Counting the Omer
There is a mitzvah mentioned in this week’s Torah portion, that is relevant to our current time period; the days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuos. It is known as Sefiras Ha’omer, the counting of the Omer. The verses read as follows:
Leviticus 23:15-17
You shall count for yourselves- from the morrow of the rest day, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving- seven weeks, they shall be complete. Until the morrow of the seventh week you shall count, fifty days; and you shall offer a new meal offering to Hashem. From your dwelling places you shall bring bread that shall be waved, two loaves made of two tenth ephah, they shall be fine flour, they shall be baked leavened, first offerings to Hashem.
From these verses we derive that there is a mitzvah to count the days between the holiday of Passover, when we marched forth in freedom from Egyptian bondage, to the holiday of Shavuos, when we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. When the Torah mentions the start point of our counting, “From the morrow of the rest day”, it refers to the day after the first day of Passover, the day upon which a special offering was brought in the Temple, the Omer offering. This was an offering brought from barley, and only after it was offered, were the Jewish people allowed to eat from the new crop of grain that had grown that year. Once the counting of 49 days is complete, we celebrate the holiday of Shavuos, on the fiftieth day, and on it, we bring another unique offering, one of fine wheat flour.
To fulfill this mitzvah, we count each of the 49 days. Since the Torah speaks of counting days and it also speaks of counting seven weeks, we make sure to count both the days and the weeks. So, for example, on day 25 of the omer, the counting will go as follows: Today is 25 days which is 3 weeks and four days in the omer.
The meaning behind the mitzvah
There is a book written called the Sefer Ha’Chinuch. In it, Rabbi Aharon Halevi, counts all of the 613 mitzvahs in the Torah and offers insight into why we are commanded to observe each particular one. He offers the following explanation for the counting of the Omer:
Sefer Ha’Chinuch Parshas Emor Mitzvah 306
The main essence of the Jewish people is the Torah. It was for the sake of the Torah that heaven and earth were created. This was the main reason for us to be redeemed and go forth from Egyptian slavery; for us to receive the Torah at Sinai and abide by it. The gift of getting the Torah was a more significant event for us than being freed from servitude. Since the moment we got the Torah is so important to us, and it was the whole purpose of leaving Egypt, therefore we count from the day after we left Egypt until the day that we received the Torah. We count to show our great anticipation and excitement to receive the Torah; our source of greatness. For when we count toward something, we demonstrate that we are looking forward to it.
There are a number of questions to be asked about the counting of the Omer. I’d like to present a long list of questions, and then offer the answers:
Questions:
- If we are counting from the Exodus until the day we got the Torah, then why don’t we start from the first day of Passover, which was when we actually left Egypt?
- Why do we count by referencing the Omer offering that was brought? It didn’t play any significant role in either the Exodus or the receiving of the Torah?
- We know that when we count in anticipation of something, we usually count down toward it. Think of a rocket ship about to blast off: We countdown from 10. Think of a young man and woman counting the days from their engagement to the wedding; they will be counting down the day. So why don’t we start with 49, and say “There are 49 days left until Shavuos, and then 48 days left”, and so on? Instead, we count the days from the Omer, starting with number 1.
- By both the Omer offering brought on the second day of Passover, and the fine wheat flour offering brought on Shavuos, the Torah describes a “waving”. The Kohen, the priest who served in the Temple, took the grain offerings and waved them around in all directions. What was the purpose of this waving?
- Most grain offerings brought in the Temple came from wheat, considered “king” of all grains. Barley was often used as animal feed. Why did the Omer offering come specifically from barley?
- The Omer offering was brought on the second day of Passover, the 16th of Nissan. Until that day, all grain from the new crop could not be consumed. Why was this offering permitting the new grain brought specifically on the 16th of NIssan?
- There is a midrash that tells us the following: “Says Rabbi Yochanan: The mitzvah of counting the Omer should never be taken lightly. For through the mitzvah of the omer, Abraham and his offspring merited to inherit the land of Israel. The midrash then goes on to recount how through the generations, beginning in the era of the Judges, through the Purim story, the Jewish people merited salvation as a result of observing the mitzvah of Omer. What is so special about this mitzvah?
- The word Omer actually describes a measurement of volume. It is one tenth of an Ephah. Where is the first time in the Torah the measure of an Omer is mentioned?
- There were many kinds of grain offerings brought in the Temple, and most of them contained 1/10 of an Ephah. In other words, just about every grain offering contained an omer of flour, and yet this one brought on the 16th of Nissan from barley is the only one called the Omer offering. Why?
Answers 1-3
Let’s deal with the first three questions. It is actually the Sefer HaChinuch, the one that gave the explanation of the mitzvah, who asks and answers these three. Why do we count from the second day of Passover and not the first? We want the first day of Passover to focus entirely on the great miracle of the Exodus from Egypt. We don’t want to split our attention by dealing with any other ideas, so we wait until the second day. Once we begin our count on the second day, it wouldn’t sound right to count by referencing the second day of Passover. Imagine saying, “today is the first day from the second day of Passover”. It sounds bizarre. So instead we count from the special offering that was brought on that day, the Omer offering so as to also show our gratitude to Hashem at the renewal of our crop. He explains that we don’t want to count down in order to show our great anticipation for Shavuos, the day we got the Torah. If we were to count down, we’d have to say at the beginning of the count that there are 49 days left. Having to acknowledge that the day we are excited about is so far away would be too painful, and that is why we begin our count by saying that there is one day from the Omer. Perhaps you can counter and ask that when we hit the midway point, from day 25 and on, we should start counting down? He answers that once we begin the count with one format, we don’t want to switch it in the middle.
A Deeper Look
In the Torah commentary, Be’er Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Tzvi of Salant, offers more explanation about the Omer, with which he answers the remaining questions.
Let’s go back to the very first time the measurement of the Omer is mentioned in the Torah. In the book of Exodus we are told that shortly after they left Egypt, the Jewish people complained that they were hungry (not much has changed since then, we still complain a lot about food). God promised to feed the nation a miraculous food; Manna, which fell from heaven every morning (except for Shabbos morning).
The verse reads as follows:
Exodus 16:16
This is the matter that Hashem has commanded: Gather from it, for every man according to what he eats- an Omer per person- according to the number of your people, everyone according to whoever is in his tent shall you take.
For the forty years that the Jews were in the desert, Hashem lovingly gave each person one Omer of manna to eat each day. The Midrash and the Zohar (the primary book of Kabbalistic mystical teachings) tell us that there is a connection between the Omer of manna that Hashem gave us in the desert, and the Omer offering that we offer to Hashem on the 16th of Nissan. The Midrash contrasts the two gifts, noting that Hashem gave each and every one of us an omer, but we collectively only offer one Omer to Hashem. Hashem gave us the most miraculous, delicious food, and we give barley, which was usually reserved for animal fodder.
We see that the Omer offering was deeply connected to the manna, the food gifted to us by The Almighty for 40 years. What is that connection?
During the 40 years that the Jews received the Manna, it was clear to them that their sustenance came directly from God. They didn’t need to till soil and plant. They were spared the labors of harvesting and grinding grain into flour. The manna came straight from Heaven ready to eat. The Jews were free to spend their days and their nights in spiritual pursuits, studying the new Torah they had just gotten.
But once the Jewish people entered into the land of Israel, and the Manna stopped falling, we had to engage in regular agriculture. We worked the fields and toiled to produce our food. Now, we are to face a new danger, a blurring of vision. It had once been apparent to us that our sustenance comes from God, but now, we may see only our hard work producing results. Cause and effect. Our effort results in food, with no God in the equation. So convinced of our belief that it’s just the strength and might of our own hand that grants us a living, we may forsake participation in the study of Torah. That is why Hashem told Moshe to fill up a flask of manna, and place it in the innermost sanctum of the Temple for safekeeping. So that in the days of Jeremiah, when the Jews abandoned their connection to Torah study, Jeremiah could use this flask of manna to convince them that they must spend time on the Torah. You see, said Jeremiah, when you engage in Torah, God will have many ways to provide for you, as He did with this flask of manna.
The issue is that the flask of manna, in the inner chamber of the Temple isn’t visible to the nation most of the time. What could serve as a reminder to us that our sustenance comes from God, and that we must spend some of our time studying? That is where the Omer comes in. The Manna lasted the Jewish people until they entered Israel, and then they began eating from the produce of the land. What was the calendar date when they transitioned from Manna to the crop that they worked to make? We are told in the book of Joshua, which details the entry of the Jewish people into the land of Israel, that the date was the 16th of Nissan:
Joshua 5:11-12
They ate from the grain of the land on the day after the Pesach offering, matzos and roasted grain, on this very day. The manna was depleted the following day, when they ate from the grain of the land; there was no longer any manna for the Children of Israel. They ate from the grain of the Land of Canaan that year.
יהושע פרק ה
(יא) וַיֹּ֨אכְל֜וּ מֵעֲב֥וּר הָאָ֛רֶץ מִמָּֽחֳרַ֥ת הַפֶּ֖סַח מַצּ֣וֹת וְקָל֑וּי בְּעֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה:
(יב) וַיִּשְׁבֹּ֨ת הַמָּ֜ן מִֽמָּחֳרָ֗ת בְּאָכְלָם֙ מֵעֲב֣וּר הָאָ֔רֶץ וְלֹא־הָ֥יָה ע֛וֹד לִבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מָ֑ן וַיֹּאכְל֗וּ מִתְּבוּאַת֙ אֶ֣רֶץ כְּנַ֔עַן בַּשָּׁנָ֖ה הַהִֽיא: ס
Once the manna was gone, and they began eating from the grain of the land, on the 16th of Nissan, that is when they needed another reminder indicating the source of our sustenance. That is why the Torah prohibits us from eating from the new crop until we bring the Omer offering. We take the barley grain that we worked so hard to create and we bring it to the Temple. We wave it in all four directions, north, east, west, and south, and then up and down, to demonstrate that this food is a gift granted to us by God who created the world in all directions, and the heavens above and the earth below. Once we clarify this to ourselves, that yes, we worked hard in our fields, but one’s livelihood is ultimately a gift from above, only then can we enjoy the new crop. And we bring this offering on the day that our prior reminder, the manna, ceased. We bring the offering from barley, a grain less noble than wheat, to show that when we recognize the divine source of our sustenance and eat with that in mind, we have the ability to elevate even something as lowly as animal food, into something sublime and spiritual. This is why the offering is called the Omer, just like the sublime food from heaven came as an Omer for each person.
But the Torah didn’t stop with just the Omer offering. Yes, a large crowd assembled the night before the offering, when they harvested the barley, dried it out and ground it up. Yes, most of the people were still in Jerusalem on the 16th of Nissan when the offering was brought on the altar, having just been there to bring the Pesach offering. But, these are just short moments, and perhaps the concept of the Omer, that of divine sustenance, would not have long enough to sink into our minds. That is why we are commanded to count for seven weeks, each day referencing the lesson of the Omer. So as to firmly embed in our hearts and souls, that we eat and live as a result of Hashem’s kindness. Just as that lesson had been clear to us for 40 years in the desert each morning when we collected our Omer of Manna. And we keep this count going, the count that tells us that we must carve out some time from our pursuit to earn a living to study some Torah, until the holiday of Shavuos, the day when the Torah was given to us. This is the great power of the Omer, recognizing that everything we have comes as a gift from above, and as such we must spend some of our time on the task that God asks of us. That is the great merit of this mitzvah in whose merit Abraham was promised the land of Israel for himself and his offspring.
