Six Days of the Omer
Pixabay Aca Pio pin
Yesod of Chesed
Bonding/Foundation of Lovingkindness
Sunday evening and Monday
Evening April 28 and Day of April 29
Truth be told, I’m feeling a little sluggish as we make our way today, and my mind continues to turn over a question that rose in me during the first seder this year:
In an era when our Jewish foundation often feels so tenuous, how is it that it is also solid enough, resilient enough, that we can swap out the symbols - beet for shankbone, for example, and bring our own imagination to the story so much so that while it would be unrecognizable to our Talmudic ancestors it grows only stronger for us?
I would love to talk about this with Abraham, but he’s wandered a bit from the group. He does that sometimes. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he walks fast and often ends up near the front. Then he stops and just . . . looks. I don’t know at what. Do you? I only have ideas of what he might be seeing that the rest of us don’t as he gazes across the expanse.
He’s almost never alone when he walks, of course. Typically not with Sarah or Hagar, not with Keturah, not with Isaac or Ishmael, he doesn’t usually walk with them, but he is always connecting with someone. Always reaching out to someone, even if just for a mile or two before he moves ahead and walks with someone else. In these pauses, though, he is by himself. Or maybe he isn’t . . . exactly . . . by himself.
We all walk by and eventually he is at the end again. Until he’s not. Until he has leap-frogged his way back to the front, walking-companion by walking-companion. Despite what everyone says, he always seems unsettled to me. Always searching for something. Always in between.
Maybe, standing there, arms crossed . . . maybe he’s thinking about the wells.
See, when he walked the dunes of Be’er Sheva nearly 4,000 years ago, Abraham dug wells. Of course, they aren’t there anymore. According to the Torah, the well originally dug by Abraham had to be re-dug already in the time of his son Isaac. Never mind that one of the likely 1,000 year old wells near Be’er Sheva is visited as if it were the original by his descendents: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Be’er Sheva with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin he asked to visit Abraham’s Well, the site where a peace treaty had been signed between Abraham and King Abimelech thousands of years before. These wells, all of the wells of our stories, served as a kind of café. A place for business transactions, to find a spouse, to develop ideas, or, as the tour guides tell it, a place for Abraham to talk about his foundational beliefs. Wells were places to share stories and create foundational narratives.
Yesod is the foundation upon which God built the world - the foundational story, one might say. It is also the liminal place of transition between the sephirot above and the reality below. The light of the upper sephirot gather in Yesod and are channeled to Malkut making Yesod very different from an ordinary foundation. It doesn’t simply rest beneath the higher levels of the structure. It encompasses the whole structure. As the substructure of everything it means to be human, it must include and permeate . . . everything it means to be human. Yesod is about creating bonds between the layers, Yesod is about us bonding with one another and with our Source.
That’s really heady stuff.
Abraham is walking with us, but, of course, he is not only ours, and I’m aware that today, as I walk, I’m not sure what to make of that. I have no conclusion, only more questions. But today isn’t only the day of Yesod. It’s the day of Yesod shebe Chesed, the day of this kind of foundation within loving-kindness. I’m genuinely not sure how to think about that, but there is something here in the liminality, in the foundation not being beneath but being a whole, in the permeating quality of the foundation, in Abraham being a foundation, in the wells, in their impermanence, in the stories we tell at them, in all of the stories we tell, in the foundation being resilient and strong enough that the symbols are truly only symbols and therefore exchangeable - changeable, and the loving-kindness - the choice of loving-kindness . . .
See you at Sinai.
How to say the blessing:
Choose the language that resonates with you the most.
Non-gendered Hebrew based on grammar system built by Lior Gross and Eyal Rivlin,
available at www.nonbinaryhebrew.com
Gender Expansive:
הִנְנִי מוּכָנֶה וּמְזֻמֶּנֶה …
Hineni muchaneh um’zumeneh …
Here I am, ready and prepared …
Feminine:
הִנְנִי מוּכָנָה וּמְזֻמֶּנֶת …
Hineni muchanah um’zumenet …
Here I am, ready and prepared …
Masculine:
הִנְנִי מוּכָן וּמְזֻמַן …
Hineni muchan um’zuman …
Here I am, ready and prepared …
All Continue:
… לְקַיֵּם מִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה שֶׁל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב בַּתּוֹרָה וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם מִמָּחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת
מִיּוֹם הַבִיאֳכֶם אֶת עֹמֶר הַתְּנוּפָה שֶׁבַע שַׁבָּתוֹת תְּמִימוֹת תִּהְיֶנָה. עַד מִמָּחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת
הַשְּׁבִיעִית תִּסְפְּרוּ חֲמִשִּׁים יוֹם וְהִקְרַבְתֶם מִנְחָה חֲדָשָה לַיי
… lekayyem mitzvat aseh shel sefirat ha-omer, kemo shekatuv batorah: us’fartem lakhem mimacharat hashabbat, miyom havi’akhem et omer hat’nufah, sheva shabbatot temimot tih’yena, ad mimacharat hashabbat hash’vi’it tis’peru khamishim yom, vehikravtem minkha khadasha l’adonai.
… to fulfill the mitzvah of counting the Omer, as it is written in the Torah: And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbat, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the wave-offering, you shall count seven full weeks. Until the day after the seventh Shabbat, you shall count fifty days, until you bring a new gift to the Eternal.
Gender-Expansive Language for God
בְּרוּכֶה אַתֶּה יי אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ חֵי הָעוֹלָמִים אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשֶׁנוּ בְּמִצַוְּתֶהּ וְצִוֶּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר
Brucheh ateh Adonai, Eloheinu khei ha’olamim, asher kidshenu bemitzvoteh v’tzivenu al sefirat ha’omer.
Blessed are You, Eternal, Life of all worlds who has made us holy with Their commandments, and commanded us to count the Omer.
Feminine Language for God
בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ יָ-הּ אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ רוּחַ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוְּתָהּ וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר
Bruchah at Yah, ru’akh ha’olam asher kidshanu bemitzvotah v’tzivanu al sefirat ha’omer
Blessed are You, Yah, our God, Spirit of the universe who has made us holy with Her commandments, and commanded us to count the Omer.
Masculine Language for God
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam asher kidshanu bemitzvotav v’tzivanu al sefirat ha’omer.
Blessed are You, LORD, our God, ruler of the universe who has made us holy with His commandments, and commanded us to count the Omer.
Count the day and week
Today is the _________ day, which is _________ weeks and _________ days of the Omer.
Today:
הַיּוֹם שִׁשָׁה יָמִים לָעֹֽמֶר.
Hayom shisha yamim la-omer.
Today is six days of the Omer!
Sefirat HaOmer Blessing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hCiPI1tMQ