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Topics in this digest: Emor 5765
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Lev 23
In the fourteenth day of the first month at evening is the Lord's
Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of
Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.
...Leviticus 23:4-6
And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you; on
the next day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.
...Leviticus 23:11
And you shall count from the next day after the sabbath, from the day that
you brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be
complete; To the next day after the seventh sabbath shall you count fifty
days; and you shall offer a new meal offering to the Lord.
...Leviticus 23:15-16
And you shall proclaim on the same day, that it may be a holy gathering to
you; you shall do no labor in it; it shall be a statute forever in all
your
dwellings throughout your generations.
...Leviticus 23:21
For many people, the commandment to count seven Sabbaths might seem to be
one of the Torah's more obscure commandments. To start with, what exactly
is it we are being commanded to do? To count fifty days, but starting
when? It sounds like this says we should be counting from the first
Shabbat after Passover for forty nine days, and on the fiftieth day we
celebrate a holiday--so the holiday would always be on Sunday, but the
calendar date would move around because the day of the week that Passover,
the 15th of Nisan, falls on varies.
That's what a sect called the Beitusim thought. The rabbis, however,
disagreed. Shabbat is also a term that is used in the Torah for a
holiday. Shabbat literally means to rest. On holidays we are also
commanded to rest, just as we are on the day of the week we call Shabbat.
So the rabbis understood this commandment as meaning we start counting the
second day of Passover, and count for 49 days, and on the 50th day we have
a holiday.
Which means the holiday, Shavuot, will always fall on the same date, the
6th of Sivan, although the day of the week will vary.
The rabbis wanted Shavuot to come out on the 6th of Sivan for a very
powerful reason. According to tradition, the 6th of Sivan is the day that
God gave the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai for the first time¡Xthe original
giving over of the Ten Commandments.
By fixing the calendar in this way, the rabbis established a fixed link
between Pesach, the holiday of freedom, and Shavuot, the holiday of the
receiving of the Torah.
The rabbis not so subtly therefore put out the message that the REAL
goal--the real purpose--of Passover was not just to get free of Pharaoh.
Rather, it was to get to Har Sinai and Matan Torah, the giving of the
Torah.
Pesach was a necessary beginning: can a slave follow the Torah? Certainly
not. A slave cannot willingly accept Torah. A slave is not free to
willingly choose to obey the Torah and walk in God's ways. To truly
observe the Torah, you must be a free man.
One of the highlights of the Passover seder is when we sing "Dayenu."
Dayenu, "it would have been enough." We sing a song showing how grateful
we are to God for all the wonderful things He has done for us. If God had
only brought us out of Egypt, but hadn't given us Shabbat¡Xthe most
wonderful present God ever gave anyone--dayenu, it would have been enough.
If God had given us Shabbat, but hadn't given us the Torah--dayenu, it
would have been enough.
This Passover when we sang Dayenu, however, my nine-year-old daughter
Katherine weighed in with a different opinion. She said, "what do you
mean it would have been enough if God hadn't given us the Torah? If God
hadn't given us the Torah, we wouldn't be Jews, and we wouldn't be sitting
here having a seder." Katherine insisted that if God had not given us the
Torah, it would NOT have been enough!!
I had to admit, Katherine was right! As much as we should be grateful to
God every step of the way, for every little thing nice thing God does for
us, without Torah we wouldn't have been singing Dayenu--we would never
have gotten the commandment to observe the holiday of Passover.
We need Torah, though, for a lot more than just to tell us to observe
Passover. Following Torah is not only what defines us as Jews--it's the
source for all of our spiritual nourishment. Torah is the bridge between
God and Man ¡V or at least the bridge for Jews.
Other religions may have their own ways to access God, but when Jews want
to find God, we look in the Torah. When we want to find answers to life's
most difficult questions, we look in the Torah. When we want to find
meaning in our lives, we look in the Torah. A little while ago, in our
Torah service, we sang etz chayim hi l'machazikim ba, the Torah is tree of
life to those who cling to it.
So Shavuot represents the goal and purpose of Passover--to bring us to
Torah, the most precious possession of the Jewish people, our lifeline to
God.
Which explains one of the reasons we have a countdown.
We often count the days until some special event or moment in our lives.
What are some examples of things that you have counted down?
Kids often count the days until summer vacation. When I was in the Army,
EVERYONE counted the days until ETS, "Estimated Time of Separation." My
first year in rabbinical school, the wife of one of the graduating seniors
bought him a watch, six months ahead, which gave the countdown to
ordination. He'd come into minyan and announce "five months, 22 days, 11
hours and 17 minutes until ordination." If you were in love and engaged,
and on a business trip, you might count the days until you are reunited.
It's the same with the counting of the omer. We are so eager to receive
Torah that we are counting the days.
When I first thought about the idea of counting the days, I was somewhat
bothered by it. When I was younger, I was heavily influenced by Buddhist
teachings, including ones that encourage us to "be here now,¡" to be
focused on the present, to concentrate on the moment, to not be so wrapped
up in the past or the future that you miss the present. Judaism takes a
somewhat different approach. We affirm that when doing a particular task,
you should do that task. When you are praying, you should pray, not think
about work or going golfing. When you are working, you are supposed to
give your full attention to what you are doing for your employer. I saw a
great cartoon the other day: it showed a guy at work, thinking about
playing golf; then it showed the same guy playing golf, thinking about
being intimate with a woman; the next panel showed him together in bed
with the woman, and thinking about the computer at work.
Even though it's good to be focused on the present, there is nothing wrong
with anticipation, with looking forward to something. Anticipation can be
half the fun! Having a goal does not mean you can't appreciate the
moment.
I was talking with my wife Lauri about counting the Omer, and being eager
to receive Torah, and she pointed out that we already have received the
Torah, so it might be hard to generate that same kind of enthusiasm that
you would have for a pending reunification with a long lost lover.
The mystics view the Jewish calendar as a kind of helix, spiraling upward,
where every year we are ideally at the same spot on the spiral, just at a
higher level. Shavuot is the time of year when we receive Torah--when we
open our hearts to God's word. This year we will be able to accept the
Torah at a new and deeper level than last year--so it's like receiving it
anew. This is why we read the story of Ruth at Shavuot. Ruth accepted
the Torah with words that I think are one of the most beautiful passages
in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible: ¡"And Ruth said, Do not entreat me to
leave you, or to keep from following you; for wherever you go, I will go;
and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and
your God my God."
One Shavuot, we are all like Ruth, accepting God and the Torah anew.
The Kabbahlists give us another reason for counting the Omer, beyond
showing how eager we are to receive Torah: and that is to use this time to
prepare for receiving the Torah.
The Kabbahlists say that Egypt was a land where our ancestors defiled
themselves through 49 gates of impurity, and that there are 49 gates of
purity leading back to wholeness. For 49 days after God removed them from
Egypt, the people removed the Egypt from within themselves. Each of the 49
days has a unique character to fix.
According to the Jewish mystical tradition, God interacts with the world
through seven aspects or channels called sefirot. There are ten sefirot,
but the upper three are beyond human understanding. So for example, two
of the sefirot are Yesod or foundation, and Tiferet, or beauty. Yesod is
understood as the trait of bonding, joining together. The foundation
holds the whole house together. Compassion is beauty, and this is seen to
correspond to the trait of compassion and harmony. Today, the 20th day of
the Omer, we focus on Yesod of Tiferet--so the kind of question we would
ask ourselves is whether our compassion is bonding: when we are
compassionate to someone, is it a "one-shot deal", or do we use it to make
a lasting connection?
The need to prepare for receiving Torah is described in a beautiful story
in the Talmud. The Talmud says on the day when the Messiah comes and
Israel is rewarded for not losing faith that he would come, the nations of
the world will accuse Israel and say, "Master of the Universe, has Israel,
who accepted the Torah, actually observed it?" And God will bring lots of
proof that Israel has been faithful to the Torah--including testimony from
the nations themselves. The nations will then plead, "offer us the Torah
again, and we'll obey it!"
But the Holy One, blessed be He, will say "someone who has taken the
trouble to prepare for the coming of Shabbat¡Xcleaning his house, cooking
special foods, buying good wine, will surely enjoy a feast on Shabbat.
Will someone who hasn't bothered to prepare anything enjoy much of a
meal?"
To help you do another mitzvah--to prepare and to count the days to
Shavuot--you will find on the table by the entry to the sanctuary a
handout with instructions for how to count the Omer as well as a Homer
Simpson calendar so you can keep track.
Only 29 days until we stay up all night studying Torah on Shavuot! May
God strengthen us in our efforts to be ready!
Amen
What is the Counting of the Omer?
Forty-nine days divide Passover from Shavuot. But this seven-week period
is not an ordinary one. It is actually a link that binds these two
festivals together. Every one of these days is counted in orderly
progression. On every one of these forty-nine nights, a Jew recites a
blessing (found in the prayer book) and then verbalizes the number of that
day. This counting, called ¡§Sefirat Ha¡¦Omer¡¨ (the Counting of the
Omer), expresses a Jew¡¦s eager anticipation of receiving the Torah on
Shavuot, forty nine days after experiencing the liberation of Passover.
This period is a time of personal refinement and introspection in
preparation for receiving the Torah
In Leviticus (23:15) the commandment of counting the Omer is stated:
¡§You shall count .. from the day that you brought the omer as a wave
offering.¡¨ The omer was a measure (around two quarts) of barley which the
Jews brought as an offering on the second day of Passover. This was
followed by the counting of the omer, which led into the fiftieth day- the
festival of Shavuot. Even after the destruction of the Temple where the
omer offering was brought, this tradition of counting the omer continues.
The preceding is from:
http://r.vresp.com/?RebBarrysTorahCommen/ab14b3fdf3/340303/7f2a79ca74/565f099
where you can also find the Kabbahlistic calendar which gives an
explanation of each of the 49 personality traits we work on during the
counting of the Omer.
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