A Moment That Took Years to Understand
Many years ago, when I first began studying Kabbalah, I had an experience that completely unsettled me—and only made sense much later. I walked into the learning center of a great Kabbalistic master. The room was packed, so I assumed there must be some kind of public gathering and quietly stepped inside.
In the middle of teaching, he suddenly stopped. He looked straight at me, pointed in my direction, and motioned for me to come forward. My heart was pounding. I had heard that these masters could see right through a person, and I didn’t know what to expect. When I approached, he held out an apple in his hand.
Naturally, I reached out to take it.
The entire crowd shouted: no.
I pulled my hand back, confused. He offered the apple again. I tried again—same reaction. Again, the crowd protested. Only then did I notice people signaling to me to hold my hands under the apple. I did that. This time, he gently dropped it into my hands.
He leaned in close and said to me quietly, almost sharply: “What have you been learning?”
And then he walked away.
Don’t Take—Receive
It took me years to understand what just happened. He wasn’t giving me an apple—he was revealing something about how I was living.
Don’t take—receive.
That’s actually the root of the word Kabbalah itself. Lekabel means to receive. Not to grab, not to control, not to extract something for yourself—but to receive what is being given.
When you take something, you make it about you. You assert ownership. You separate yourself from everything else and end up alone with what you’ve taken. But when you receive something, you recognize that it’s being given. That means there’s a giver. And that changes everything—it creates a relationship.
Life Is Being Given to You
This isn’t just a mystical idea—it’s how reality actually works. The Torah says, “מָה ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ” — “What does Hashem ask of you?” (Deuteronomy 10:12). Life is not just something I have; it’s something being asked of me, something being given to me in every moment.
And every morning we say, “הַמְחַדֵּשׁ בְּטוּבוֹ… מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית” — that creation is constantly being renewed. That means existence itself isn’t static. It’s continuously being given, right now.
What Lag BaOmer Is Really About
That’s really what Lag BaOmer is pointing to. It’s connected to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who revealed the inner dimension of Torah—teachings that aren’t something you take intellectually, but something you become open to receiving.
That moment with the apple stayed with me, because it wasn’t about the apple. It was about how I approach everything in my life.
Don’t take your life—receive it. Don’t take your next breath—receive it. Because the moment you receive, you’re no longer alone with what you have—you’re in a relationship. And even something as simple as an apple becomes a gift, carrying the presence of the One who gave it.