Every Day a Mitzvah
Time is more than just something we pass through, it is a creation of G-d. The objective of Torah is to refine and elevate all of G-d’s creations including time.
Anticipation
Counting the days between the two Holidays of Passover and Shavuos, is an exercise mandated by the Torah in this week’s portion. The Torah commands us to count 49 days, from the second day of Passover – the day on which a special barley offering, known as the Omer was offered, hence the expression: “counting of the Omer” – until the festival of Shavuos, the anniversary of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.
The counting of the days between the two festivals of Passover and Shavuos serves several spiritual functions.
Firstly, as the Midrash states, it expresses the yearning and eager anticipation the Jews expressed when they were told that they would receive the Torah on Mount Sinai in fifty days upon their departure from Egypt. In their eagerness to receive the Torah they began counting the days.
We too, when counting the days between Passover and Shavuos, 3,300 years later, affirm our own excitement at the prospects of receiving the Torah anew on the Holiday of Shavuos.
Moreover, not only do we re-experience the process of the Exodus from Egypt and receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai, but as we express our longing for the giving of the Torah, we simultaneously express our anticipation for the future Redemption when we will be taught new Torah insights by Moshiach.
Spiritual Refinment
Secondly, the counting of the Omer, is actually a process of spiritual refinement and preparation for the receiving of the Torah. Every one of the forty nine days between Passover and Shavuos, Kabbalah tells us, corresponds to one of the Divine attributes. There are seven attributes – or, instruments that G-d uses to create and govern His world – and each of them consists of one of the other seven, totaling 49. Paralleling these 49 (7x7) Divine attributes are the 49 characteristics of our soul.
By commanding us to count the forty nine days, the Torah was also asking of us to refine our characters. During each and every day we are to focus our attention on one of the forty nine characteristics of our personalities and seek to refine them and uplift them.
Furthermore, the word sefirah-counting, in Hebrew, is etymologically related to the word Sapir-Sapphire, a luminous stone. The connotation of this is that sefirah is the time when we generate light and then instill this light into our very personality traits.
Accordingly the mitzvah is to not just perfunctorily count the days, but to bring light into our lives by refining our personalities and by imbuing our human characteristics with G- dly light.
Upon completing this process of refinement, we then become worthy and capable of receiving the Torah and internalizing it.
Unlike Passover, when G-d, unilaterally, plucked the Jewish people out of the impurity of Egypt, Shavuos, by contrast, is when there was a duality of effort. G-d gave us the Torah and we actively received it.
When the Jews were taken out of Egypt they were spiritually ill prepared for G-d’s revelation at that time. The forty nine days that followed the exodus were days of soul-searching and spiritual growth, the necessary prerequisites to become an active recipient of the Torah.
A Day Transformed
Another unique characteristic of the mitzvah to count the days between Passover and Shavuos is that by counting the day, the entire day is rendered into a Mitzvah object. Just as the leather used for Tefillin and the candle used for lighting Shabbos candles are the stuff out of which the Mitzvah is made, so too, the days themselves become the substance of the mitzvah. Every day that we count transforms that day into a holy-mitzvah object, so that time itself is exalted and transformed into something holy.
All Holy days are days that are made holy, but only through the mitzvah of counting the Omer do we have the capacity to transform 49 consecutive days – most of which are regular weekdays – into one long continuum of holy days. It is this power that enables us to transform the fiftieth day into the Holiday of Shavuos.
Exile turned into Redemption
One may extrapolate from the above that the same process of counting as an expression of a) eager anticipation, b) refinement and c) transformation of our days can be applied to the entire duration of Galus-exile.
If exile is viewed as no more and no less than a period of punishment for our sins, then there is little that can be said about the positive character of these days.
While exile did indeed atone for our sins, it is far more meaningful than just that.
If exile is no more than G-d concealing His presence, there would be no reason to celebrate.
The days of exile are rendered ironically meaningful and holy when they are filled with eager anticipation for the Geulah-Redemption.
In other words, when we utilize every day we are still in Galus as a day of yearning for the coming of Moshiach, then these days of Galus themselves become rarified and transformed into days of Geulah.
Just like the days of Sefirah are themselves an integral part of the process of the Giving of the Torah and the revelation at Mount Sinai, so too, every day that leads to Geulah becomes a part of Geulah itself.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Emor by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
