"Today is the second day of the Omer" by Rabbi Laura Geller

Judaism's most powerful spiritual tradition sounds simple: 
 "Teach us to count our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90) But how do we count our days? What is the spiritual practice that can teach us? 

It is called "counting the omer", and it began yesterday. Here's what the Torah says about it: "And from the day on which you bring the omer (a specific measurement) of the wave offering-the day after Passover-you shall count off seven weeks.  You must count until the day after the seventh week -fifty days.  Then you shall bring an offering of new grain to Adonai." 

We learn more about it, later, in the Book of Joshua, which describes the first Passover in the land of Israel, after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, after the years when the food we ate was manna which fell from heaven. When we finally entered the land of Israel, the manna stopped, and we fed ourselves from the produce of the land. Imagine what it must have meant, after that first Passover, to finally eat bread made of wheat grown in our own land! The ritual of counting the days, of bringing a grain offering of freshly baked bread made out of an omer of wheat, was a way  for us to thank God for all those years of the omer's worth of manna we were given by God.

So what does it mean to count our days?

It means to notice what we have to be thankful for, all those things we take for granted: our homes, our families, our work, our ability to feed our families. And maybe it reminds us that others in our world aren't so lucky, and we need to do something about that.

By the time of the Rabbinic period, from the 1st century CE, we were no longer farmers. So the rabbis added a dimension to this tradition by linking the fiftieth day, the day after seven weeks, to Shavuot, the anniversary of the revelation at Mt Sinai. So for our rabbis, the counting wasn't about a harvest, but rather about a journey, a journey from slavery to freedom, from the narrow place represented by Egypt to the expansiveness symbolized by the giving of Torah.

So what does it mean to count our days? It means to notice our journey, and to ask ourselves where we are going and why, and for whom we are responsible along the way.

The mystical tradition offers a way to notice our journeys. Kaballah describes the ten sephirot, ten different dimensions of God. Only seven are accessible to us. As Rabbi Arthur Green explains in The Jewish Holidays: A Guide and Commentary by Michael Strassfeld:
 "The 49 days form a multiplication of seven times the seven Sefirot, which represent aspects of both the divine and human personalities: Hesed (love), Gevurah (power, judgment, including anger), Tiferet (glory, pride, also inner balance), Netzach (triumph, aggrandizement), Hod (beauty), Yesod, (the "foundation," including sexual energy), and Malchut (kingship, authority, but also the feminine component in the male personality). Each of the seven in turn contains all seven within itself, making a total of 49 inner aspects of the divine/human self. On each day of the counting... [we] seek to restore or elevate within ourselves the combination of the Sefirot belong to that day. This is readily comprehensible on a moralistic or psychological level... Thus, on the first day of the Omer, one works on the Hesed within Hesed, on the purest love the soul can find within itself. On the second day, (today-Thursday April 21) attention is focused on the Gevurah within Hesed, the anger or judgment within one's love; the third day on Tiferet in Hesed, the glory or perhaps a self-glorification that lies within love; and so forth. In the second week the focus is on Gevurah, beginning with Hesed in Gevurah, the love inside the judgment, and proceeding through the system. Thus the counting becomes a series of meditative and morally restorative exercises, purging the self and preparing to stand again at Sinai."

Today, Thursday, the second day, we focus on Gevurah sh'b hesed, the discipline or boundaries that are ought to be connected with love. Rabbi Jacobson asks about this day: Is my love disciplined enough? Do I respect the one I love or is it a selfish love? His suggestion for an exercise for this day is: "Help others on their own terms, not on yours."

The tradition is to count the omer at night (remember that in Jewish tradition the Hebrew day begins the night before) with the blessing:" Holy One of blessing, whose presence fills creation, you make us holy through connections, and connect us to each other and to You through counting the omer." Then you insert the appropriate day's count, so tonight would be:  "Today is three days of the omer."

Last year we sent you an email every day during the Omer period to remind you to count your days.   This year, instead of a daily email from us, we offer you a few links to some omer counting disciplines on line and invite you to choose to sign up.


http://www.mussarleadership.org/middot/avot_6_6.html
http://www.meaningfullife.org/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 (select Daily Omer to receive a daily reminder.)

You can even sign up for an app on your Iphone!  http://neohasid.org/resources/omer/iphone/

Let us know if you find the practice helpful to you as you continue your journey from liberation to Sinai.

May you discover a heart of wisdom.

Rabbi Laura Geller