By Rabbi Jenni Greenspan
Passover
I have long been fascinated by and enthralled with the counting of the Omer, perhaps because the command to count 50 days between the second day of Passover until Shavuot were the first verses I read aloud from the Torah when I became a Bat Mitzvah. During this time, we are to pause each evening, offer a blessing and count how many days and weeks it has been.
There is a deep connection between these two holidays, one which celebrates the moment in which we were freed from Egypt, and the other celebrates the moment we received the Torah as Sinai. We actually referenced Shavuot in the actions taken during the seder: when we drank the fourth cup of wine.
Exodus 6:6-7 uses four verbs that our sages say correspond to the four cups of wine on our seder tables. God tells Moses to tell the people, “Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am God. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, Adonai, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians.”
Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, or Ramban, who lived in 13th-century Spain, suggested that each of the four verbs meant more than their surface meanings. Regarding the fourth, “I will take you to be my people, … when you come to Mount Sinai.”
The fourth cup was not about the seder night at all, but rather about Shavuot, the wedding of God and the Jewish people through the gift of Torah. Shavuot is the end of a longer process of freedom, one that takes physical, then emotional, then spiritual separation from that which once bound our ancestors.
I think it is significant that when we count the Omer, we do not count down the way that we do when we excitedly anticipate something like a vacation or a wedding. Instead, we count up. With the notable exception of the process of pregnancy, we often count up when we are marking days it has been since we made a change for our survival, or when we survived a trauma. In addiction recovery, many count the days since they last used their substance of choice. Others may count how long they have managed to survive following a major trauma.
As a people, we have been counting the days since Oct. 7, days in which more than 130 people have been held in Gaza. As of this publishing, we have been counting 202 days since those being held knew freedom.
So what does the counting of the Omer give us?
I believe that it gives us grounding following the trauma. It gives us a reminder that we are still alive, still pressing on. It reminds us that freedom doesn’t happen overnight. It gives us the time to move forward. It reminds us that our ancestors, too, had to count on a freedom yet to come.
This year, we have experienced a different type of counting, and one that I pray ends quickly and peacefully. May we also embrace the Counting of the Omer, a counting that can help set us on a path toward healing. May we find the moment to pause, and to mark how we’ve progressed even as our generation continues to experience bondage.
And when we conclude this year’s counting and receive the Torah anew, may we do it fully free with all of our people home with those they love.
Rabbi Jenni Greenspan is a Southern California native who is now thrilled to serve as the senior rabbi of Beth Shalom Congregation in Columbia.
