“Teach Us To Number Our Days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom.”
(Proverbs 90:12)
In ancient days, our ancestors would offer their first barley sheaf of the season at the Temple in Jerusalem on the second day of Passover. From there, according to a commandment in the Torah, they would count the days until Shavuot, which was the full harvest festival. While today we are no longer primarily an agrarian people, we continue the practice of counting these days forward. This begins on the second night of Passover and continues for seven weeks, until the night before Shavuot.
Like so many Jewish rituals, the counting of the Omer has embodied multiple meanings over time. I’d like to share a few of them with you now.
The first thing to know is that if you’re confused about what exactly is meant by “Omer,” you’re not alone. It refers to a unit of measurement used when the Temple stood in Jerusalem; exactly how much it amounted to is unclear. And today of course, without the Temple and without living by times set by the harvests, the counting of the Omer is a practice that could have fallen by the wayside. But it never did.
And part of why is that there are always new meanings to be found in old words and ancient practices. In addition to the Omer count, take Bar and Bat Mitzvah. We’re blessed to have a number of them this Spring, as many of you know! This life cycle ritual has changed over time, but the core values that animate it have not. We still believe in the voices of our people, whether younger or older, male or female or non-binary. You all matter. Like the days of the Omer, you all count.
The Omer also gives us a deeper appreciation of living in Jewish time. How many of us have ever found ourselves saying “I’m counting the days?” Often it’s because there’s an exciting experience in front of us, and the closer it comes the more eager we become. It can be hard to think of anything else, and those are wonderful moments. In another way though, they can erode the gift of living in the moment… of pausing to notice the gifts of every day. Enter the Omer! The simple act of pausing to notice where we are, say a blessing and recite a simple sentence starting with the words “today is…” becomes a profound way to pause and breathe before we’re off and running again.
Finally, and here we return to the opening line from the book of Proverbs about numbering our days. The Omer doesn’t ask or expect that each day we face is going to be blissful, or that each will be better than the one that preceded it. This period teaches us that wisdom is found in facing the good things and the struggles that each day brings, and working through it all.
And so let us count these days – not to check them off as a means towards something else, but rather to live mindfully within them.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Gutterman
