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I write this on Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day, which immediately follows Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.
Israel’s commemoration of these two days is strikingly different from their equivalents here in the United States: for starters, by connecting them on consecutive days, Israel is signaling the extent to which, over the 77 years of its existence, that existence has felt precarious, in need of life-or-death sacrifices from its entire citizenry.
As a country nearly 250 years old, whose existence has been long since established, and whose protection does not require a nationwide conscription law, we have a much different relationship to each of these holidays, our own Memorial Day and our own 4th of July, here in the United States.
Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzma’ut are, respectively, days of mourning and days of celebration. On Yom Hazikaron in Israel, commemorative sirens bring the country to a halt twice throughout the day; I remember as a young kid attending kindergarten in Jerusalem, driving with my parents, and pulling over to the side of the road like all other cars, during those silent, solemn experiences. We light a yahrzeit candle on the eve of Yom Hazikaron to express our remembrance of fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terrorist actions against Jewish people around the world.
Here at Society Hill Synagogue, we have commemorated the day in two ways. On Tuesday afternoon, as Yom Hazikaron began in Israel, a group of Society Hill Synagogue members gathered in our Beit Midrash to watch a livestream of the 20th annual Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony, organized by a grassroots organization of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who have lost family members to the conflict, recognizing the ways in which the fates of the two peoples are inextricably linked.
On Wednesday evening, in an event organized by the Israel Connections Subcommittee of our Israel Committee, we held a solemn commemoration in our sanctuary with memorial prayers, yahrzeit candle lightings, letters from soldiers, and more.
I am grateful to all the members of Society Hill Synagogue who have stepped up as their heart moves them to express their connection to Israel in our diversity of expressions.
Wednesday evening, the night evolved, as it does in Israel, from mourning to celebration.
In some ways, this binary is not entirely accurate (as binaries rarely are): even while stepping into a mode of celebration, the pain of this current war, and all wars, lingers in our minds and in our hearts. We pray for the safety and protection of all innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and people in this world.
Still, in my view, there is absolutely a reason to continue celebrating Israel’s existence. As the sole Jewish state, a concept that seemed unimaginable for centuries, the lifeline to millions of Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust, at a moment when the Jewish people wondered if our fate was not long for this world; as one place in the world where Jews can engage in “public Judaism” — where the civic calendar mirrors the Jewish cultural calendar; where one can walk around the street in a Cap’n Crunch costume on Purim, as I did this year, and not be looked at askance; where we can seek to live out Jewish values, such as love and care for the stranger and the oppressed; cultivating a sacred level of empathy and pluralism — to me it remains a remarkable accomplishment.
To me, the cracks in the foundation that it, and all nation-states, and all groupings in human history, endure, is not reason to distance ourselves from the project — it is all the more reason to roll up our sleeves and get involved.
So on Yom Hazikaron I mourn, and on Yom Ha’atzma’ut I celebrate, recognizing that our emotional capacity as humans always involves a little bit of the blending of the two throughout our lives.
Wishing you meaningful days of commemoration.
I also want to share the D’var Torah I delivered this past Friday, on the ritual of S’firat Ha’omer, Counting the Omer.
We’re about to participate in what I used to think was one of the most underwhelming rituals in public Jewish life, and that ritual is the Counting of the Omer.
In a few moments, we’ll read the words from Sefer Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, which instruct us as follows:
You shall count off
us’fartem lakhem
וּסְפַרְתֶם לָכֶם
S’firah, the count — “seven weeks, from the day on which you bring the omer” — omer means a sheaf or a bundle.
The springtime holiday of Pesah, Passover, is when our first fruits begin to ripen; when the seeds we’ve been tending to all winter finally begin to bear fruit. The first fruit to blossom in ancient Israel was not so much a fruit as a grain — barley — and, in gratitude, before partaking of the benefits of the springtime harvest, the mitzvah — the sacred calling for the Israelites — was for them to bring the first omer, the first sheaf of the barley harvest, to the priest, who would present it, wave it in fact, before Adonai, to communicate the community’s gratitude for the blessings, the sustenance, in their lives, the connection they felt with God, before partaking of the harvest themselves.
But the barley was just the beginning. The people were ultimately reliant not only on a successful barley harvest, but, about seven weeks later, they were reliant on the full bounty of summer: primarily wheat, but also grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. A successful barley harvest did not guarantee they would have all the sustenance they needed to make it through summer.
So, after the barley harvest, they would wait. Or, more accurately, they would count, while tending to their next chapter of plantings, of seedlings. Hence the mitzvah, the sacred calling, of S’firat Ha’omer, The counting of the omer. During this period between the harvests, the commandment states, “You shall count off seven weeks, from the day on which you bring the omer, until the day after the seventh week — fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to Adonai” (Leviticus 23:15-16). At that point, “You shall bring from your settlements two loaves of bread as an… offering… as first fruits [of the new season] to Adonai” (Lev. 23:17). “On that same day,” that 50th day, “you shall hold a celebration; it shall be a sacred occasion for you… for all time” (Lev. 23:20).
This is Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. After seven weeks of counting seven days, the beginnings of that summer harvest are coming in. All that bounty. And with the first fruits of the new season, from that first crop of wheat, the core of one’s diet, we would bring two loaves of bread — we’re going beyond matzah now for Shavuot, letting it rise; transforming the wheat into bread with our investment of love and care — and offering it up to God, once again as an expression of thanks and gratitude and interconnection.
Some of you may be wondering, where’s the Torah? Mt. Sinai? The Ten Commandments? I thought Shavuot was all about commemorating experiencing revelation at Mt. Sinai?
At first glance, the Torah does not say anything about Shavuot having an association with the revelation at Sinai. But an interpretation arose that, indeed, upon calculating the dates referenced in the Torah, receiving the Torah at Sinai — receiving the code, the covenant, the mitzvot through which the Israelites were called upon to live out their lives — took place exactly seven weeks and one day after the Exodus from Egypt.
Thus, a physical, earth based experience — yearning, praying, working from the glimmers of the spring harvest to the bounties of the summer harvest — is mirrored in a spiritual experience. The Exodus from Egypt is not just freedom “from,” it’s freedom “to.” What do we do with our freedom? We discern a purpose, manifest in Torah and mitzvot, the sacred code of our people. In each case, physical nourishment and spiritual purpose, an invisible string of time connects the first chapter of the journey to the next chapter.
So what I once thought was an underwhelming ritual experience in S’firat Ha’omer — you read a passage from the Torah, then say a blessing, and then say a number — I’ve now begun to experience as an important moment in identifying the interconnected nature of seemingly disconnected sacred moments in time.
In offering a commentary on the Sh’ma, Rabbi Arthur Green teaches, “In [the Sh’ma] we declare that God is one — which is also to say that humanity is one, that life is one, that joys and sufferings are all one — for God is the force that binds them all together. There is nothing obvious about this truth,” he continues, “for life as we experience it seems infinitely fragmented… Within a single life, one moment feels cut off from the next, memories of joy and fullness offering us little consolation when we are depressed or lonely. To assert that all is one in God is our supreme act of faith.”
Counting the Omer is a means of expressing this faith; of making the invisible visible, of articulating our understanding that the moments of our lives — both the moments of our individual lives and the moments of the life of our community — are interconnected.
Pesah makes no sense without Shavuot. We don’t just yearn for freedom to do nothing. Or, to the extent we do, it is for the temporary respite of Shabbat, not an indefinite abyss, not in this lifetime.
When I’m at my most tired, I sometimes fantasize about retirement: putting all my labors to the side for good. But then I have, let’s say, two days off — and I recognize that regardless of how my day is structured, life calls to us with a sense of a purpose; there are tasks in each chapter of our lives. Perhaps for our Kitah Zayin (7th Grade) and Hebrew High Students leading us in prayer this evening, it’s to form a loving relationship to who you are and to find your place in the world, connected to your community. Perhaps for our elders it’s to form a sense of peace in relationship to the contributions you’ve already made to the world and to prepare for the next chapter. Perhaps for all of us it’s to connect to the Divine, which serves as a source of strength as we aim to repair the world as we find it.
The freedom of Pesah leads to the purpose of Shavuot. When Moses first comes to Pharaoh to say, “Let my people go,” the sentence doesn’t end there. Moses says:
Let my people go so that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness
Shalah et ami
v’yahogu li bamidbar
שַׁלַח אֶת־עַמִי
וְיָחֹגוּ לִי בַּמִדְבָּר׃
A festival in the wilderness; Shavuot.
Pesah, the holiday of Freedom, was always interconnected to Shavuot, the holiday of receiving the mitzvot, the Torah, the holiday of purpose.
And the Omer, the counting of the Omer, is the act which brings this invisible string of time to light, preparing us to go from one chapter to the next.
I’m no Swiftie, but I do know Taylor Swift’s song, “Invisible String:”
Time, mystical time
Cuttin’ me open, then healin’ me fine
Were there clues I didn’t see?
Indeed there were, as represented in S’firat Ha’omer, the counting of the Omer, which brings to light how each moment is interconnected with the moments that come before and after. Each day of the Omer is a sacred day in preparation for the next day, in which we count our blessings, waving our offerings of gratitude before the Holy One, an invisible string tying me to You.
May we cherish each moment. Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi K.
