Tag: Counting the Omer

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Holiday omer

Lag BaOmer in a Time of COVID

Counting the Omer seems like a simple mitzvah. It doesn’t take long—a blessing, the recitation of the number of days and weeks. The trick is that you have to do it in the evening, every evening, for forty-nine days. I find that type of consistency hard. Despite attempts at setting an alarm or signing up for emails, I invariably forget a night, maybe on week two or three, four if I’m lucky. This year, I put Rabbi Karyn Kedar’s book The Omer: A Counting on my bedside table. That worked well until I took it to the synagogue one week for Friday night services, only to find it waiting for me on the bimah, one week and several uncounted days, later.

While I appreciate the spiritual tie between Passover and Shavuot—journeying from liberation to the moment of entering into a covenant with God—the daily counting has always been difficult. Similarly, the minor holiday of Lag BaOmer (literally the thirty-third day of the Omer) has seemed a little inaccessible. Sure, I love a good bonfire with some s’mores and I’m not opposed to shooting arrows, but the meaning behind these activities has always felt a little thin. Last year, Lag BaOmer was notable as the first time that our community gathered in person since the pandemic, and our joy was more at seeing one another again than the celebration of this holiday.

However, this year, more than two years into the pandemic, I’m finding new meaning in Lag BaOmer. Each week our mi shebeirach list grows longer as more people get COVID, some for the second time. Students miss dance recitals, baseball games, and their proms because they test positive. And although the spring has finally arrived in Maine, it feels as if this pandemic will never end. Considering all of this, this Omer period of semi-mourning seems appropriate. Fittingly, one reason for this mourning is in memory of a plague that killed thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students. On Lag BaOmer, the plague lifted and not only were the survivors able to bury the dead, but they also celebrated. This week flags fly at half-mast as we mark the grim milestone of the one millionth American death from COVID. Our modern-day plague has not ceased. In this time of our mourning, the holiday of Lag BaOmer reminds us of the importance of finding joy even in the midst of sorrow. We don’t know when this plague will cease, if ever. But we do know that despite our difficulties, finding joy is essential. This Lag BaOmer I’ll be celebrating with my community, not because an ancient plague ceased, but because this holiday reminds us that we must create and seize moments of joy even in the midst of mourning.

Rabbi Erica Asch leads Temple Beth El in Augusta, Maine. She is also the President-Elect of the CCAR.

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CCAR Press omer Prayer Shavuot

CCAR Press Interview: Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar on ‘Omer: A Counting’

Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, senior rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, IL, shares insights on writing Omer: A Counting. It is available as a print book, an inspirational card deck, a print book and card deck bundle, and as a companion app on Apple, Google Play, and Amazon.

What is the Omer? What spiritual meaning can it provide for contemporary Jews?
The seven weeks of the Omer offer an invitation to walk a spiritual path from constriction to expanse. On the holiday of Shavuot, we will explore seven spiritual principles: decision, discernment, choosing, hope, imagination, courage, and praying. Each one, powerful on its own, can be a sort of north star and illuminate a path toward personal and spiritual growth.


How do you suggest that someone who has never counted the Omer before get started? How can Omer: A Counting enhance their practice?
For forty-nine days, or seven weeks, we take on a discipline, an obligation to mindfully enter the day, to be aware of its potential power to matter, to make a difference, to count for something. Awaken your routine with intention, with attention.


To get started simply begin or end your day with a moment of thought. Perhaps you sit in a beautiful place in your home, perhaps you leaf through a book that’s been inspirational to you. Perhaps you just take a walk or look out the window. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, even five minutes will do. And you say to yourself, today I make myself count for something good.


The book is divided into seven spiritual principles. How did you come up with these principles? What is their significance?
I offer an original set of spiritual principles for the seven weeks of Omer, listed above. These principles are points of light to illuminate a path towards spiritual awareness as we attempt to be free from what enslaves us.


Was there something new that you learned while writing this book?
It was very powerful for me to articulate the seven spiritual principles as stepping stones. Each one can be an entire practice on a spiritual path that sometimes feels more like a zigzag than a straight line. For example, every internal change begins with the spiritual principle of decision: we decide to behave a different way, to live a different way, to interact in a different way.

Rabbi Kedar is available to teach online on topics in her books. Email bookevents@ccarpress.org for more information.

Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar is the senior rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, Illinois. She is the author of two CCAR Press books, Omer: A Counting (2014) and Amen: Seeking Presence with Prayer, Poetry, and Mindfulness Practice (2019).

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omer

Counting of the Omer

These days, with four small children in our house, I count a lot. I inventory lunches and shoes and loads of laundry. I track little back packs and waters bottles and ouchies. I measure fevers and hours of screen time and outside play. I tally toys and turns and the children themselves every few minutes. Every day fills itself with small, sometimes forgotten numbers.

When each of my children were born, we counted their lives according to hours, or feedings, or dirty diapers. As they aged, the measuring stick dilated into weeks or months, but never much longer than that. Ella, my first child, was only sixteen months when Aidan was born; and the twins, Daniel and David, followed just twenty four months and one week later. Now, for more than half a decade – since my pregnancy with Ella – I counted our lives in days, sometimes in weeks, and occasionally, in months. But the twins marked the last pregnancy my body can healthily carry. As they age, the measuring stick lengthens and stretches with their no-longer-so-little bodies. And steadily, my subconscious practice of counting the time since their birth in days, then weeks, then months faded into the the bittersweet ease of measuring their lives in years.

The practice of the counting of the Omer reminds us of each day’s preciousness. Some days are more exciting than others (I’m looking at you, Lag B’Omer) but every day merits a blessing. Marking and measuring the small things, the circadian passage of time, is what makes up the majority of our lives. Bigger milestones come and go, and I am grateful for them. But the counting of the Omer reminds me again of the joys of measuring our time in smaller increments.

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Rabbi Lauren Ben-Shoshan, M.A.R.E., lived in Tel Aviv, Israel until recently, and now resides in Palo Alto, California with her lovely husband and their four energetic and very small children.

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News Passover Pesach Reform Judaism

Making Each Day Count: Getting Ready for Omer

How does this happen? That busyness reigns supreme, that ambition drives the day, that exhaustion connects moment with moment, that, well, we simply forget to pay attention to what is noble and grand and really important. That we ignore what is truly beautiful and possible.

How does this happen? Days pass by and we are mostly oblivious. We simply pay little or no attention to our potential power, to the passage of time, to wonder, to the incredible beauty that emerges when shadow dances with light. We tend to be deeply uninvolved and forget how we have emerged from the days that we were afraid to be ourselves, the days when we were hesitant beings.

product_image-1.aspRemember those days when we blinked and twitched as we tried to find our place in society, to discover our way through family craziness? Do you remember when we desperately searched for a strong sense of self that would withstand the push and pull of life? I remember. And if I were to be completely honest, I don’t have to reach back into memory. I still blink and twitch and I am still discovering my way. Maybe that’s why we choose to be so busy, so distracted by nothing much, because to be aware is, can be, complicated.

But we are invited every so often by the rhythms of the Jewish calendar to transcend our very human tendency towards oblivion. We are invited to gain a sense of footing, to lift our eyes beyond the mundane and think and learn, consider and see, really see what is possible and interesting and fantastic in our lives. Now, with the ever-slow emergence of spring and sun and warmth and the undeniable regrowth of color we have our chance.

Seven weeks, forty-nine days, separate Passover and Shavuot. And for those forty-nine days our tradition gives us a simple command – to count. Count each day, for forty-nine days, one at a time, and pay attention. Take time back from oblivion and to notice.

Though the counting of the omer is an ancient tradition connected with the harvest in the Israel, today it has become a spiritual practice. Like all spiritual practices there are tools, which help us stay focused on the journey. For years, during the counting of the Omer, I have sent daily emails, short passages, some from Jewish tradition, some from the wisdom of great thinkers, some original writing. Every passage ends with the short blessing, which counts the sequence of days from the first to the forty-ninth. These passages are like a bit of sweetness delivered to your mind and heart; a daily invitation to breathe, to pause, to reflect.

Reflection. It is the nectar of a considered life. And our lives are worthy of our consideration. Each day. One day at a time. Making our days count for something grand.

Rabbi Karyn Kedar is the senior rabbi of Congregation BJBE in Deerfield Illinois. She is the author of several books including Omer: A Counting, published by CCAR Press in both paper and as an ebook. This book includes passages for counting the Omer as well as seven spiritual principles to consider each week. You can also sign up for her blog at karynkedar.com.