This week's section is called Emor, “tell them”. It is a section full of precepts (63), among which are such fundamental ideas as Kiddush Hashem, the sacrifice of every Jew for the sanctification of Hashem's name.
There is a mitzvah in this parashah which is directly related to the upcoming events: the counting of the Omer. This mitzvah consists of counting the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, and sanctifying the 50th day, which is the festival of Shavuot. Within this count is a special day, the 33rd (see Lag BaOmer (for more details), known as Lag BaOmer. This day marks the passing of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a teacher from the time of the Mishnah (2nd century CE).
But Rabbi Shimon was not only a master of the Mishnah; he was the one who began to reveal the deepest part of the Torah, Kabbalah. He wrote the Zohar, a classic work of Kabbalah, and from there the secrets of the Torah began to be revealed, the main subject of which is to reveal the holiness of God that fills the world.
There is a story the Midrash tells about Rabbi Shimon that will help us understand something of his greatness: One of Rabbi Shimon's students left the house of study, traveled outside of Israel, went into business, and became wealthy. His classmates found out and envied him. So Rabbi Shimon took them to a valley near Meron (where he is buried) and called out, “Valley, valley, fill up with gold coins!” Immediately, the valley filled with gold coins. Rabbi Shimon told his students, “Take, but know that you are taking your portion in the World to Come.” His students understood, and they did not take.
Rabbi Shimon's essence was the study of Torah; that was his primary occupation in life. The Torah is the source of the world's energy, both spiritual and material, as God Himself promises: "If you keep My laws," "I will give rain in its season," "peace," etc.
Today, in this time of the Jewish people's spiritual and material exile, we fail to see the connection between the Torah and the energy emanating from it, because that is the meaning of exile: the concealment of truth. Therefore, in the Age of Redemption, when the truth is revealed, there will be an awe-inspiring abundance in the world as a result of the complete study of Torah at that time.
Rabbi Shimon's greatness lay in the fact that, since his essence was Torah, destruction and exile did not obscure the truth from his perspective, and from his point of view, the world looked exactly as it would in the time of Redemption. When he wished to show his students the power and energy of Torah study (as opposed to material wealth), he showed them that the Torah they studied was expressed as a "valley full of gold coins.".
Rabbi Shimon's power lay in his ability to reveal, even in exile, when the world conceals the divine truth that pervades it, the true essence of things as they will be at the time of Redemption. He accomplished this primarily through the revelation of the Torah's profound meaning. When he needed to demonstrate this idea tangibly, he showed his students that the Torah generates a flow of material energy in such a way that it could be understood even in this world.
Rabbi Shimon introduced this power into his Torah, to pass it on to all future generations, including us. Through the study of Torah, and especially through the inner and profound aspects of Torah as revealed through the teachings of Hasidism, we can uncover the divine truth of the world, to the point of perceiving it in a material form.