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.

On Front Yards, Sink Holes, and Resilience

As a family with 2 kids ages 3 and 5, we are lucky to have a large front yard.  It is a great place for our kids and neighbors to run, jump, play, whatever.  The only problem is, our front yard has a minor sink hole.  Not a huge one, but one significant enough to create a 4-6 inch drop spanning the length of our yard and about a foot wide.  This large "divet" in the terrain initially proved challenging for my children  and their friends when they played in the front.  It made soccer games unfair, as the team protecting the goal that sits behind the sink hole had an unfair advantage given the bunker that protects it from infiltration, in addition to its goalie.  And it made running from first to second base of the makeshift t-ball field we set up notably treacherous as inevitably the runner had to leap across the hole twice to avoid falling in it.  You get the idea.  As a result, this sink hole has been filled with pebbles, dirt, and re-sodded numerous times, in attempts to create a level playing surface for our family's so-called "athletic" endevours.   But despite all efforts, the sink hole always returns in some form - maybe a little further South or a little more North - but it always comes back!


Our front yard really is a metaphor for life and how we handle the "sink holes" - the obstacles that challenge us along our own life's path.  The way I see it, there are 3 choices. 

1. Fill in the sink holes. 

Whatever the obstacle is, try to make it go away.  Say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done to create an even, level playing field. When another sink hole appears, repeat the process.  The problem with this method is that, just like in my front yard, sink holes always return in one form or another, regardless of how many times we try to even our path. This response assures a life lived on the defense, always waiting for the next hole to appear, always filling in and patching just to get by.

   2.    Step away from the sink holes. 

Knowing that it is just going to reappear, why not abandon the sink hole-ridden surface and find a different path entirely?  Who needs obstacles anyways?  My kids could just move their sporting events to our backyard.  It's flat back there and completely sheltered with its fenced and wooded perimeter.  The problem is, abandoning a challenging path for an easier one often comes with significant drawbacks.  The simpler route may not have the same benefits as the rougher road.  In the case of my backyard, because it is so private, it loses ease and accessiblity to the neighborhood kids' participation in these games.  So although my kids might be able to play their games on a flat surface, the "team" sports will have to become one-on-one games between my son and my daughter, which  (given my kids' age and skill differential) will undoubtedly make the games quicker and less interesting, or much less spontaneous.

  3. Figure out a way to play despite of (or even with) the sink hole.

Accepting that the path is challenging yet valuable, figure out a way to work with the sink hole's presence.  Is there a way to look at the obstacle instead as an opportunity?  "Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child." This notion can serve as important advice for each and all of us, children and adults alike.  Playing fields aren't ever perfect.  Sink holes, fallen trees, and inclimate weather prove no different than any of the obstacles and challenges that will confront us wherever we go, whatever we do.  Comprising ourselves and our goals to assure a simpler path may, at first, seem to make things easier, but in the end, it assures stagnation, if not, diminishment, not only of the personal growth that comes from traversing a challenging road, but of who we are meant to be. 


So we decided to keep our sports in the front yard. Sure, sometimes the soccer games aren't so balanced and t-ball runners become a little more guarded on their first-to-second base dash, but in the process, the kids have learned agility, balance, not to mention determination and resilience.  Plus, if you kick the ball into the sink hole at a certain spot from the side, it jets the ball into the goal at an angle that no goalie has been able to stop!

I Told Myself I Would Never Say That! or Parenting Confessions and the Prophet Malachi

A Parenting Confession: I have dabbled in overprotectiveness,  irrationality, and dictatorship of and over my children. These are just a few of the "lesser" qualities for which I gave my mother a very hard time when I was the child.  In fact, I find myself regularly doing and saying things* to my kids that I vividly recall swearing to myself that I would NEVER EVER do/say to my children when I became a parent.   

In keeping with the prime purpose of parenting (the dictionary defines it as “the methods, techniques, etc., used or required in the rearing of children”), I think many of us often see it as a future-focused sort of opportunity -  to follow in our own parents’ footsteps in passing on positive qualities and at the same time, improving upon the short-comings of our own parents as another generation of a family unfolds. 

But perhaps parenting has an additional purpose that moves us in the opposite direction: empathy for and sometimes forgiveness of our own parents. I now have a greater understanding of how my mother must have been feeling in any number of situations when she was raising me.  I see how hard it is to inculcate patience and perspective when losing my temper proves so much more instinctual; I know the deep fear that sets in when one of my children does anything that I just “know” will place him/her in imminent danger; I understand how sometimes what seems to be the best choice in a given moment really only demonstrates a complete lack of rationality; I even value the right to throw in the “Because I told you so” card from time to time because sometimes it is just about the only thing I can think of.  And I see already, as I demonstrate these same "offenses" against my children, they are saying to themselves: “I will NEVER EVER do/say that to my kids when I am a parent!”

In a powerful passage from the second collection of books in the Hebrew Bible called Neviim/Prophets, the prophet Malachi prophesies the conditions that will indicate the fulfillment of God's vision for a perfect world (put more traditionally, the conditions that will immediately precede the Messiah's coming): that the hearts of parents will turn to their children and the hearts of children will turn to their parents. (3:24)  I can't imagine that Malachi was referring to only two generations relating to each other, but rather, that such a condition might more likely include three (and if one is truly lucky, four generations.)  If so, it serves as a powerful antidote to the traditional notion that the sins of the parents essentially carry to their children and even grandchildren to the third or fourth generation. (see Exodus 34:7)  Understanding our own role as parents as an opportunity to not only to impact the lives of our own children but to transform negative feelings of the past toward our own parents into positive ones might serve as profound treatment for the very real world condition of grudge holding that so many people hold against their own parents, even when they are no longer children themselves. 

Perhaps if those of us who are blessed to become parents are able to turn our hearts not only toward our own children but also to our own parents at once, we really will create a chain of parents and children, connecting  past, present, and future throughout the continuum of generations, and indeed, such a reality might truly stand as a measure for when our world might be fully imbued with wholeness and love.

*I refer here to a cadre of general parenting habits/choices within a range of normative parenting -- this is in no way meant to address patterns of sickness and/or abuse that some people may experience or perpetuate.  If you are seeking resources on breaking the chain of violence or abuse, please click here for some helpful resources.