Growing From Sefira Isn't Easy as It Looks

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Mitzvos are meant to change us:

לא ניתנו המצוות כ"א לצרף את הבריות

Beraishis Rabba 44:1

If a mitzva hasn’t tangibly improved my practical behavior or worldview, I assume I haven’t don’t it quite right. Which has, for many years, been a particularly frustrating part of my ספירת העומר.

Counting Sefira is easy: it takes only a few seconds and is repeated night after night in a way that begs for some kind of progressive growth over time. But I really don’t know how or where that growth should happen.

Rabbi S.R. Hirsch teaches us that Sefira connects the Minchas Ha’Omer (which permitted new grain crops for private use) with the Shetai Halechem brought 49 days later (which permitted new grain crops for use in the Mikdash).

The Omer, having been offered on the second day of Pesach, draws our attention to the physical fruits of our new-found national independence and identity. But, continued R’ Hirsch, that’s where most nations stop. As the People of the Torah, however, we’re supposed to lash that identity and independence to the principles and morality of the Torah. Thus, seven cycles of seven days’ thinking about how all that should apply to our mundane lives.

Sadly, I’ve so far been unable to find a way to integrate those lofty thoughts into my daily mundane life.

Using Mishna Avos for inspiration

Some communities make a point of learning the six chapters of Pirkei Avos during each of the six (or so) intervening weeks. The idea is to use Avos to focus ourselves on the Sefira mindset. That’s truly wonderful.

But I’ve long suspected that Avos wasn’t really meant for us. The content is - for the most part - directed most directly at rabbinic leadership. After all, how many of us will ever need to know how to lead a rabbinic court, select and manage elite Torah students, or shape relationships with governments?

I believe that the very first words of Avos (משה קיבול תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע) hint to this. Unlike the account of Moshe’s transmission of the Torah provided in Mesechte Eruvin (54b, where the flow goes from Moshe → Aharon → sons of Aharon → elders → the entire nation), Avos doesn’t even mention the nation as a whole. So, while learning Avos is all upside, I’m not sure how well it complements Sefira.

Other people will focus each day on one of the 48 ways Torah can be acquired listed in Avos 6:6 as a preparation for Shavuos. That’s also a wonderful endeavor. But it addresses only one of the 613 mitzvos that came with our קבלת התורה. It’s hardly a great fit.

Using mourning for inspiration

The Gemara (Yevamos 62b) describes the deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students during the weeks of Sefira. Rishonim like Meiri and the Tur associate those deaths with a custom to avoid weddings. Crusader massacres of thousands of Jews in May of 1096 (during the First Crusade) compounded the sadness of the time for German Jews, at least.

Ok. So I won’t get married during Sefira. But that’s hardly enough to inspire the kind of Sefira-related growth I’m looking for. And the origins of the restrictions on music and shaving are far too modern to be relevant to our discussion.

Using food for inspiration

We’re Jewish after all, and Jews use food for everything else, right? The Minchas HaOmer is itself food, it’s brought to permit food for all of us, and the Sefira links the Omer to yet more food: the שתי הלחם.

Sure, we’re all used to reflexively converting agricultural references in the Torah into metaphors for things like earning a living and mastering our technological environments. But behind every metaphor lies the actual thing. In this case, that thing is food.

In the non-metaphor Torah’s eyes, agriculture is a big deal.

R’ Hirsch, for instance, points out the peculiarity of Yosef’s first dream: why was he dreaming about farming (מאלמים אלמים) when, with only the briefest of exceptions, his family had always been shepherds? Hirsch suggests that, while Chazal reserve judgement over whether dreams are significant, they can certainly be platforms for God to slip us important hints. Perhaps, in this case, at least Yakov understood the dream as a taste of the way his descendants would ultimately live once settled in their ideal land.

And don’t forget the Gemara (Chulin 84a): יכול יקח אדם מן השוק ויאכל ת"ל וזבחת מבקרך ומצאנך. We shouldn’t buy our meat in the supermarket, because that’ll make it too easy to ignore the true costs of its production. Instead, only eat from the animals from your own barn that you slaughter.

In other words, think carefully about what we eat, how it got to us, and how much we owe God for each step of that supply chain. And then imagine how much more gratitude we’ll owe Him when all this is happening in our own national home.