Sermon: Making each Day Count (7th Day Pesach) (Cantor Cheryl Wunch)
Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 21 March 2015
This morning we celebrate the liberation of our ancestors. We read of them passing through the sea of reeds and singing to God a song of gratitude and triumph. Tonight, many of us will celebrate our own liberation from the restrictive diet of the past 7 days. Whether celebrating our ancient deliverance, or our modern-day gastronomical one, the fact is, that the journey is far from over. The Israelites did not pass through the sea and walk directly into the land of Israel. They weren’t greeted on the other side with a print-out of the Torah, its laws and commandments, and left on their own to live their new lives as free people. They weren’t even brought directly to Mount Sinai – no – they had more hardships to overcome.
It is said that God knew that even though the Israelites were physically free, their minds and souls were not free to accept the Torah. They still had that slave mentality – or post-traumatic stress as we might call it today – and so they had to wander for a little while before they were ready.
Shavuot, the holiday where we celebrate the receiving of the Torah is 7 weeks after the start of Pesach. As we know, there are number of explanations for and traditions associated with the counting of the omer. In addition to representing the time that the Israelites wandered from the sea to Sinai, it is also an agricultural count – from the time of the barley harvest to the wheat harvest. When our people were primarily farmers, it was important to know when the crops were at their peak – both for proper farming and for preparation for festivals that fell at harvest time.
In Talmudic times, the Omer became a period of mourning because of tragedies that occurred during that time, including the death of many of Rabbi Akiva’s students. Some people refrain from dancing, listening to music, cutting their hair, and celebrations like weddings during these seven weeks.
There is also the interesting midrash that Abel, son of Adam and Eve, was born on Passover and died on Shavuot:
We read: “Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua disagree. Rabbi Eliezer says: the world was created in Tishrei. Rabbi Joshua says: In Nisan. He who says in Tishrei holds that Abel lived from Sukkot until Chanukah. He who says in Nisan holds that Abel lived from Passover until Shavuot. In either case, all agree Abel was only in the world for fifty days.”
Genesis Rabbah 22:4
In this Midrash, Abel represents the life of the grain, which is “born” on Passover and “dies” (is harvested) on Shavuot. Abel’s name (Hevel) means “breath” or “emptiness.” By counting the days of the Omer as the days of Abel’s life, we remind ourselves how fragile we are, and how dependent we are on the humble grasses of the world.
The mystics have taken this time of preparation for the receiving of Torah as an opportunity to journey into the human psyche, into the soul. They say that there are seven basic attributes that make up the spectrum of human experience. At the root of all forms of enslavement, they believed, is a distortion of these emotions. In order to be truly free, we must be able to meditate on each attribute and find its purest form within ourselves. Each of the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot is dedicated to examining and refining one of these human attributes. The seven attributes are:
Gevurah ― Justice, strength and discipline
Malchut ― Sovereignty, leadership
Further, understanding that human emotions are complex and are rarely experienced one at a time, the mystics combined the attributes so that each day we can explore a different facet of our own humanity. So during week one, when the focus is on chesed, loving kindness, there is one day dedicated to the humility of loving kindness, one day dedicated to the justice of loving kindness and so on.
Today, which is the 6th day of the omer is dedicated to the yesod of chesed, or the bonding or connecting of loving kindness. On this day we are encouraged to think about how our connection to others impacts our ability to love. We are reminded that for any love, whether love between humans or love for God, to be everlasting, we must learn to connect to each other and work together. Chesed is a two-way street – it involves give and take, an ability to rely on each other, an understanding that a relationship must benefit both parties in order for it to be successful.
Tomorrow’s focus will be the Malchut of Chesed: Nobility in Loving-kindness. Once we have learned about the bonding that needs to take place, we then learn thatmature love also comes with ― and brings ― personal dignity. “ Knowing your special place and your contribution in this world. Understanding that any love that is debilitating and breaks the human spirit is no love at all. For love to be complete it must have the dimension of personal sovereignty.”
And on and on it goes – each day of the omer bringing with it important lessons and reminders that serve to help us liberate ourselves and prepare ourselves for the ultimate gift of Torah.
There is also a tradition of exploring these attributes by studying biblical characters that embodied them. There is a fantastic work by Rabbi Jill Hammer, who is an author, a teacher, a poet, and the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, where she assigned a female biblical character to each day of the omer. I have to admit; when I read this I was embarrassed to realize that I did not know much about many of the women she chose…I’m sure many of you right now are having a hard time thinking of 49 female characters in the Tanakh… but it is a great study. Today, we are taught about Serach bat Asher. In Rabbi Hammer’s words:
Serach is mentioned only twice in the Bible as the daughter of Jacob’s son Asher. Yet many legends were told about her. The most prominent of these was that she was granted eternal life because of her kindness to her grandfather Jacob. When the brothers of Joseph learned that Joseph was alive, they were afraid the news would kill their aging father. They asked the wise Serach to tell Jacob. Serach took a harp and sang the news to Jacob in rhyme while he was praying. Jacob exclaimed: “May the mouth that told me these words never taste death!” And so Serach, because of her chesed, lived forever.
It was Serach who confirmed for the Israelites that Moses was their redeemer, by remembering the words of promise and redemption that her father had taught her generations before. And it was Serach who, when it came time for the Exodus, showed Moses where to find Joseph’s bones, for the Israelites had promised to carry those bones out of Egypt when they were redeemed. There is a legend that in the time of the Talmud, Serach poked her head in the window of a study hall and told the Talmudic rabbis that the walls of the Sea looked like clear mirrors in which Israel saw all their generations reflected. Serach’s yesod shebechesed – connection within love – shows us how to connect one generation to another, keeping links of hope and promise alive.”
While all of these teachings are beautiful and meaningful, it’s not enough to know the symbolism of the counting of the omer – sometimes we get so enthralled by the spiritual aspects of our tradition that we forget that change and growth comes both with understanding and with action. Yes, it is a great first step to meditate on the attributes associated with each day, and to learn from our ancestors who embodied each attribute, but we then must do something about it, so that we, too, can free our minds and hearts, and fully accept Torah. So each day, we must ask ourselves – what can we do to better embody loving kindness, or humility, or justice? What small changes can we make to improve our lives and the lives of those around us? That is what the journey towards Sinai is about – small steps, small adjustments, that add up to major revelation.
Counting the omer is an ancient practice that, at first glance, seems to be just one of those traditional holdovers that we do because we’re supposed to, not because it holds any meaning for us. We have calendars, so we know when Shavuot is coming. We don’t live our lives by the plough. We don’t need to complete the barley harvest in order to make room for the wheat harvest. We don’t have to make a pilgrimage to the Temple to make our sacrifices. And yet, we count each day… and when we can look past the utility of counting and delve into the actionable lessons, we understand that the point of counting each day is to make each day count.