Parshat Emor: Sefirat HaOmer

We read Parshat Emor this coming Shabbat, the 35th day of the Omer, 15 days before Shavuot and Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah). “And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering—the day after the Sabbath—you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete.”1 These 50 days are connected to the Giving of the Omer, an offering of barley which was made at the beginning of the barley harvest. On the 50th day, after the summer wheat harvest, two loaves of wheat bread were then offered.

The counting of these 50 days holds much significance. We count towards that which we desire – towards a vacation, towards our birthday, towards that first date. With Sefirat HaOmer, we count because we exhuberantly await the giving of the Torah. A Midrash cited by Nissim ben Reuven of Girona tells us that when we were in the desert, we began to passionately count down the days after Moshe informed us of the coming event.2 Rav Dov Ber Cohen teaches that we count down (50 towards 1) when we care only about the destination, for in such a case, each day is only significant in its relationship to that end. With Sefitar HaOmer however, we count up, (from 1 towards 50) for we each day holds its own significance.3 Each day of the Omer provides us with an opportunity to realign ourselves and to connect deeper to our souls. As we approach the giving of the Torah we are reminded that receiving such a gift takes inner work. We learn from this that we are often our own greatest barriers to receiving what we want.

To understand the significance of the Omer, it’s important to understand the context for our ancestors at the time. The world since Creation has been tumultuous. Hashem, the Creator of the Universe, has been searching for a partner in His Creation, a people through which to reveal Himself to the world. Rav Aryeh Kaplan in his book, If You Were Gd, poses the thought experiment: imagine you get to play Gd over an island of people. You can control the various forces of nature and even suggest thoughts, but you certainly cannot reveal yourself. Such a revelation would fracture any semblance of independent life or free will. Yet, you care about these people. You want to guide them, help them. How do you do it? He suggests that one could use infiltration. One could introduce a group of people to model the way for everyone else. They would likely be persecuted as the out-group. One would have to do their best to help them, but only through indirect methods. Safeguards would also need to be in place in order to prevent them from assimilating.4

The Jews are Hashem’s infiltrators. He searches the world for someone capable of carrying such a responsibility and He finds it in Avraham and Sarah and then with their lineage. His people become slaves in Egypt but Hashem remembers His covenant, and in a massive revelation, reveals Himself, bringing the Jewish people out of slavery. This is Hashem’s first act where He truly upholds His promise. He protects us. He delivers us. He redeems us. Hashem moves first in this partnership – He does not wait for us to act. He demonstrates his commitment and trust first. We can learn from this that if we are to build strong and intimate relationships, we should never wait for the other to move – our question should always be in how we can fulfill our side of the relationship.

Afterwards comes our part. We await the giving of the Torah, both a blessed gift, the path of life – and a great responsibility, our half of the covenant. The Torah makes us His nation. The Torah gives us the keys and tools to be a model nation onto the world. But it’s not merely a set of rules passed down to us by a controlling Gd. Rather, He created the world for us – for our pleasure and our benefit and our joy. The Torah is the blueprint for achieving that goodness. It is the cheatbook from the Gamemaker. We count and patiently await its giving.

But first, we must cleanse and open our hearts. Each week of the Omer corresponds to one of the seven lower sephirot. The sepherot are essentially expressions of the Divine in this world. For example, one of the sephirot is chesed – lovingkindness, generosity. We can understand the presence of the sephera in this world as such: when someone is generous, they did not invent generosity. From where did their capacity to be generous originate? The answer is from Hashem and Hashem’s expression of generosity in this world. When someone is generous in this world, they serve as a channel through which Hashem pumps lovingkindness into the world. Thus, each week of the Omer corresponds to a different sephira. Why the lower ones? Because the three highest ones correspond to intellect, while the seven lower ones correspond to the emotional spheres. It is our emotions that serve both as our biggest blocks and our life-energy. Each day then is a sub-combination of two of the sephirot. Seven times seven equals forty-nine – each day corresponding to some deep aspect of our emotional world. Each day represents another tikkun (fix) that we can make. As each day progresses, we cleanse and open our hearts so that we might be able to receive the Torah.

With this, we come to understand that all that ever holds us back from what we want is ourselves. We hold pain, fear, doubt, anger, jealousy – traits of our egos – in our hearts, and they numb us to the world. These are enormously important protective walls for slaves and we held them dearly in Mizrayim. But slowly, we come to realize that such blocks also numb us to the world, to life, to love, to Hashem. For living and loving is risky and a closed heart does not risk.

We count the Omer to open our hearts. We count the Omer so that we might let go of all the thoughts and emotions that do not serve us. We carry them like baggage, thinking that we must, or perhaps we have simply become accustomed to their weight. Yet, when we look deep enough, we see that they are the very source of our not receiving what we most deeply want. The Torah is waiting, but it is us that needs to receive it. So many of our worries and fears revolve around what if’s. What if I don’t meet my significant other? What if my work is not meaningful? What we must come to understand is that the true treasures of this world are not found by overturning every rock. Rather, those treasures await just outside our reach, waiting for us to cup our hands and hearts, and invite them in. Our work is in making ourselves worthy of receiving what we want.

Michael Singer, in his book The Untethered Soul, reminds us that every time something in life triggers us, it does so because it touches on an unreleased memory, a piece of pain we still carry. Our hearts close and we protect ourselves with anger or fear, doubt or cynicism.5 It is better to never have loved than to love and get hurt, right? Or so we think in those moments. What we must understand is that those moments are our opportunities to finally let go. A perfectly open heart does not react when things do not go our way. It has no expectations. It does not need things to be a certain way. It overflows love because it is its nature to do so and love simply wants to be shared. An open heart is courageous, powerful, and dripping with life. It experiences life as a flow and not as a fight. With each day of the Omer, we have a chance to reflect and let go a little more, coming closer to that which we want most. If we understand ourselves to be channels for Hashem’s sephirot into this world, then we must also understand that any blocks in our hearts prevent this from happening. We begin the Omer with barley, a cheap, unrefined crop. 50 days later, we finish with bread, the product of our sweat and toil, inner and outer work.

The purpose of our lives is to become Tzelem Elokim ( the image of Gd). We do this by repairing our middot (emotional elements: fears, doubts, desires). Repairing our middot is a return to our deepest self. We do this by stripping off the layers of what we are not. To do so me simply relax, observe, and breath. When something creates a disturbance in our hearts, it is Hashem offering us an opportunity to open more, to receive His Torah more fully, and to become more like him. When we feel that sting, we don’t even need to understand it – trying to understand it simply keeps us caught in our emotional loops. Rather, relax your shoulders, take deep breaths, and try to relax the area around your heart. Each time we do this, we heal a little bit more. I imagine that the joy of our receiving of the Torah mirrored the joy of an open heart, for is not the Torah a product of Hashem’s open heart? May we all merit in these final weeks to feel more opening, more peace, and more joy.

_______