BH
Shalom. Today is forty-eight days, which are six weeks and six days of the Omer. You know what that means? Tonight, we wrap up the count and tomorrow night usher in the holiday of Shavuot!
Shavuot, for whatever reasons, seems to have been lost to the larger Jewish community. However for me, this holiday holds some of the most powerful lessons for the Jewish people.
We as a Jewish people are standing at the foot of Mount Sinai once again. We are humbled, pure, holy and ready. What has gotten us to this point? The Omer count of course.
Through the process of counting the Omer, Jewish people today have the distinct honor and ability to “re-live” the amazing spiritual journey our ancestors trekked many centuries ago. Each day, refining our bodies and souls to recommit to the greatest thing - even greater than sliced bread - the Holy Torah!
The process takes us through a journey, each day inching forward toward this amazing goal.
What’s all this about counting? We know to count the Omer, but also, in this weeks Parsha, Vayikra, we read about a lot of counting. G-d commands Moshe (Moses) to take a census of the Jewish People in the desert. Down to the last man. (The census was to determine which people were eligible to be drafted to war, thus only men were counted.)
So, why this fixation on counting? So lets break it down; the Jewish tradition tells us of many great leaders - Abraham, Moses, Joshua, King David, Queen Esther, Deborah, and more. In fact as a nation, we have thousands of great women and men that we know well by name. The truth of the matter is though, as great as these leaders were, they were also - simply - individuals.
This is the unique message that Vayikra and Shavuot teach us. Hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the Torah are mentioned in a group - Bnei Yisroel. But here, and in several other points we are assured that each of these people are an individual! They are counted, each one for her/himself. Each one has a mission and each is G-ds gem.
Each woman today can light Shabbat candles, exactly as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah did! Every woman has the ability to make their mark in the world.
For men it's the same - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, King David, King Solomon and Mordechai in a room won’t create a minyan. They are only nine! One little bar-mitzvah boy, unlearned and unknown can complete that minyan in the same exact fashion as Moses could. Simply, as the tenth man.
We are all in this together, we received the Torah together at Sinai. We each individually stood there and witnessed great miracles. We - you, me, him, her. Not we as in “us” or “them.”
With the Omer counting coming to an end, it's time to get ready to witness that great miracle once again. We have counted our way up. Tomorrow night every single one of us has the ability to receive the Torah b’simcha ub’pnimiut (happily and with internal meaning).
For this reason, the Lubavitcher Rebbe launched a campaign to round up people into the synagogue to hear the Torah reading on Shavuot - the reading of the Ten Commandements. Because these commandments are everyone’s. They belong to each of us to mold our personal lives by.
Its our Torah - “Five Books of Moses” is just a stage name. Don’t believe it!
I encourage you to find somewhere to go to hear the reading on Sunday morning. (Chabad.org has a listing.)
Kabbolos Hatorah B’simcha Ub’pnimius!
