Simultaneous Joy and Pain: The Wisdom of the Counting of the Omer

(Originally published on Huffingtonpost.com, based on a sermon I delivered on April 29, 2013)

This year at our Passover Seder, I experienced something deeply powerful -- something I had not felt in the context of Passover before. Like many, we spend much of our Seder going around the table, each reading a section from the Haggadah out loud. Generally, because our Seder is populated partially by adults and partially by very young, mostly illiterate children, we move from adult to adult, skipping over the smaller folks at our table. But this year, when my husband finished reading his part, my Kindergarten age son said he'd like a turn to read.

And all of a sudden, space and time expanded for me, while I assume it continued at a normal pace for everyone else. It felt like a worm hole opened, and in what must have actually been only a second between my son saying he wanted to read and his starting to pronounce the Haggadah's words, his entire life so far from his birth until that moment flashed through my mind. And in that 5 1/2 years contracted down into 1/60th of a minute, I felt the most profound, overwhelming joy, and at the very same time, an all-consuming sadness. Joy at the fact that my son could actually do what he was doing: he could read, was somehow growing up, increasingly less toddler like and more and more fully real. Sadness that my son could actually do what he was doing: he could read, was somehow growing up, increasingly less toddler like and more and more fully real.

This is the time of year when we Jews find ourselves in the middle of the annual observance known as Sefirat haOmer, the Counting of the Omer. As such, beginning on the second day of Passover, each day (technically evening since Jewish days start at night) we say a blessing and literally count which day and week it is in the seven-week cycle, leading us up to Shavuot, which falls on the 50th day. What began as an ancient agricultural-spiritual holiday to mark the weeks between barley and wheat harvests has evolved significantly over time.

Thanks to the rabbis of the Talmud, we understand the Counting of the Omer primarily as the communal spiritual re-enactment of our ancestor's process of journeying from the Egypt for 49 days to the Torah being given to them at Mt. Sinai.

Thanks to the Kabbalists, we also understand the Omer time as an individual opportunity to refine and perfect areas of our own lives as we leave our own individual Mitzrayim -- whatever narrow and constricted parts of ourselves hold us back, and then travel to a place where we too can be open and receptive to whatever Revelation awaits us.

In either case, most important is the idea that we count up, not down, to express our ancestors and our own increasing excitement as they and we step closer and closer toward Revelation.

But the period of the Omer, as you might know, is also overshadowed with the tone and rituals of mourning, thus the associated prohibitions against haircuts, shaving or getting married, except on Lag B'Omer , the 33rd day of the Omer. The question is: Why? Why the sadness and mourning, if the time should have been completely celebratory? Think about it: Our ancestors were finally free -- no Egypt, no taskmasters. They could live life on their terms and would soon culminate their seven-week trip with the most momentous, holy experience of meeting the Divine and receiving of the Torah. Not much to be sad about, right? There are a few explanations for the mournful tone of the Omer period, mainly having to do with a plague that was said to have ravaged a Jewish community at the time of the Mishnah's composition. But I wonder if there isn't something more at play?

When we think about our own journeys out of whatever enslaves us, into moments of liberation and redemption and then ultimately to moments of real awakening and revelation, what are they really like? Are they filled only with excitement and joy? Or are they more complicated than that?

As a person whose job privileges her to share many important moments in people's lives, I have seen this complexity -- simultaneous overflowing joy and sadness -- particularly, but not exclusively at life-cycle events, made manifest in tears. Tears that society and Hallmark card commercials suggest are wholly joyous, but which I know also contain an honest sorrow. Both feelings evoked by the same experience, at once deep happiness for the arrival at a new marker, and also grief that the arrival at said marker comes with the knowledge that all the previous markers won't be sought out and reached again. It's in these moments that we live in both worlds, but out of which we all have to make a choice: which sensibility we will choose to let color our experience? When we arrive at these crossroads, one the path of joy and optimism and one the path of sadness and regret, how do we choose which route to take?

The Omer tradition, linking Passover to Shavuot, gives us the answer. This set of seven weeks, each made up of seven days, enables us to live in the real, complicated world of emotional complexity, fully, experiencing both joy and sadness -- incarnate in each day of the counting. But when the last day of the Omer concludes, the mourning ends. There is a reason that the moment of Revelation happens the first day of the eighth week, the 50th day -- the day after the last day of the counting. Because to experience Revelation, we can't be in mourning. We have to release it, and take that deep breath that acknowledges that we have a choice to make: Will we view life as some sort of diminishing, increasingly limiting count down to the end -- a road that ultimately leads us back to Mitzrayim, to the death of the spirit -- or will we see life as opening to an unending fount of opportunity, hope and joy -- a road that is the promise of a Revelation at a mountain point in an open, awaiting, uncharted land?

The wisdom of the Counting of the Omer is that it enables us to live in both worlds for a bit. The moments in between, those moments where only a second in real time passes, but a lifetime flashes through our mind's eye, those moments between Mitzrayim and the Mountain, that's when the real awakening happens. But you can't stand at Sinai unless you are awake -- heart, mind, body and spirit not somewhere back where you've been before, back in Mitzrayim, but open to the only place and moment there really is: the Present.

Back to our Seder: So I'm in this out-of-place-and-time experience, fully immersed in my seemingly conflicting feelings. And then, I hear my son carefully sound out: "God -- took -- us -- out -- of -- E...E...E...g...." And just like that, I am back. Back from this journey into the realm of my own reflections and emotions, because my son needs my help. "Egypt" I say. "Egypt with -- a -- strong -- hand..." he continues. And my eyes well. And there is no longer any sadness. But neither is there joy. I am simply and only and entirely filled with the most deep and overwhelming sense of gratitude and wonder instead.

Divine Revelation and Processed Food?

In the world of nutrition and health today, there is a lot of talk about the difference between whole and processed foods.  In case you are unfamiliar with these terms, a “whole food” is basically in its natural, unaltered state – aka, human hands haven’t monkeyed with it all that much, other than harvesting it,  butchering it, maybe grinding or mushing it up. A processed food, on the other hand,  involves combining more than 1 ingredient in a process (sometimes other foodstuffs or sometimes additives, preservatives, chemicals) to form a different food product; put simply, to be processed, human hands necessarily are more involved.  And generally speaking, a whole food is a better nutritional bet than a processed food; better to eat an apple than Apple Jacks Cereal, for example. 

While we may believe that differentiating between whole and processed foods is modern reality, Judaism has been talking about it for a long time, and not just in relation to the condition of our bodies, but in relation to how we use whole or processed foods as a means to connect with the earth, our communities, our rituals, and the Divine. 

I am writing this piece on the 45th day of the counting of the Omer – the period of time between Passover and Shavuot.  As modern Jews, we likely understand this time primarily as the spiritual re-enactment of the 50 day journey our ancestors took from their Redemption from Egypt to Divine Revelation at Sinai.  We can generally credit the rabbis of the Talmud for our modern spiritual-historical understanding.  But if we look to Torah, we find this period originally entailed a spiritual-agricultural orientation, linking the early spring barley harvest to the late spring wheat harvest. 

Beginning the second day of Pesach, our ancestors would bring an Omer offering, which consisted of newly harvested barley rudimentarily beaten into a form of barley flour, then  waved (along with a few other foods) above the community as an offering to God.  It was, for all intents, a "whole food" offering of barley in a relatively pure state, as a means of thanking God for providing the fresh grain.  No one in the community could consume newly baked bread until this offering was made.  They would then count 49 days – the course of the 7 weeks from the barley to wheat harvest, leading up to Shavuot.

On Shavuot, however, instead of bringing another Omer, our ancestors would instead bring the first fruits of the wheat harvest as an offering.  But rather than bringing the sheaf in the form of newly ground flour, the people were commanded to offer it in the form of the very first "processed food" - as baked and leavened bread. (See Vayikra 23:15-23)  Here, their offering marking the wheat harvest was not a presentation of a pure foodstuff, but rather,  something whose individual ingredients (wheat, oil, etc) started out as sourced directly from God but whose resulting form (bread) required human hands to create.  As we know, God did not make the bread, humans did. 

So why the difference in grain offerings from one observance to the other?   If the point of harvest-time offerings  was to credit God as the provider of food and thus sustainer of life, it would make the most sense to offer “whole” offerings, certainly not processed ones, right?  Why not just repeat the exact same ritual with the wheat as they did with the barley?

One reason may very well have to do not only with the evolution of the harvest season, but also with the evolution of our ancestors' relationship with the Divine, as seen over the arc of Passover to Shavuot.  At Passover, God redeemed our people through great signs and miracles.  The Jewish people's role was simply to trust in God and walk out of Egypt.  God really did all the work.  This very much refects the direct nature of the Omer offering - the barley in its pure form clearly represents a direct gift from God - with notably minimal human involvement. 

On Shavuot, however, something different happened.  There were still, of course, great signs and wonders at Mt. Sinai as God gave "Torah." But there, the people had a direct role as well: they had to receive it.   Very much like harvesting wheat and processing it into bread, the Torah could not be made real in the world unless and until the people took it in, processed it, and enacted it.  At the same time, because the people are commanded to offer to God the first fruits of the wheat harvest in the form of bread, they are, at once, reminded that even when they create something themselves, it is never a result of their actions alone.  God still remains the ultimate provider, however, the vision at Shavuot, is one of Divine/human partnership, and not solely Divine power alone. The bread offering becomes a consumable symbol of the covanental, two-part relationship between us and God in making the Divine vision manifest in the world. As such, it is notable that of the Omer and Shavuot offerings, Torah only designates the Shavuot offering of bread as "holy" (see Lev. 23:20). 

So as far as modern day health is concerned, go ahead and consume the whole food.  But on this Shavuot, before your blintzes and cheesecake, say haMotzi and eat some bread!  Let it connect you to our past, our present, and our future as the Jewish people, to the land from which it came, to the Divine provider of it all!