From the Rabbi

 The counting of the Omer is both a grounding experience and a transcendent one. The mitzvah, the commandment, is simply to count — count the days between the second seder until the evening of Shavuot, for 49 days in a row.

Yet it marks a mythical and mystical journey from redemption to revelation, liberation from enslavement to our connections as a people. It is as if, having left the narrow places — the meaning behind the word mitrayim — and left the seder table and the matzah crumbs behind, we embark on an ever-widening path towards unimaginable awe-someness somehow captured entirely through the revelation at Sinai, also called Mattan Torah — the gift of Torah..

For what is Sinai, for us? How can we make real this counting time for us, in Jewish terms and yet also in ways that speak to our lives, when we may be unsure or even suspicious of the role of Torah in our lives? The medieval Jewish mystics grappled with the same question. By linking each of the seven weeks and seven days to a kabbalistic quality, they transcended the literal boundaries of the mitzvah, and its associations.

It was a short linguistic leap. The practice is called sefirat ha-omer, the counting of the omer. So they turned to the sefirot, the circles on the tree of life. And we count until the sefer torah, our sacred book, arrives in our midst.

Each of the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot is dedicated to examining and refining one of seven attributes that reflect the spectrum of human qualities or experiences. And each day of each week layers over a second quality, using the same sequence.

Read a description of the seven qualities by my Reconstructionist Rabbinical College classmate Rabbi Yael Levy at tinyurl.com/omercount.

Give it a try. Being irregular at it, or perhaps even unsure — am I doing it right? does it matter even if I don’t do other things like this? — still counts.

Taking a moment, especially after the special time and perhaps irregular time of Passover to count off where you are on your journey to a wider and more awesome place, brings its own inherent gifts.