Here are the remarks I delivered this past Friday at services on a special Jewish ritual at this time of year:
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A ritual that we’re called upon to engage with at this time of year—a mitzvah, a sacred act that we’re called upon to fulfill—is sefirat haomer, the counting of the omer. In the Torah, we’re called upon, from the day after Pesah, the day we bring the omer tenufah (omer: sheaf, bundle, the very first bundle of barley, the spring crop, of tenufah, of elevation, which we lift up to present to God in gratitude for our blessings) — we’re called upon, from the day we bring that first seasonal tangible reminder of the blessings in our lives, of our dependence on and connection to the Source of Being, to begin counting off 50 days.
50 days: the day after seven weeks of seven days, at which point we celebrate shavuot, from the word shavuah, week, the Festival of Weeks—seven times seven being a perfect encapsulation of fullness in ancient tradition; the world was created in seven days. Seven times seven and we have a sense of completion and fullness, which we celebrate with expressions of gratitude and rest.
So what’s the significance of this in our own era? How do we make sense of the commandment to count—to count off each day, one through 50, from the period between pesah and shavuot, which we’ll do here together at services in just a moment?
I’m going to warn you: the moment itself is a bit anticlimactic. We build it up as a special ritual—sefirat ha’omer, the counting of the omer; we stand up, we say the blessing, and then… we count. We say a number. 1… 9… 12. And we sit back down. No special song. No special food. No taking drops of wine out of our cup. We just count.
So what’s the significance, what’s the sacredness, in this day and age, of just counting?
Well, remember what comes on each end of the fifty days. On the front end, Pesah, the celebration of our freedom—our rebirth from oppression to freedom, the Exodus from Egypt, in some ways the signal event in our people’s story, when we underscore the feature of the Divine capacity to inspire us to our highest highs, to break free and help everyone around us achieve this freedom, too. It’s perhaps paralleled only in our people’s story by what rabbinic tradition teaches happened at the other end of the 50 days: z’man matan torahteinu, the moment we received our Torah. The moment our people heard the Divine call not just to exist, but to act. The moment we received the mitzvot; calls to action, to purpose, to serve the Holy One, sewing holiness in the world in the ways we live our lives.
If you’re ranking the most epic moments in the story of the Jewish people, any shortlist has these two—the exodus from Egypt and the revelation of Torah at Mt Sinai—right at the top of that list
So why count? Why engage in the mundanity, if that’s a word, of just counting each day in between the two?
You might think that it’s about the buildup from Pesah to Shavuot, reminding us that Pesah wasn’t just “freedom from…” but “freedom to…”; to connect that freedom to what comes next.
But how about that in between the days when we might be most inclined to look forward or look backward, two of the biggest days in our people’s story, that the in-between times matter, too. Each day matters. Today matters, too.
How often do we find ourselves saying things like the following: “once I get through [you pick: work commitment, family obligation, holiday celebration] that’s when I’ll start living life like I want to. That’s when I’ll start cherishing life at the pace that sounds ideal. Once we’ve made it to Sinai, at that point I’ll start fulfilling the mitzvot.
There are mitzvot, opportunities for holiness in our daily lives before we get to Sinai. We’re in the midst of one right now. Today, tonight is sacred. Each day is.
In part that is the Torah of sefirat haomer: To cherish the days, even between big days behind us and in front of us. Even—perhaps especially, during the journey between two poles of life like, oh, I don’t know birth and death.
If Pesah honors the birth of a people through the sea, and Shavuot honors a culminating moment in their journey, there is a third hag, a third pilgrimage festival, to honor the in between stage—Sukkot. Sukkot honors our transience, the in-between stage, the journey through the wilderness, embodied by the fragile yet sturdy shelters we build as we make our way through, reminding us of life’s fragility.
Sefirat Ha’omer, counting the omer is like Sukkot in that it reminds us to cherish the in between times, the mundane nature of just counting every day, even, or perhaps especially when we’re looking backwards or forwards and might be inclined to miss it.
Another version of John Lennon’s “life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans,” is the professor who presents a jar to his students alongside piles of rocks, pebbles, and sand. He proceeds to demonstrate that all three can only fit in the jar if you start with the biggest—the rocks—and then proceed in order of size: pebbles and then sand. The rocks represent the most important things in life—health, family; the pebbles represent what’s next—our work, our passions, making a living; the sand, the remainder—material excess, other frivolous matters. It’s only all going to fit if we put the biggest things in first.
This is true even when—perhaps especially when—we’re looking forward to that big thing on the horizon. “I’ll prioritize that stuff when I get through” whatever your equivalent of Sinai is.
As usual, when I offer remarks like this, it’s not because it’s easy, or because I’m personally practicing it all to a T. The urgent typically crowds out the important in many of our lives.
But sefirat haomer swoops in to remind us that steadiness, cherishing, the in between, is just as important, just as sacred, just as much of a mitzvah as anything else on the horizon.
Sefirat ha’omer, the counting associated with that first sheaf of our crop, remembering that each day following it is a blessing.
