27 Days of the Omer. That is 3 Weeks and 6 Days.

Pixabay paulbr75

Yesod shebe Netzach
Foundation and Bonding within Endurance
Sunday evening May 19 and Monday May 20

Jonah walks like he’s on stage, and not just any stage. Jonah walks as though he were in a musical and any moment the opening bars of a song will pour from the sky.  Jonah walks like Chaim Topol as Tevye and Barbara Streisand as Fanny Brice . . . or probably as Miss Marmelstein.
Surrounded by children, Jonah is telling them his story.

“I knew my task, children. The work of a prophet is to bring the word of God to people and to represent people before God.” Jonah sighs. “But when God told me to go to the city of Nineveh . . . Nineveh, children! It was the last place on earth I wanted to go.”

“My teacher says it was one of the most beautiful cities ever. In the whole wide world,” says a child.
“Why didn’t you want to go there?” asks another.

“Children, how are your imaginations?” Jonah asks.
“My imagination is very good,” says a child. “I can imagine what’s happening in a book even if there are no pictures in it.”
“My imagination is good, too,” says another. “I make up my own stories.”
“When I’m walking in my neighborhood, I imagine there are still dinosaurs,” says a young one. “And then there are dinosaurs.”

Jonah nods approvingly.
“Imagine, children, the river in ancient Assyria called the Tigris and on the east bank, across from the modern city of Mosul in Iraq, there is the city Nineveh and the symbol of that city is a fish inside a house. When King Sennacherib of the Neo-Assyrian empire ruled, this city was transformed with new streets, parks for people to gather, and a canal system.”

“What’s a canal system?” the children want to know.

Jonah thinks for a moment so he can give them an answer that makes sense. He asks, “Can anyone please find me a stick?” The children do and he kneels down and digs a curving line in the dirt. It is about a foot long. Then he draws three lines coming out from that center line. “Imagine, children, that this is a river,” he says pointing to the center line. Opening his water bottle, Jonah pours water into his river and as the water flows down it some of the water also diverts into the lines he drew coming out from it. “These,” he points to the smaller lines, “are like canals. Of course, the water seeps into the ground very quickly here in our model, but in the great city of Nineveh the canals were built so that they would hold water instead.”

“You mean they were lined with cement?” asks a child.
“Something like that. The canals carried water throughout the city for people to drink and bathe and also to water the beautiful flowers in the public parks and gardens. Can you picture the gardens?”
“Yes!” shouts a child. “They are so colorful!”
“And there are fountains!” squeals another gleefully.
“And so many birds!” adds another.

Jonah hands the stick back to the child who found it and stands. “Yes,” he says. They are and there are. There were also temples and the temples were like jewels. The palace had over 80 rooms. Some of the doorways were guarded by tremendous figures of winged lions or bulls with human heads that weighed 30 tons. They had been transported from quarries - large deep pits - over 30 miles away. They had to be lifted 66 feet up once they arrived at the palace site. There were 9,843 feet of palace reliefs - pictures carved in stone documenting every step of the construction of the statues including a picture that shows 44 men towing a particularly large one.” 

“And you didn’t want to go?” asks a child incredulously.
“And I didn’t want to go!” exclaims Jonah. “Nineveh was extraordinarily beautiful, it’s true, but it came with a catch. The way the Assyrians treated anyone who wasn’t Assyrian was brutal!”
“You thought if you went they might kill you?” a child asks.
“Oh, they were already killing people. That was one reason God wanted to send me. Those stone carvings in the walls also included many battle scenes, impalings, soldiers parading the spoils of war before them, boasting of King Sennacherib’s violent conquests. There is an inscription, “And Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke . . . I shut him up in Jerusalem, his royal city like a caged bird. Earthworks I threw up against him and anyone coming out of his gate I made pay for his crime. His cities which I had plundered I had cut off from his land.”   

The children are quiet. Stunned.

“How could such a beautiful place be built by such cruel people?” a child wants to know.
Jonah let the question hang in the air for a while.
“Sadly,” he says gently, “There are many such places made by many such people.”

I’m still listening, but I can’t help but think about how learning about history tends to be brutal and is likely, when we take it seriously, to relieve us of our most cherished illusions about the past. King Solomon was no King Sennacherib, but it also took a lot of resources and enslaved labor to build the Temple. 

“No, children,” Jonah continues, “I did not want to go to Nineveh. To be honest, since that was basically all God wanted to talk about, ‘Go. Go to Nineveh, Jonah,’ ‘Jonah, go to Nineveh’, ‘Oh, did I mention Nineveh, Jonah?’ I also didn’t particularly want to talk with God just then, either. Sometimes it’s like that.”

“But you are a prophet?” a child asks.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t want to talk with God?” asks a child.
“That’s right.”
The children look at one another speechless.
“What happened then?” one of them whispers.

“Well, I ran. I went to Jaffa and set sail for Tarshish. I know it was foolish, but I thought maybe the cell service wouldn’t be so good out on the water, so to speak. God kept after me, though. A tremendous storm arose, and a storm on the sea is really something. Waves rose and crashed around us. Our boat was tossed around and the sailors figured out this was all because of me. I took responsibility and told them to throw me overboard! But they wouldn’t, they believed there had to be another way.”

“Were you scared?” asks a child.
“Terrified!” exclaims Jonah.
“Were you mad at God?” asks another. “You know, for chasing after you and making a terrible storm.”
Jonah thinks about that a moment. “Yes and no,” he decides. “I wasn’t exactly surprised that God followed me out onto the sea. And the storm,” Jonah shrugs, “the storm was a storm.”
“What happened?” a child asks.
“They threw me overboard!” laughs Jonah.
“It was . . . funny?” asks a child.
Jonah clears his throat. “Not at the time,” he says more soberly. “But, look, this was all a very long time ago and what I didn’t know then I know now.”
“What do you know now?”
“That I would be swallowed by a very, very large fish for three days and three nights.”
“WHAT?” exclaim the children.
“I know, right?” laughs Jonah. He tilts and shakes his head. 
“Didn’t you say the fish is in the symbol for the city of Nineveh?” asks a child.
“I did,” Jonah nods. “God is many things and not without a sense of humor.”

“What did you do inside the fish?” a child wants to know.
“Well, there aren’t many things one can do inside a very, very large fish under a very deep sea. Also, the fish wasn’t much of a conversationalist.”
“What does that mean?”
“The fish didn’t really want to talk,” says Jonah. The children nod. They know fish, too. Generally speaking, with Nemo and Dori being notable exceptions, fish are not typically big talkers. “While in the big fish, I decided I did need to actually talk with God. We had a good chat. God was still in it with me, and, albeit begrudgingly, I was still in it with God. Eventually I agreed to go to Nineveh. I mean, there wasn’t really a way around it, and if you can imagine the smell in the belly of a fish I’m sure you can understand that I was ready to get out of there.”
The children hold their noses.
“Being swallowed by a very big fish is a pretty cool time-out, though,” one child reflects.

“How did you get out of the fish?” a child wonders.
“I was vomited right up!” says Jonah.
 “Ewwwwwww!” squeal the children.

“God was like, ‘For real, this time, Jonah’  . . . so I went to Nineveh. It was everything everyone said it was. Beauty and cruelty all woven together. I wonder sometimes if every large and powerful empire has been. Anyway, shockingly, the people believed me when I said they would be overthrown if they didn’t do better and they fasted, the king prayed and repented and sure enough God spared the city that time. Not later, though, by the way. Nineveh is nothing but an archeologist's dream, now. The many peoples they plundered eventually rose up against them and defeated them.”

“That was good, right?” asks a child. “That they were sorry?”
“Sure. I guess.” Jonah becomes quiet and the children look at each other.
“You guess?” 
“I need some help, can two of you hold up your hands, please?” Two children do and Jonah holds up his own. “On the one hand,” he says holding out his left hand, “God said if they were sorry and promised not to be so cruel the city would be saved and it was, so God did what God said God would do, which is good.” Jonah holds out his right hand, “On the other hand, the things they’d already done seemed to me to be beyond forgiveness. They had hurt so many people, and so many of them Jewish people.” Jonah nods toward one of the volunteers, “On the other hand,” the child holds up one hand, “God knows people’s inclinations, what they are likely to do, and God didn’t seem to do anything to change them and make them likely to do better.” The child holds up the other hand, “On the other hand, how many chances should a person or a people get?” The child with their hands up looks expectantly at the other volunteer who holds up one hand, “On the other hand God forgives, the whole world is built on forgiveness, and thank God for that.” The child holds up the sixth hand, “On the other hand,” says Jonah, and his voice breaks. He lowers his hands and so do the children who volunteered. 

“I’m confused,” says a child.
“It’s confusing,” agrees Jonah.
“I liked the bit about the very, very big fish,” a child offers. 
Jonah lets out a one-breath, short burst of a laugh and nods. 
“Me, too,” he says. “Inside the very, very big fish it all made more sense.” 

Jonah reaches out his hands and two of the children take them and stand next to him, their small hands in his large ones. 
“Let’s keep walking, children. We are halfway there, but we still have a long way to go. Who’s turn is it to tell a story?”
“Oh, me!” a child pipes up. “I have a good one!”

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 שִׁבְעָה וְעֶשְׂריִם יוֹם
שֶׁהֵם  שְׁלֹשָׁה שָׁבוּעוֹת וְשִׁשָּׁה יָמִים לָעוֹמֶר.

Hayom shivah v‘esrim yom
shehem shlosha shavuot v’shisha yamim la’omer

Today is twenty-seven days of the Omer.
That is three weeks and six days of the Omer.
Sefirat HaOmer Blessing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hCiPI1tMQ