I offer these words at a time in between Passover, the Festival of Freedom, and Shavuot, the Festival that celebrates the Jewish people encountering God at Mt. Sinai and accepting the sacred words of Torah. In Jewish communities, we observe a nightly ritual called Counting the Omer, so named in Hebrew for grain offering that was presented in springtime. The days between Passover and Shavuot are numbered each evening. The Book of Leviticus describes this ritual, instructing us to count every day for the full seven week duration in between our two major Spring Festivals.
Why do we count these days aloud? We could offer the following three reasons among many.
First of all, the counting demonstrates our anticipation for receiving on the Torah, celebrated on Shavuot. If you’ve ever counted the days with eager anticipation until the end of school, or until a vacation from work, or until a birthday or other celebration, then you might understand what I mean. Counting teaches us that Pesach and Shavuot are linked, that one anticipates the next, that the Freedom we commemorate in the former is not complete until we commemorate the giving of Law in the latter.
Second, counting aloud encourages a state of mindfulness about the infinite potential of every single day. Long ago the Psalmist prayed to God, “Teach us to number our days, that we may acquire hearts of wisdom.” This period of counting helps us to notice what a single human being can accomplish in a single day, if only we approach each day as a fresh miracle. Counting each day helps us to take notice of the thousand opportunities for sacred deeds that come with the rising and setting of the sun. We call these opportunities mitzvot, deeds of sacred living. Counting each day becomes a kind of spiritual discipline.
Finally, a tradition about the Omer warns that if a day is missed in the counting, it cannot be made up. How sad if the only thing we could count from this day would be missed opportunities. What will you do this day to make it count?
Shabbat Shalom and Have a Meaningful Omer!
Rabbi Jonathan Blake
Why not count the Homer (Homer Simpson) instead: http://homer.jvibe.com
ReplyDelete"... receiving the Torah",
ReplyDeleteFrom who?
Hi Eric,
ReplyDeleteActually the Shavuot Festival is properly termed in Rabbinic Hebrew, "Z'man Matan Torateinu," which means not receiving (as I inaccurately wrote) but the time of the GIVING of our Torah. Tradition holds that the Torah was GIVEN to the Jewish people by God at Mt. Sinai.
I do not accept this claim in any literal sense but rather endorse the view that the Torah was written by people and "given" to us by way of a long process of redaction, canonization, and promulgation.
Rabbi - please, there are those among us who do not speak in so highfalutin a jargon; Can you PLEASE explain what you mean when you say, "a long process of redaction, canonization, and promulgation"?
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing highfalutin intended about these terms. They are widely accepted in academia.
ReplyDeleteRedaction = Editing of various source documents that comprise Torah/Bible.
Canonization = The process by which it was determined which texts are to be included in Scripture and which texts/documents are not to be included. This process was undertaken, probably several times, and finalized some time probably around the 4th or 3rd century BCE with regard to the Hebrew Bible.
Promulgation = Those processes by which a body of literature is taught, promoted, and copied by Scribes so as to reach its audience.
Ultimately, it is through these processes that our Hebrew Scripture reached the masses.
If you believe that the Torah was spoken by God to Moses at Mount Sinai, we may just have to "agree to disagree" - as always, in a spirit of respect and shalom.
Yours,
JEB