Transformation through Counting

S’firat HaOmer

Rabbi Anne Persin

On the twelfth night of…, wait wrong season (and wrong religion, for that matter.)  Let me try again: who knows thirteen?  I know thirteen!  Thirteen are the attributes of God!, Twelve are the tribes of Israel, Eleven are the stars in Joseph’s dream, Ten are the Ten Commandments, Nine are the months ‘til a baby’s born, Eight are the days to the B’rit Milah, Seven are the Days of the Week (boom boom), Six are the books of the (clap) Mishnah, Five are the books of the (clap) Torah, Four are the Mothers, Three are the Fathers, Two are the tablets that Moshe brought, One is our God, One is our God, One is our God…in the heaven and the earth!

We LOVE to count!  From the minute we’re born people are counting our fingers, our toes, our cute little rolls of baby fat.  Throughout our toddler years, we read books and sing songs that focus on numbers and counting—one little, two little, three little Indians….  We get to school age and we learn how to transform numbers through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.  With every year of our life, numbers and counting become more and more sophisticated and complicated—fractions, equations, sine and cosine.  Until we just can’t quite handle it any more (thanks be to God, I have finished all of my math requirements.)  I can finally stop counting.  

Except that we don’t stop counting, ever, really.  We still in our hearts of hearts enjoy the act of counting—it was just the math so many of us did not love.  Rather we continue to count—we count how many people are at the party.  We count how many chocolates are left in the bowl.  We count the dollars in our wallets and the change in our tzedakah boxes.  But more than anything else, we count time—we count the minutes till the meeting is over.  We count the hours till we see our loves ones again.  We count the days to graduation.  We count the weeks before the new baby is due.  We count the months we have mourned.  We count the years we have been together.

There is a Hasidic tale that tells of a man who once found a chest full of gold coins.  When he took it home, he proceeded to count each and every coin very carefully.  His counting had no effect on the number of coins that would or would not be there—he now had no more and no less then he had before he counted them.  But in the counting of the coins, they became more real to him—with each coin he had a greater understanding of the treasure that lay before him.  

So, too, it is with us.  When we count, we transform that which we are counting into something greater, not in number but in understanding; when we count, we transform that which we are counting into something more real.

One of the primary goals of the Passover Seder is to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt as though we, ourselves, made that trek: “In every generation each person is to see themselves as if they came out of Egypt.”  We eat the bitter herbs so that we can taste the bitterness of our ancestors’ lives on our tongue.  We eat the charoset so that we might remember the mortar that was used in the building of Pharaoh’s monuments.  “Ha Lachma Anya” this is the bread of affliction.  And we eat the ever so tasty matzah—the bread of poverty and persecution—so we will never forget just how quickly our people had to flee, as well as how swift was God in leading us to freedom.  But throughout this journey, this trek, that we have lovingly retold year after year after year, we are missing something.  YEAH!!  God freed us from slavery with an outstretched arm.  YEAH!!  But for what!?  And, actually, that is exactly what our ancestors asked.  “Moses why would God bring us out of Egypt, only to leave us to die in the desert?”  What is the point of freedom?  Where do we go from here?

You see, no matter how exciting the 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea were, the next day the Israelites woke up to, what?  When they were slaves they had a clear sense of purpose, sure it was in service to Pharoah but at least they understood that—there was security and consistency in being slaves that all of the sudden they were without.

I am going to ask you one of my favorite trivia questions—when the Israelites left Egypt, where were they going to?  Most people answer “Israel” which would seem like the right answer, but in truth, the Israelites don’t have Israel in mind quite yet.  No, not Israel, rather when the people left Egypt their destination was Mt. Sinai.

And so we count…

For 49 days beginning with the second Seder we count until we, too, reach Mt. Sinai, until we, too, stand before God ready to receive the 10 commandments, until we, too, hear God’s voice speaking to us, “I am the Lord your God….”  On that 50th day, we celebrate the holiday of Shavu’ot, remembering the purpose of the Exodus from Egypt—reconfirming our relationship, our covenant, with God.  We left Egypt 13 days ago, therefore, today we are 13 days closer to Sinai.

Let’s be honest here, holidays come and go, celebrations pass by like speeding trains.  Only yesterday was your wedding day and here you sit today with your baby graduating from college.  It is so easy for us to lose track of the days in between constantly jumping from special event to special event—and so, 3000 plus years ago, the Torah spelled out a little trick that we can do to appreciate the time in between—to, in many ways, slow down time—we can count.  The Torah teaches us to count the days between leaving Egypt and receiving the 10 commandments—so that we might transform this entire season into a sacred remembering.  We call this time, “the counting of the Omer,” the counting of the sheaves of wheat that we would bring to the Temple in Jerusalem as a thanksgiving offering to God.  With every day we count off, we are reminded of all that we are thankful for; with every day we count off, we come closer to meeting God on the mountain.  

This evening, we will all stand ready to count this day as we leave Egypt farther and farther behind us and as we move closer, in time to Mt. Sinai.  We will stand ready in thanksgiving to God for all of our blessings as we count the Omer together.

As we count each day between Passover and Shavu’ot, may we remain aware of the transformative power and special texture of each passing moment.  As we count from one moment to the next, may we act to make every moment count, appreciating our freedom from slavery as well as our commitment to God.