Image: This is only a drill. Photo of drill by Mitch Wright on Pixabay.com.
You resolved that this year, you are going to keep the Counting of the Omer all the way from Passover to Shavuot, and then somehow, somewhere, you realized that you lost count.
Perhaps it was just a single blessing – after dinner, you go to say the blessing and the number suddenly brings the awareness that you FORGOT it last night.
Or perhaps you see something about it online (like this article?) and realize that in fact you don’t even remember when or how you lost count.
What to do? Give up? Sigh and think, “I’m a bad Jew”?
Never!
I would like to introduce a word to your Jewish vocabulary: the word “PRACTICING.”
As in “I am PRACTICING to count the Omer.”
Perhaps this wasn’t the year for a full-on, complete Counting of the Omer.
Perhaps you aren’t quite ready for that yet.
That’s OK. You are not sitting around doing nothing. You are practicing to count the omer.
And like anyone who is learning an art, you have made mistakes. No big deal! How will you get better at it? By practicing.
So pick up with today, recheck how to do it, and get back to practicing!
Some tools:
The Homer Calendar – All the tools you need to count the omer, plus added humor.
Some people like to use their smartphone for reminders. Go to your source for apps, and search “Omer Counter” or “Count the Omer” or just “Omer.” I used to have an Android app I recommended, but it was improved into uselessness, so I don’t recommend it anymore. Check out the apps, and if you find one you like, recommend it in the Comments section, please!
Mizrach Omer Calender, by Moses H. Henry, Cincinnati, 1850.
Counting the Omer is a mitzvah (commandment) through which we count the days from Passover to Shavuot. It’s an ancient custom that takes us from the giddy joy of Passover to the serious business of receiving the Torah on Shavuot. It begins on the 2nd night of Passover and continues for 49 days until the Festival of Shavuot. (To learn more about the holiday and its history, click on the links. I’m sticking to “how to” in this article. To learn why we count the Omer, read Why Count the Omer.)
The procedure is simple. Every evening sometime between sundown and midnight we say a blessing:
Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of Time and Space, who sanctifies us with Your commandments and has commanded us to count the Omer.
Then you do the actual count:
Today is the ____ day of the Omer.
After six days, you include the weeks as well:
Today is _____ days, which is _____ week and _____ days of the Omer.
For instance, on the 48th (next to last) day of the Omer, you would say: “Today is the 48th day of the Omer, which is 6 weeks and 6 days of the Omer.”
(If you have learned your Hebrew numbers, this is a GREAT opportunity to practice both your cardinal and ordinal numbers.)
The target is to count each day of the Omer in the time between sundown and midnight. Now, like any good game, there are penalties if you miss the target.
1. If I forget to count until after midnight (say, I wake up and realize, “Gosh, I forgot to count the Omer last night!”) I can still COUNT but you cannot say the blessing. On the next night, I go back to saying the blessing and counting as usual.
2. If I completely forget for 24 hours – that is, forgets to count until the next evening – then I am still obligated to count, but I don’t get to bless anymore.
The object is to get all the way through to Shavuot – to count the complete Omer! – without missing an evening count and blessing.
Some readers may find it a little scandalous that I frame this as a game, but I find it a useful way to think about counting the Omer when learning how to do it. There are many beautiful spiritual practices that are based on counting the Omer, but it is hard to do those effectively until you’ve got the basics. Llearning the basic practice works well as a game.
What’s the point? In a word, mindfulness. It took me years to get all the way through the Omer with the practice intact, every day, every blessing said on time. I’m a scattered, not-detail-oriented person, and I grew a lot of self-discipline from my repeated attempts. (I know, that sounds so boring: but seriously it paid off in my ability to focus and deliver on routines: for instance, posting nearly daily to a blog!) Counting is also the gateway to a number of spiritual practices such as meditations on the Sefirot, the different emanations of the Divine in Kabbalistic practice.)
Helps in Counting the Omer: There are some great smartphone apps and computer apps. Search “omer” in the appropriate places for your operating system and hardware. You can also get “omer calendars” and “omer counters” from Jewish bookstores.
I encourage you to give this mitzvah a try. It’s joys seem very simple (and perhaps minimal, to a newcomer) but it is a gateway to all sorts of cool stuff. If you didn’t begin on the 2nd night of Passover, no worries – while you won’t be doing a complete count this year, you can still “jump on” for the ride and learn!
When I was a child growing up in Tennessee, I used to count the mosquito bites on my body. I could tell you exactly how many I had at any given time, where they were, and which ones itched the most. I could not escape the bugs, but I could keep a perfect accounting of what they were doing to me.
I was on the watch for every slightest itch. I knew when one bit me, and I knew when the bite began to tingle. I paid careful attention to each of them. Because I was always thinking about them, I could not resist scratching at them. As a result, I was miserable most of the summer.
It was years before it dawned on me that some of the misery was the fault of the mosquitoes, and some of it was my own. By focussing all my waking attention on those bug bites, I drove myself crazy. As an adult, I learned that the less attention I paid to them, the less they bothered me. Now I will sometimes get a bothersome bite, but mostly, I notice them, chalk them up to the fact that this world is not created just for my comfort, and go about my business.
The same can be true of hurts from other people. We can choose to keep careful track of them and to catalog every twinge. Some of us monitor every slight like I did those bug bites, focussing attention on them, picking at them, scratching at them, and complaining to the world about our catalog of grudges and woe.
The good news is that unlike the mosquitoes, there’s a cure. The cure is the month of Elul, the month for apologies and mending broken relationships. When someone comes to me and says, “I’m sorry I never thanked you for that favor” I have the choice to accept the apology. If there is something I need to make things right, I can ask for it. I don’t have to trust that person again, if they are not trustworthy, but I can still be healed of that bothersome little wound.
I can also choose to cherish the anger. I can refuse an apology, and say that nothing will ever make it right. And that may even be true: some hurts go very deep. But do I want to carry it forever? Do I really want to keep scratching at it? Or do I want to make room for some healing, not for the person who offended, but for myself?
