20 Days of the Omer. That is 2 Weeks and 6 Days.
Woman Playing Frame Drum, Iron Age II, ninth–eighth century BCE. Collection of The National Maritime Museum, Haifa. © Zev Radovan/BibleLandPictures.com. From The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1, Ancient Israel, from Its Beginnings through 332 BCE.
Yesod shebe Tiferet
Foundation within Compassion and Harmony
Sunday evening May 12 and Monday May 13
Early this morning, still in Day 19, I woke up thinking about psalm 150.
הַלְלוּהוּ בְּתֵקַע שׁוֹפָר הַלְלוּהוּ בְּנֵבֶל וְכִנּוֹר
Celebrate God with blasts of horn (shofar), with harp and lyre.
הַלְלוּהוּ בְּתֹף וּמָחוֹל הַלְלוּהוּ בְּמִנִּים וְעֻגָב
Acclaim God with timbrel and dance, with lute and pipe.
הַלְלוּהוּ בְצִלְצְלֵי־שָׁ֑מַע הַֽלְלוּהוּ בְּֽצִלְצְלֵי תְרוּעָה
Praise God with resounding, loud clashing cymbals.
כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַלְלוּ־יָהּ
Let all that breathes cheer - Halleluia.
Usually this psalm invites me to bring all of my instruments to a day, or if they aren’t all available to find those that are, or if not even one is available to remember my breath is enough . . . just being here in this day is enough. This morning I wondered what it would be like, what it could be like, to flip it and watch for the instruments that find me today instead.
What are the resounding cymbals of this day?
What are the timbrels?
What are the pipes?
That’s how I met Avraham Sharon.
To be completely honest, I don’t particularly like him and I doubt he likes me.
In 1927 he made aliyah, he moved to Israel, and studied music and composed melodies for nine poems by Rachel the Poetess. At the time he was a staunch believer in Hebrew Labor, and I don’t want to get into that with him today. The Hebrew Labor movement was the idea that Jewish labor was vital for the national revival process, that we could build a new type of Jewish society by building everything with our own hands rather than create a typical colonial society and exploiting Arab labor. Philosophically, manual labor was considered good therapy for us as individuals and as a people. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was a champion of the idea. I can see the merit in it, but Avraham Sharon was also a member of the Jewish Work Guards, an organization whose members stood outside orchards and blocked entry to Arab workers.
Anyway, Avraham Sharon is also a scholar of the music of ancient Israel, and when he overheard me talking with friends about the instruments that might be found in a day he waited for them to move on and then struck up a brief exchange.
“Did you know there were twenty-four choral groups in King Solomon’s Temple?” he asks me.
“I didn’t,” I say.
“Twenty-four choral groups and two-hundred eighty-eight musicians, and twenty-one weekly services,” he continues. “It tells us so in I Chronicles 25:7.”
Of course, I have to see for myself and right there in verses 1-31 it lists the 288 people who sing and make music.
“And anyway,” says Avraham Sharon, “there they are, warming up.”
Walking in our general direction is a mass of almost three hundred singers and musicians. Their instruments sound like the chatter of an orchestra before the performance.
Avraham wanders off.
The day continues, and as I walk the Temple musicians disperse and find old friends and family they haven’t seen in almost a year.
As the sun begins to set and Day 19 becomes Day 20, I hear new instruments, different voices. I look more closely and see the Palestinian and Israeli teens and young adults of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus. They’ve just sung the closing song of the Joint Memorial Day Ceremony. Tonight we enter Yom HaZikaron and in a few days we remember the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. In between is Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s independence day.
Their bodies sway together, their heads incline toward one another in conversation, a few are holding hands. Some are still singing. I hear them.
The olive tree sheds tears of oil for everyone . . .my family and my neighborhood are on the news, and you’re still speaking in our name . . .they say it’s do or die, but when the day is done, what will be left behind? . . . only you and me . . . we live within the wars . . . we feel each other’s pain . . . because of you I know we must choose another way . . .
Tiferet means harmony and beauty and it also means compassion.
Compassion literally means ‘to suffer together.’
Some say it is the feeling that bubbles up when we connect with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Empathy is more generally the ability to feel with someone, to take the perspective of another. For us to feel compassion, we must also feel pain.
Dr. Dacher Keltner who wrote Born to Be Good and collaborated on the Pixar movie Inside Out, is Mexican-American, not Jewish, not connected with the Land as far as I know, and I don’t see him here walking with us. I have no idea if he’s ever even heard of counting the Omer or Sinai. He knows a lot about these sefirot, though, from a scientific perspective. He teaches that we can see our natural connectivity and compassionate instincts in how our brains react to pain. Physical pain lights up the anterior cingulate region of our brains. Witnessing someone else in pain lights up the same part of our cortex and also the amygdala - the brain’s threat detector. Another area lights up, too. It’s a very old part of the mammalian nervous system called the periaqueductal gray, deep in the center of the brain. In mammals, this region is associated with nurturing. We don’t only see suffering as a threat, we also instinctively want to alleviate that suffering through nurture.
Once compassion is activated, our heart rate slows down, we secrete oxytocin - the bonding hormone, and regions of the brain linked with caregiving and pleasure light up, often resulting in our desire to approach and care for other people.
In our autonomic nervous systems, we have the vagus nerve. Our vagus nerve coordinates the relationship between breathing and calming and is related to immune response. It turns out the more pride we feel in a particular team, the weaker our vagus nerve response, while the more we feel connected in common humanity the stronger the response.
Yesod means foundation, and the foundation of our bodies is connection and capacity for connection. Vibrations of compassion move like music through our nervous system.
Compassion, continues Dr. Kelter, is contagious. And he’s not the only one to say so.
Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have been studying a community in Massachusetts and they found that among adults everything is contagious. If your neighbor eats a certain diet, you are likely to. If a person a couple of blocks away starts smoking, other people start smoking, and you end up smoking. If you become angry it spreads to your family and through your social networks. Good news, positive and prosocial emotions are the most contagious. The research says they spread like wildfire.
“You know,” begins Rabbi Barry Leff of the Neshamah Center, joining me as I walk, “compassion can be based on many different things. Some religious people are compassionate because they believe it’s what God is telling them to do. Some people are compassionate because it intellectually seems to be the right thing to do. But true compassion is based on real caring for other people.”
I notice a group of women with the salt of the Red Sea in their hair and the sand of its shoreline on the hems of their skirts. They are carrying frame drums. They aren’t playing them right now. They seem to be watching the Jerusalem Youth Chorus teens, just like I am. I notice for the first time how young some of them are, teens themselves. One young woman turns to an elder who nods with permission and she takes the hand of another young woman and skips across to the teens of the chorus.
“I think she is one of the young Egyptian women who served Batya,” I say.
“When she went down from her father’s palace to rescue Moses?” Rabbi Leff asks.
“I think so,” I say.
“Who is that with her?” he asks.
“I think it’s one of Miriam’s nieces,” I say. “One of Aaron and Elisheva’s daughters.”
“What makes you say so?” he wants to know.
I shrug and smile, “Nothing in particular. It’s the story I want today. I want to be walking with Miriam’s niece and Batya’s maiden who just ran into some Jewish and Palestinian kids from the Jerusalem Youth Chorus as we all make our way toward Sinai together.”
The chorus begins to sing again.
Miriam’s niece and Batya’s former servant raise their frame drums.
Feet keep time on the ground around us.
Grandparents and parents and siblings and children cry.
Our broken hearts keep breaking.
Voices rise and fall, turn and join, collide and harmonize and become the foundation of a new story.
בעזרת השם
B’ezrat HaShem.
With God’s help.
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 עֶשְׂריִם יוֹם
שֶׁהֵם שְׁנֵי שָׁבוּעוֹת וְשִׁשָּׁה יָמִים לָעוֹמֶר.
Hayom esrim asar yom
shehem sh’nei shavuot v’shishah yamim la’omer
Today is twenty days of the Omer.
That is two weeks and six days of the Omer.
Sefirat HaOmer Blessing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hCiPI1tMQ