42 Days of the Omer. That is 6 Weeks.
Hananmariah Depositphotos
Malchut shebe Yesod
Nobility/Sovereignty within Foundation
Monday evening June 3 and Tuesday June 4
וַתֵּ֤רֶד בַּת־פַּרְעֹה֙ לִרְחֹ֣ץ עַל־הַיְאֹ֔ר וְנַעֲרֹתֶ֥יהָ הֹלְכֹ֖ת עַל־יַ֣ד הַיְאֹ֑ר וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֶת־הַתֵּבָה֙ בְּת֣וֹךְ הַסּ֔וּף וַתִּשְׁלַ֥ח אֶת־אֲמָתָ֖הּ וַתִּקָּחֶֽהָ׃
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. Exodus 2:5
וַתִּיטַ֨ב הַנַּעֲרָ֣ה בְעֵינָיו֮ וַתִּשָּׂ֣א חֶ֣סֶד לְפָנָיו֒ וַ֠יְבַהֵ֠ל אֶת־תַּמְרוּקֶ֤יהָ וְאֶת־מָנוֹתֶ֙הָ֙ לָתֵ֣ת לָ֔הּ וְאֵת֙ שֶׁ֣בַע הַנְּעָר֔וֹת הָרְאֻי֥וֹת לָֽתֶת־לָ֖הּ מִבֵּ֣ית הַמֶּ֑לֶךְ וַיְשַׁנֶּ֧הָ וְאֶת־נַעֲרוֹתֶ֛יהָ לְט֖וֹב בֵּ֥ית הַנָּשִֽׁים׃
The girl pleased him and won his favor, and he hastened to furnish her with her cosmetics and her rations, as well as with the seven maids who were her due from the king’s palace; and he treated her and her maids with special kindness in the harem. Esther 2:9
Fourteen people have come up around me.
Seven and seven.
Some of them are walking quietly, some are talking loudly, some are in a signed conversation communicating with their facial expressions as much as their hands . . . a few are laughing.
These are the attendants of Batya and Esther, and today, a day of Malchut before the week of Malchut they have joined me.
As I listen to them reconnect and reminisce, I find myself asking again:
What is malchut, anyway? For that matter, what are these sefirot?
Mysticism isn’t my intellectual dwelling place, so I do a little reading to see what I can discover.
I learn that one way of looking at or understanding the sefirot is as a flow in which the concentrations of energy change, but the motion is constant. We could think of the flow as a river of something coming into being. Malchut, then, is the manifestation or expression of that becoming - actualization.
During the Omer, our journey focuses on seven sefirot, but in Kabbalah there are ten. Ten emanations or illuminations of God’s infinite light as it manifests in creation. Ten channels through which the Essence of the Universe, according to Kabbalah, is revealed. The ten powers of the soul. The ten structural forces of nature.
I am not a Kabbalist.
I am also not a Chasid.
Still, I recognize that I am influenced by this system of Jewish theosophy and mysticism - this doctrine or tradition that believes in creation through emanation and understands the world through the lens of the sefirot - ten creative forces that intervene between the infinite, unknowable “Ein Sof” and our created world. According to this mystical tradition, it is through the sefirot that God created and continues to organize the universe, and it is by influencing them that we cause God to send to Earth forces of compassion or severe judgment.
At least twice a year, celebrating Tu BiShvat and in this time of the Omer I soak in these ideas. As I think about it, during Elul as well.
Maybe I am more influenced by these ideas than I thought. I keep reading.
Eliezer Segal, an extensively published professor of classics and religion, teaches that the right side represents unity, harmony, and benevolence as embodied in Chesed and is associated with bestowing generous goodness on the world. The left side is the side of power and strict justice, embodied in the sefirah of judgment. This is the side of separation and distinction, of awe. The middle column represents the ideal balance of divine mercy and justice, and this harmony is represented in the sefirah of Tiferet which sits midway between the extremes of justice and lovingkindness.
I notice that the extremes are also associated with female and male, making the kabbalistic midway, the ideal balance of divine energy within this system, either both female and male or something between the two. Interesting. Following traditional understanding of this theosophy, Kabbalah recognizes the universe could not survive if it were founded only upon justice or only upon mercy. The ten sefirot are the Divine Crown, Wisdom, Understanding, Lovingkindness/mercy, Justice, Harmony, Endurance/Eternity, Splendor/Humility, Foundation/Bonding, and Sovereignty/Nobility/God’s Presence in the World.
Ten.
But there are seven days of the week, seven maids who serve Esther, and some say seven servants with Batya at the Nile, and seven sefirot of the Omer.
According to Rabbi Naftali Silberberg, on the one hand the Sages tell us the world was created with ten qualities and ten utterances, which the mystics understand to correspond with the ten sefirot. They explain that ten is considered a complete number because every physical object comprises three dimensions. Each dimension is composed of a beginning, an end, and a body. Together with the space it occupies, every entity then has ten components. A life is divided into decades. Ten are required to make a minyan.
On the other hand, he says, the world was created in seven days, each day corresponding with a sefirah, and the creations of each day are a reflection of the divine attribute that dominated that particular day. Seven is also a number of completeness, the completeness of the natural world.
I think about the plus one, the eighth day, the day of miracles.
I keep reading.
The first three sefirot, explains the rabbi, are God’s intellect. The last seven are God’s emotive attributes. Cognition is intensely personal. Even when we are thinking about others, it is “me” who is thinking about “them”. Not only are our thoughts hidden from others, as thoughts they have no impact or dependence on others - only on us, the person thinking them.
It seems according to this way of thinking, emotions require a recipient because emotions are directed at another entity. Rabbi Silberberg offers the example that the attribute of kindness requires someone to receive one’s generosity. Emotion toward someone, he says, typically leads to an impact on that someone. Intellect, he says, leads to emotions - positive to positive and negative to negative. Therefore only the seven divine emotional traits are directly involved in creating the world, but God’s wisdom, understanding, and knowledge are heavily invested in that creation in a more concealed and indirect manner.
I listen more carefully to the seven and the seven talking and laughing and connecting around me - the attendants of Princess Batya and Queen Esther.
I have thought of them before as the people with whom Batya and Esther weren’t alone. Both young people in a palace and system hostile to their values and in the case of Esther her life, both typically depicted alone, I have instead imagined them surrounded by allies . . . maybe even friends.
Batya left the palace and all it represented purportedly to bathe in the Nile, but inside her own chambers there would have been a room to bathe in with waters brought and warmed by servants. Only the lowest in Egyptian society would have bathed in the Nile. She left the palace and her maidens came with her. They saw her take the basket from the water and the baby from the basket and they did not even remind her that her father had decreed him drowned. She knew, and they knew she knew. My take on the story is that they were in it with her - with her and with Jocheved and Miriam.
I look around at these maidens now, their numbers suggesting new meaning.
The plan, the conspiracy, to save this one baby, Moses, from death, seems to have been devised by three: Jocheved, Miriam, and Batya. Maybe seven maidens, although there is no specific number in the text, I’ll have to think about this more, but here they are near me now as seven . . . maybe seven maidens helped actualize that plan.
Who are the three, then, in Megillat Esther? Esther, of course, Mordechai, and maybe Hegai - the guardian of women?
The fourteen voices around me have become softer, a hum.
A few threads of thought come in and out of reach.
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 שְׁנַיִם וְאַרְבָּעִים יוֹם
שֶׁהֵם שִׁשָּׁה שָׁבוּעוֹת
לָעוֹמֶר.
Hayom sh’nayim v’arba’im yom
shehem shishah shavuot
la’omer
Today is forty-two days.
That is six weeks of the Omer.
Sefirat HaOmer Blessing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hCiPI1tMQ