“LEARNING TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT WHILE LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE…”

The lessons learned from counting the Omer – the days from Passover to Shavuot

Children are constantly counting days and looking forward – to birthdays, to holidays, to vacations, and to friends and relatives arriving in their homes. As we grow into adulthood and become aware of our mortality, we learn that the beauty of our lives is not in reaching a destination but in making the journey. If we do not live in the present – we risk wasting a great deal of precious time. At the same time, if we have no goals and markers to reach for, we can lose sight of our ideal path.

Our Torah teaches us about counting our days. We are told the count seven days times seven weeks from the second day of Passover until we reach Shavuot. We are enjoined to begin each of those days with a reckoning by saying, “Today is the first day of the first week of the counting of the Omer...” and so on.

The Omer was an offering of newly harvested barley that was made by the Priests on the second day of Passover when the Temple once stood. We count the days from that initial offering to the day of Shavuot when we celebrate our having made it to Sinai. The counting of the Omer is meant to make a connection between the physical redemption that we attained at Passover when we left Egypt to the spiritual freedom that came on Shavuot when we received the Torah at Sinai.

The custom of counting the Omer teaches us to celebrate each day by accounting for our time and making our time count. But at the same we must always keep an eye on the future by having a vision of where we want to go.

As a Temple we engage in such a reckoning at our Annual Meeting. We reflect on where we have come in the past year, celebrate where we are today, and share our vision for the future.

Join us on the evening of Monday, May 19 at 7:30 p.m. for our Temple’s Annual Meeting to celebrate where we are and envision where we want to go.
 

Judy Schindler, Rabbi