(Originally published in 2021)
The journey of the Omer — the 49 days traversed from the holiday of Passover to the holiday of Shavuot, from the exodus to Mount Sinai — is an apt metaphor for the journey taken by each of our souls in this world from birth to death.
We begin our journey mimaharat haShabbat, “on the day after Shabbat,” on the day after the intense divine revelation of leaving Egypt. Each of us begins our life in this way, in the shadow — or perhaps, the light — of a subconscious memory of intense divine connection, the perfect Shabbat peace of having once been part of the Source. This memory and the continual yearning for return drive our steps forward into the world and shape our path. We want that Shabbat again.
And we see it in the distance, too. Our path is flanked by two poles, two shabbatot — a memory of a past connection, and a beckoning vision of a future one — the mountain of Sinai looming against the horizon as our destination point (Shavuot), the word shalom, peace, at the end of our prayers, and our messianic dreams of ultimate redemption and peace for ourselves and the world There is something in us that feels the divine pull of both poles — both our past and our future divine connection — as we walk through this in-between desert world on our own.
This desert journey of ours is fraught with danger, probably the most significant being the danger of forgetting both where we came from and where we are going (see Pirke Avot 3:1), forgetting what that perfect peace feels like, losing sight of our true home and destination, losing our way.
This is a basic human problem. On some level, we know the solution to our troubles; we know where our true home is. But we forget. We remember and move forward, and then, in the very long in-between time between glimpses, we forget again. How do we survive and keep ourselves connected to home while on this journey?
A therapist friend shared her concern for how her clients manage their emotional lives between sessions. Yes, during the session she and the client can work together to build a sense of presence and love and Self Energy (an IFS term), and the client does experience some relief, a peace, a homecoming. But what happens between sessions? How does the client tap into this centeredness during the many days they are not together? The solution she found is to have the client — in a moment of distress or activation — place a hand on her heart as a reminder to her nervous system of where home is, a kind of honing mechanism that brings her back to center, to a memory of the feeling of peace, a way to find home again.
Perhaps Sefirat ha’omer can be seen in a similar way. The injunction is to count the days between the two poles, to construct a bridge that links them, piece by piece, day by counted day, like Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so that they can find their way home again. When we count each day in relation to both poles, where we came from and where we are going, we infuse the journey with a sense of rootedness, homecoming and clarity of purpose. Each day becomes a reminder — like the hand on the heart — of where home is.
We do this work on our own. While the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah were both gifts from above — we passively received them without much effort — this counting and remembering work we do without divine assistance. Usefartem lakhem, “count for yourselves,” the Torah says. By yourself and for your own sake, in order to help yourself. It’s as if a teenager is setting off on an independent trip and the parent offers some tips and tools for survival. Here are the tools, but you are going to have to use them for yourself. And in so doing, you will come to know your own strength; you will build your own pathways to home and learn to have faith in your ability to get there on your own.
Each time we return is a true homecoming. We may be tempted to think of the two poles as the only home, Mount Sinai as the ultimate destination, that the goal is to get “there,” to be where God is, only at that endpoint. But every time we put our hand to our heart, each day we count — remembering that we are on a journey home — we are suddenly already “there,” already home. The flip happens in a moment. One minute we are distracted and distraught, faithless and alone in the desert, and the next we are at home, centered, connected to the divine, resting deeply in the eternal Shabbat peace we have always known.
The Torah understands the exquisiteness of these self-made moments of revelation and return and it sanctifies them with the term sheva shabbatot temimot , seven perfect weeks, referring to these days between the two holidays. To count each day in this way, to remember to stop in the desert of our lives and connect to the home of our heart — this is purity, perfection, wholeness, completion. We don’t need to already be at the destination point to be whole and perfect; right here and now, in all our unredeemed human imperfection, when we reach for the return, right here becomes “there,” becomes already tamim, perfect.
Sheva shabbatot temimot. Note that the Torah uses the word shabbat here to mean “week,” something it does only in this context, as if to reinforce our sense of the Shabbat nature of this in-between desert journey. We are flanked by Shabbatot as we traverse this path alone — the shabbat of Passover and the shabbat of Shavuot, the shabbat of our pre-birth connection and the shabbat of our after death return — but we should not think that the journey itself has no peace. Even in this desert life, we can have moments of peace, moments of connecting to our home in the divine, moments of the perfect rest of Shabbat.
Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom at Pexels
