let me count the (w/d)ays

The period between Pesach and Shavuot was one of seri­ous ten­sion in ancient Israel. The bar­ley har­vest began at Pesach and the wheat har­vest ended near the time of Shavuot. More was at stake dur­ing the period of the count­ing of the Omer than our spir­i­tual growth. The future year’s wealth, whether or not the peo­ple would go hun­gry, was deter­mined dur­ing that seven-week period.

Today, we might be count­ing, but we are also ac–count­ing… prepar­ing a report on the har­vest. What have we har­vested? Will the stores be full for the com­ing year? The task is not so much the process of count­ing (and how we might account for each day), but the goal at the end of the period. Will we be ready for the full­ness of the gift that comes at the end the forty-nine day count?

count points on-[a]-line

When I began count­ing the Omer on Face­book a few years ago I joined a few friends. Now I am very pleased to see so many peo­ple shar­ing their var­ied approaches. Not only is the Omer counted on Face­book, but also on Twit­ter with #Omer, #Omer­Count and #Count­TheOmer. As noted here, there’s a page at the Huff­in­g­ton Post where Joshua Fleet curates a live­blog of Omer count­ing. And a quick review of that page sug­gests that even more peo­ple are using var­i­ous elec­tronic, social media to count the Omer in increas­ingly dif­fer­ent ways.

One that caught the atten­tion of a cou­ple of friends is: “Omer 2013: tak­ing into account” by Jacque­line Nicholls

count­ing every day of the omer, from pesach to shavuot, by tak­ing account of the things in life we hold onto. 50 peo­ple will share with me a list of the small items that are found in pock­ets, the bot­tom of their bags, the small stuff they carry around. from that list I will make a draw­ing and together a story will be told.”

I think this is a lovely idea. If I was to build on Jacqueline’s idea for my own count­ing, I would:

• start with 49 items that I’d take out (of “Egypt”) with me and each day “dis­card” one that was “unnec­es­sary” till I arrive at Sinai with the essence of what I need.

Or the reverse:

• as I leave Egypt a slave, what ideas/values do I col­lect along the way so that I have 49 when I arrive at Sinai?

A sam­pling of more Omer count­ing ideas on the Web worth explor­ing include:

• The Kolot Egal­i­tar­ian Omer Cal­en­dar
• The Omer Wid­get
• Abstract Omer

color the omer

Many peo­ple who count the Omer know by now of my inter­est in color. So I was a intrigued to learn that the same day that my Omer Cal­en­dar was shared on the Huff­in­g­ton Post page two other approaches to col­or­ing the Omer appeared: one an out­growth of my exper­i­ment­ing by my col­league R. Amy Schein­er­man and another pre­pared by Aharon Varady based on the color cor­re­spon­dences of Reb Zal­man Schachter-Shalomi.

And, so it is that I recently learned of the Hindu fes­ti­val Holi which is cel­e­brated near the same time as the begin­ning of Pesach. Inter­est­ingly enough, it is con­sid­ered a fes­ti­val of colors.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle about Chakras in the Wikipedia, “Indian Yogic teach­ings assign to the seven major chakras spe­cific qual­i­ties, such as color of influ­ence (from the 7 rays of spec­trum light)….” A num­ber of illus­tra­tions make this clear.

col­ored chakras in a magen david

make it count

As we make our lives count, I want to use this time to encour­age every­one with a Twit­ter account to join us on the day before Shavuot. That day we want to make #Torah rise (yes, the “hash­tag” is also the “num­ber sign” so: “count Torah!”) among the top­ics that are counted that day. I have writ­ten about this on my own blog:

• Be תורה
• the elec­tronic leaflet
• love human­ity, & bring them close 2 #Torah
• …the real thing?
• what would dad think?
• #blo­gex­o­dus : future (tweet #torah at sinai)

…and on Face­book where you are invited to join and indi­cate that you will attend our event.

While we’re count­ing, I offer this lapel but­ton from my col­lec­tion and am reminded by a friend and col­league who has this as part of her e-signature:

The high­est wis­dom is kind­ness.
[B’rakhot 17a]

The but­ton seems to have been made in the Philadel­phia area, likely by this con­gre­ga­tion.

kind­ness counts

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jacket you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­ally attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate museum. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.