical structure of the ten sefirot of Kabbalah.[12] It was first printed in the book Imrei Binah, published in Prague in 1611, although it was already known in the Land of Israel before that publication.[12]

The poem has been translated into Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, and Persian, and it is sung across a wide range of Jewish communities in both Western and Eastern traditions.[12] Depending on the community, it is performed on Friday night — either in the synagogue or during the Sabbath meal — and on Lag BaOmer.[12]

It is regarded as one of the best-known piyyutim in Israel and as Rabbi Shimon Lavi's most famous composition. It became a model for later poems praising Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai or other Jewish saints and particularly influenced the North African tradition of piyyutim structured around the ten sefirot.[12]

Bar Yohay (Hebrew: בר יוחאי; locality code 1191) is a small community in Israel's Northern District, located in the Safed subdistrict and affiliated with the Merom Galil Regional Council.[13] It was established in 1979 and is situated near Mount Meron and the traditional tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.[13][11] The locality takes its name from the popular shortened form "Bar Yohai" for Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai. Earlier rabbinic sources call the sage "Shimon ben Yohai," while the shortened form first appears in the Zohar and later became popular.[11]

In 2022, Bar Yohay had a total population of 1,092. The statistical file recorded 1,092 Jews and no separately recorded Arab population.[13] The Merom Galil Regional Council comprises 24 settlements covering approximately 200,000 dunams and had around 15,400 residents at the time of a 2020 council profile.[14] Communities listed with Bar Yohai in the council include Meron, Or HaGanuz, Avivim, Dalton, Kfar Hoshen, Alma, and Rehaniya.[15]

The community's proximity to Mount Meron makes it directly subject to the large-scale Lag BaOmer pilgrimage. During the 2025 pilgrimage, residents reported significant movement restrictions. Ben Shakir, identified as a Bar Yohai resident and Merom Galil council member, said residents were limited to two passages into and out of the settlement per day and could effectively be confined for up to 48 hours.[16] In June 2026, the Israeli government announced that Bar Yohai would be included among nine additional northern settlements designated as part of the "confrontation line" area, making it eligible for benefits and assistance provided to communities with that status.[17]

Several aspects of the Bar Yohai tradition rest on religious belief or later literary attribution rather than independently established history. The attribution of the Zohar to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is the most significant: modern critical scholarship generally attributes the work primarily to Moses de León, a thirteenth-century Spanish mystic who presented its teachings as a tradition associated with Rabbi Shimon.[6][2] Mosaic notes that this scholarly conclusion is rejected by pious believers.[18] The Jewish Virtual Library records additional scholarly proposals that the Zohar was composed by a circle of mystics, by multiple authors, or through later editorial assembly rather than by a single individual.[7]

The identification of Lag BaOmer as the date of Rabbi Shimon's death is itself a later tradition. Ynet notes that the date is not given in the Talmudic or Zoharic accounts of his death and appears explicitly only in sources from the past five centuries.[11] The identification of his tomb at Meron is likewise traditional rather than archaeologically established. The Jewish Review of Books cites historian Elchanan Reiner's argument that Meron became associated with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai more than a millennium after his death, making the identification of the actual burial place historically uncertain.[9] The cave narrative is also drawn from rabbinic and later legendary sources; some accounts summarize the period as thirteen years, while others distinguish an initial twelve-year stay from the additional year after his first emergence.[2][1]

Regarding the piyyut, the National Library of Israel notes a hypothesis by Yehuda Liebes that two distinct figures — Shimon ibn Lavi, the author of "Bar Yohai," and a younger Shimon Lavi, the author of Ketem Paz — may have been conflated in the tradition. The National Library continues to treat them as one person and explicitly characterizes Liebes's proposal as a hypothesis.[12]