COUNTING DAYS, TO MAKE DAYS COUNT
By: Suri Davis
It is a common commentary in the Torah when G-d asks Moses to count the Jews, the question arises, “Doesn’t G-d know how many Jews there are, why does Moses need to count them”? The commentaries comment that this is so, to show how much G-d loves His nation, for those things which we hold dear, we count, for many, dollars in their wallets.
We are in a period of time between Passover and Shavuoth, when we count our days, 49 days, or seven complete weeks. 49 days correspond with the 49 levels of impurity the Jews found themselves in Egypt, before G-d determined that if at that very moment the Jews were not freed from slavery, they would sink to the 50th level, and be beyond redemption. Therein lies the reason that the Jews were hurried out of Egypt, not having enough time to permit their dough to rise, hence the matzoh, or unleavened bread which we eat on Passover.
During the 49 days between Passover and Shavuoth, we Jews are to work on ourselves, for each day counts towards the 49 levels of impurity, and so each day we have to struggle to look within ourselves and pull ourselves out from the level of impurity to reach the heights which permit us to engage G-d on Mount Sinai on Shavuoth, for we are commanded to feel as though we have OURSELVES been redeemed from Egypt, which we do by reciting and re-enacting in detail the Exodus of Egypt at our annual Seder.
Additionally, we are to feel on Shavuoth the truth that the soul of every Jew in the past, present and future was present at the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. We are to feel the depth of slavery and its impact on us in every generation and FOR every generation. We have to do the hard work during these 49 days to pull ourselves, we in every generation, from the depths we find ourselves still in exile in the diaspora, to raise ourselves to our highest spiritual potential on Shavuoth, to feeling the love G-d bestows upon us, from slaves to the chosen nation at Mount Sinai. How we have the potential to turn ourselves around each and every year, each one of us, in every generation, to feel like the children of G-d, which we are and to unleash our potential.
So, as G-d counts us because we are precious to Him, He has given us this period of time to enrich and improve ourselves. The Rabbis tell us “Derech eretz kadmah l’torah,” colloquially, you have to be a mentsch, before you can learn and live Torah. Why? Because when one learns Torah, he does so as partners in a chevrutah, or as a group, the point being to learn from each other’s experience and perspectives to find a common understanding of what the sages wanted us to learn from the Torah throughout the generations. If a Torah student doesn’t respect his partner, he cannot ferret out the insights into Torah learning, and he cannot progress in his learning.
The paradigm of Torah learning between opposing Rabbis, are Hillel and Shamai. Even though their views were diametrically opposite in many areas of Jewish law, they respected each other to the extent where they made a point of having their Torah scholars marry the women of the other scholar’s students.
Conversely, where do we learn that there was a failure of respect among Torah scholars? In the fact that during this omer period, we commemorate the loss of 24,000 Torah scholars who learned under Rabbi Akiva. It is no coincidence that these scholars died during this period of time, so as to expose the importance of respect towards one another in general and specifically in Torah learning.
We count these 49 days to make them count. There is a popular song by Avraham Fried:
Adam doeg al damav, veino doeg al yamav/Man worries about his wealth but not about his days
Yamav eino chozrim/once his days have passed, man can never reclaim them
Damav eino ozrim/his wealth helps him neither in this world or the world to come
Every minute of every day should be utilized to actualize our potential, when the moment/minute/hour/day passes, there is no reclaiming it, we’ve lost the potential to utilize it to our spiritual advantage.
To help us in our quest in improving ourselves, on the six shabbatot between Passover and Shavuoth, we learn Ethics of Our Fathers. Chabad also has a self-improvement process for the 49 days of the omer, which can be learned by clicking here.
I remember opening up my law practice 35 years ago, at age 23 and having clients in their 70s and 80s telling me that they didn’t know how the years flew. I remember thinking to myself, how is it possible that you do not know where 80 years went? Comically, one of my clients told me that life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.
We have just counted 21 days/3 weeks of the omer. We have 28 days/4 weeks left.
LET’S COUNT EACH DAY TO MAKE IT COUNT.