The Deep Meaning of Sefiras HaOmer in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Have you noticed the special prayer we say every evening after counting the Omer? It’s a very special prayer, and we say things in it that we don’t usually say with any other mitzvah. You don’t find words like these. For example: “May I be purified and sanctified with holiness from above, and through this may abundant blessing flow through all the worlds, to purify us, to sanctify us.” These are extraordinary words and phrases that we find specifically with the mitzvah of counting the Omer. And that raises a simple question: What is so special about this mitzvah? On the face of it, it seems like the simplest possible mitzvah: counting. There’s no special deed or action involved. Just counting days. The Torah gives us this interesting mitzvah: from Pesach until Shavuos, “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbos”—which here means the day after Pesach—“seven complete weeks”; forty-nine days; “you shall count fifty days.” The fiftieth day is Shavuos. That’s it. Count. Surely this seems like an exceptionally simple mitzvah to perform, and yet this particular mitzvah has a special prayer that tells us there is something much deeper here. There’s something about the mitzvah of counting the Omer that we need to understand. What is so wonderful, so special, about counting the days between Pesach and Shavuos? Today we’ll talk about the deep, inner meaning of this special mitzvah, which we have the opportunity to fulfill for forty-nine days between Pesach and Shavuos. The month of Iyar in particular, which we’re in the middle of, is a month in which, among the wonderful things we’ve already discussed, there’s also this wonderful fact: on every single day of the month, we fulfill a special mitzvah that applies only during this period—the mitzvah of counting the days. What does this mitzvah mean? Broadly speaking, we’ll discuss two

02:25 explanations that we find in the Midrashim and in the works of the great Rishonim about the nature of counting the Omer. One explanation is more connected to the Exodus from Egypt. The second is more connected to the Giving of the Torah—the two festivals that frame this period. One explanation, we might say, is more about “turn away from evil”; the other is more about “do good.” These explanations have foundations in sacred sources. They’re grounded in the Midrashim, the Zohar, and the writings of the great Rishonim, as we’ll discuss. Alongside them, there is the special, profound meaning that Chassidus gives to these days, to this period. What exactly are we doing during these days? Well, as we said, we find two general explanations in the seforim. Let’s begin with the explanation cited by the great Rishonim and attributed to a Midrash, although it isn’t known exactly where that Midrash appears. It’s cited this way by the great Rishonim. The Ran brings it at the end of Pesachim; Sefer HaChinuch, which explains the reasons for the mitzvos, brings it too; and many of the great Rishonim cite it in the name of a Midrash Aggadah. It’s very interesting. The explanation is that the story of counting the Omer began in the first year of the Jewish people’s departure from Egypt. The Midrash says this: When Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent Moshe Rabbeinu to the Jewish people in Egypt, Moshe came to them with good news. The good news was that they would leave Egypt: “When you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve G-d on this mountain.” With Hashem’s help, they were about to leave Egypt, and the purpose of leaving Egypt was to reach the moment of the Giving of the Torah: “You will serve G-d on this mountain.” So, we’re told, the Jewish people were so excited, so happy, that they simply began to count. From the day after they left Egypt, they began counting the days.

04:52 Another version of the Midrash says—as I mentioned, the commentators cite these Midrashim—that Moshe Rabbeinu told them it would happen fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt. So, starting the very next day, they began counting those fifty days, waiting to reach that long-awaited day. They counted the days as an expression of their tremendous longing, like the phrase quoted in the seforim, “As a servant longs for shade.” A servant who senses that freedom is coming counts the days until he’ll be free. The Jewish people felt the same way. They were leaving the bondage of Egypt to devote themselves to “serving G-d on this mountain.” “No one is free except one who engages in Torah.” They waited for that wonderful, long-awaited moment of receiving the Torah, and they simply counted the days until it would arrive. That is the Midrash’s explanation. Sefer Abudraham goes further, and several other great Rishonim also bring a continuation of this Midrash. It’s very interesting: it explains the idea with a parable. A man was imprisoned—for whatever reason, he had been put in prison. He was in a place that was filthy, corrupt, and deeply degraded. Then one day, a message arrived from the king. The king told him, “In the coming days, I’m going to take you out of prison. I’ll give you a change of clothes and dress you in royal garments. What’s more, I’ll give you my only daughter as a wife.” The Midrash says: That is exactly what happens during these days. The Jewish people were in Egypt, “the nakedness of the land,” in the worst possible prison, subjected to backbreaking labor. Then the good news came through Moshe Rabbeinu, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu: the time had come to leave Egypt, and now

06:54 “I’m going to take you out of Egypt,” He tells them, “and then I’ll give you My only daughter.” By that, the Midrash means the Torah. The verse says of the Torah, “An inheritance for the congregation of Yaakov”—and our Sages say: Don’t read “an inheritance,” but “betrothed,” as it were. The Torah is, so to speak, the bride of the Jewish people. So the good news arrives. The Midrash says that when this man received the good news, he was already filled with excitement and joy. Then, when the king actually took him out of prison and changed his clothes, he began to see the promises coming true. That was when he truly began counting the days until the wedding, when he could stand under the chuppah and marry the king’s daughter. And that is exactly what happened with the Jewish people. The Exodus from Egypt was a passage from slavery to freedom, from darkness to a great light—an escape from the prison of Egypt. “I brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” During all those days, the Jewish people counted the days until the moment of the wedding: the Giving of the Torah. That is the source of counting the Omer. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah to the Jewish people, one of the mitzvos we received was the special mitzvah stated in Parshas Emor: beginning on the day after Pesach, after bringing the Omer offering, we must count the days until the Giving of the Torah. This expresses the fact that it happens again every year. Every year on Shavuos, we receive the Torah anew, and so we prepare to receive it with a Jew’s longing for the Torah. A second explanation appears in the Zohar and is also cited by leading commentators. The holy Or HaChaim brings this Zohar in Parshas Emor, as do other leading commentators. “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbos.” The Zohar says this is about leaving the impurity of Egypt, moving from impurity to purity. As we see in the Torah, in Parshas Metzora, the Torah

09:10 The Torah tells us that when a woman has her period, a state of niddah impurity, she must go through a process called “she shall count seven days.” There are the days of niddah, followed by what are called the seven clean days. Only after counting those seven days does she go to the mikveh and become pure for her husband. This is also an analogy for Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people. The Zohar compares Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel to a groom and bride. Here, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the groom and Knesses Yisroel is the bride, as we find throughout Shir Hashirim. King Shlomo represents Hakadosh Boruch Hu as the groom. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”; Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the groom, and Knesses Yisroel is the bride: “I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride.” And the same thing happens here. In Egypt, the Jewish people were at the height of impurity, at its lowest depths—the forty-nine gates of impurity. As the Zohar says, there are fifty gates of impurity, but once someone reaches the fiftieth gate, it is irreversible; there is no way out. Hakadosh Boruch Hu had compassion on the Jewish people and protected them. When they reached the deepest point of impurity, its forty-ninth gate, that was when the great miracle of the Exodus from Egypt took place. As we say in the Pesach Haggadah, had Hakadosh Boruch Hu not taken our ancestors out of Egypt at that moment, at that time, we would have remained in Egypt forever, G-d forbid. Because if the impurity of Egypt had reached the fiftieth point, there would have been no way out. Then this great thing happened: Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought us out of darkness into light. The Zohar says that the Exodus from Egypt is mentioned in the Torah fifty times, corresponding to the fifty gates of holiness that the Jewish people entered as they left Egypt. In practice, that meant seven weeks. Just as a woman counts seven days and then has

11:14 her purification, here Hakadosh Boruch Hu asked for not seven days but seven weeks. As the Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh says on the parsha, this is because the Jewish people were far more deeply immersed in impurity, and seven days would not have been enough. They truly needed seven weeks, seven times seven. Through the work of those seven sets of seven days—seven weeks in which the Jewish people left one gate of impurity each day and entered one gate of holiness—they attained purification. After those seven weeks of working on themselves, cleansing themselves, preparing, refining and purifying themselves, the day arrived: the fiftieth day, the day of Matan Torah. That was when Hakadosh Boruch Hu purified and sanctified the Jewish people. Then came this wonderful festival, the day of Matan Torah, when the union, the marriage, took place. That is what Shavuos represents: the wedding day of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. “And Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai”; Hakadosh Boruch Hu betrothed the Jewish people and gave us the Torah, the Ten Commandments. That was the connection, the bond, between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So here we have the two explanations we mentioned. According to the Zohar and the commentators who cite it, Sefiras HaOmer is about purifying ourselves. It is about purification from impurity, leaving behind the impurity of Egypt in preparation for the great wedding day of Knesses Yisroel and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. According to the Midrash and the commentators who cite it, as we mentioned, the focus here is preparing for Matan Torah, but in a positive sense: the longing that shows how the Jewish people love, anticipate and eagerly await that longed-for moment of Matan Torah. In fact, these two

13:29 ideas are alluded to in two words that recur in the special prayer we say every evening along with Sefiras HaOmer: “purify us” and “sanctify us.” That is the difference between purifying and sanctifying. Purification means removing impurity. Holiness is something else entirely. Holiness points to something elevated, something different—G-dly holiness. And that is what we say. Sefiras HaOmer has the aspect of “purify us”: purifying ourselves of the evil, the kelipah, the darkness and the impurity we absorbed in Egypt. And “sanctify us” means preparing for the wonderful holiness, the G-dly holiness revealed at Matan Torah. This is the tremendous longing of a Jew during these days: counting the days, sanctifying himself, preparing and becoming ever more refined, so that he can be a vessel for the great light of Matan Torah. So these are the two sides of receiving the Torah. Chassidus comes and gives us a new depth to this whole subject. That is all very well, but what is the actual work? What are we supposed to do during these forty-nine days? What does this really involve? What is the work we are meant to do? What does it mean for us today? After all, the Torah is eternal. The mitzvos we perform are not merely symbols of stories from the past; the mitzvos are alive today. Every mitzvah has meaning in our daily lives now. As we discussed regarding Pesach and the Exodus from Egypt, Chassidus teaches us that leaving Egypt is a real experience that a Jew goes through each and every day. As the Tanya says in chapter 47, “In every generation and on each and every day, a person must see himself as though he left Egypt today.” Leaving Egypt is not about a country; it is not an event that happened in the past. It is something real that happens today. Mitzrayim, Egypt, represents meitzarim, constraints. It represents all our inner constraints: the animal soul and the impurity of the world that surrounds

16:05 us. Leaving Egypt means leaving those constraints and limitations, leaving the inner Egypt from which each one of us must emerge. And that is something that happens again and again. In the cycle of the year, that time is Pesach. Every festival represents something essential in a Jew’s life, which we then live with throughout the year. But there is a particular time of year for it. On Shavuos, for example, we receive the Torah. We study Torah every day, but when do we receive it? On Shavuos. That is when a Jew receives the Torah and lives with it all year. On Rosh Hashanah, a Jew accepts the yoke of Heaven for the entire year. On Simchas Torah, a Jew receives joy for the entire year. On Pesach, we receive freedom—inner freedom, inner Geulah, release from our inner constraints. That is what happens in the Exodus from Egypt. So what exactly does Sefiras HaOmer represent? Here Chassidus offers a wonderful explanation that teaches us what it means in our daily lives. The Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya that each of us has two souls, two life-forces. We human beings, the Jewish people, are made up of two souls, two sources of life: a G-dly soul and an animal soul. The G-dly soul is literally a part of G-d above. It is the holy soul that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives every Jew, a soul entirely devoted to G-dliness, entirely bound to G-dliness—literally a part of G-d above. But we also have an animal soul. The animal soul is, as its name suggests, animalistic. Self-centeredness and materialism are what draw us toward our animal nature; from there come the yetzer hara and bad character traits. That is the animal soul. A Jew is made up of these two souls. As we said, the Jewish people in Egypt were immersed in its impurity, in the lowest, most degraded and most abject constraints and limitations. The animal soul surrounds you on every

18:18 Side. You are completely caught up in those constraints and limitations. You’re not free. You don’t feel the light of your neshamah, or your love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You don’t feel what your connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is. I feel nothing, zero. I feel my own self-centeredness, my wants, my desires, my pleasures, and that’s where it ends. Then the long-awaited moment of the Exodus from Egypt arrives. What do we say in the Haggadah on Seder night? “The King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, revealed Himself to them and redeemed them.” An extraordinary Divine revelation took place at the moment of the Exodus. That revelation stirred the entire Jewish people in an extraordinary way. Something like this happens to each of us sometimes. It may happen only rarely: a great miracle takes place in your life, or something happens to you through a special act of Divine providence. Sometimes something awakens you. You were somewhere, at a special occasion where something happened, and your heart opened. You felt a special awakening. There’s a particular moment when we feel, very deeply, a spiritual, G-dly force urging us: Wake up. We experience an extraordinary awakening. That’s the moment of the Exodus from Egypt: “The King of kings revealed Himself to them.” What happened? There was an inner revelation. There was a revelation of love that Hakadosh Boruch Hu showed the Jewish people in those days and weeks of the Exodus. They saw the great miracles, the great kindness, the great love of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Hashem passed over the doorway; Hakadosh Boruch Hu saved the Jewish people through all ten plagues and everything that happened there. The moment of the Exodus arrived, and within the Jewish people there arose

20:25 an immense love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then they decided to flee Egypt—“for the people fled.” That was the moment of the Exodus, and here the story begins. When you have a moment of awakening, that’s a moment of leaving Egypt. It’s a moment of coming to your senses, when we open our eyes and feel: Wow, there’s a truth here. There’s something real. Something tells me: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is right here with me. And that gives you the desire to get out of all the mud, to flee all the darkness, to detach yourself from all the… all the materialism, and to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And then comes the second stage. That was the first stage. For a moment, this awakening affects the whole person, but afterward it affects only the G-dly soul. The animal soul—because it’s animalistic, because it’s materialistic, because it’s an animal soul, a yetzer hara—goes back to sleep a moment after the great miracle. It returns to its previous state. There was a moment of clarity, a moment of awakening, a wonderful moment. But it lasted only a moment. Once it passed, I went back to being myself. The G-dly soul, which is “a part of G-d above,” was ignited. It lit up. It takes in that awakening and wants to act, but the animal soul comes back to life, back to its usual reality, and promptly falls asleep again—or carries on with its animalistic ways. This is something each of us can see in our own lives. Each of us has special moments of awakening. For some, it happens on Yom Kippur. For others, it happens on Seder night. For others, it happens at particular moments or times of the year, when the neshamah awakens. At that moment, I’m filled with an immense desire to flee all my darkness and evil, the impurity and sins, and

22:39 to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—an extraordinary awakening to teshuvah. But the next day, or sometimes even a week later, everything settles down and we go back. The same challenges return, the same setbacks, the same desires, the same wants, the same negative thoughts, and so on. What do we do next? This is where Sefiras HaOmer comes in. What exactly does Sefiras HaOmer tell us? Why is it called Sefiras HaOmer? The omer was barley. The Torah tells us about the offering of the omer. On the first day of Pesach—actually, on the second day of Pesach—they would go out to the field and harvest barley. Interesting. Matzah is made from wheat. That’s what the people eat on the first night of Pesach: wheat. On the second day of Pesach, the offering was barley. As is well known, the Gemara in tractate Pesachim says that wheat is food for people, while barley is food for animals. In terms of the soul, then, food for people represents the G-dly soul, while food for animals represents the animal soul. And that’s what the Torah is telling us. The first day of Pesach: matzah, food for people. The G-dly soul awakens. The Divine revelation of Pesach night—“The King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, revealed Himself to them”—produces an immense awakening in the soul. But it’s the G-dly soul that receives it. It awakens, and this gives a Jew the desire to flee the impurity of Egypt. Yet that’s only the G-dly side of us. We also have an animal soul. You won’t achieve much by fleeing alone. As soon as that awakening wears off, you’ll return to the same state. And here begin forty-nine days devoted to the animal side, to the omer, to food for animals. Barley is food for animals. We refine our material nature, refine our animal soul, and correct our bad character traits. During these forty-nine days, a person needs to look at himself, examine himself, look at his behavior, and ask: How do I become more of a person? How do I become more refined? What

25:10 are the things about myself that I need to correct, refine, and work through? How do I make myself gentler, more sensitive, more inclined to give—in each and every trait, down to every detail? That’s what we are really saying with Sefiras HaOmer: seven weeks corresponding to seven character traits, the traits each of us has. The animal soul has its faculties, and the G-dly soul has its faculties. The books of Kabbalah speak of seven bad traits and seven good traits, like in the story of Pharaoh: seven good cows and seven bad cows. There are seven traits of holiness, of the G-dly soul, and seven traits of the animal soul. Over forty-nine days, seven weeks, a Jew refines himself and works on himself. Alongside this is the immense longing of a Jew who knows that receiving the Torah is coming soon. Then there will be a Divine revelation: the Torah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us, which is His wisdom and His will, through which a Jew can come together and unite with Hakadosh Boruch Hu as one. That is the wonderful thing a Jew waits for and looks forward to while working on himself during these days. So what exactly is the work of these forty-nine days? These are the days when we bring our body and animal soul along with us. We have already left Egypt. This isn’t a story that happened three thousand three hundred and some years ago. It’s a story happening today. We left Egypt on Pesach. Every Jew received the wonderful gift of “The King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in His very glory and by Himself, revealed Himself to them,” as we say in the Pesach Haggadah. And this happens every year on Pesach. That extraordinary Divine revelation awakened us and gave us the strength of “the time of our freedom.” In the month of Nissan, a Jew lives in an atmosphere of Geulah, especially on Pesach, and especially on Seder night. Then comes the stage when they tell you: My friend,

27:19 You need to work on your animal soul. It, too, needs to be brought into the picture. Both the body and the animal soul need to be part of all our service of Hashem, and that is the special work we do during these days. “And you shall count for yourselves.” Here is a wonderful teaching of the Alter Rebbe, which he said in the name of his teacher, the Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid of Mezritch said: The word “you shall count” means to count. But it is also related to the word sapphire—to radiance and clarity. It is an expression of light. The Zohar says, “The heavens recount the glory of G-d.” They do not merely recount it in the sense of telling a story; they shine, like a sapphire. Sapphire is one of the stones of the breastplate. It is a shining, clear stone, a kind of precious gem. This is what the Alter Rebbe says in the name of his teacher, the Maggid of Mezritch. “And you shall count for yourselves.” What is the mitzvah of counting the Omer? Not just to count with our mouths, but to “count” in the sense of illuminating, refining, and bringing clarity into our souls. We have a tremendous soul, tremendous strengths. We have a G-dly soul, “literally a part of G-d above.” The animal soul, too, can—and wants to—love Hashem “with all your heart,” with both your inclinations. Our task is to “count”: to remove the dirt, remove the coarseness, remove the fat that has built up around it; to refine and illuminate our body and animal soul, to work on ourselves, to refine the—and reveal the G-dly power within us. Through this, we awaken our thirst and longing for the Divine revelation of “I am Hashem your G-d.” May we merit, with Hashem’s help, to reach the festival of the Giving of the Torah and experience that revelation tangibly. As we discussed, these things happen every year, and they happen in a real and substantial way in our lives in this world. May we merit to see the Divine revelation of receiving the Torah, to receive the Torah with joy and inwardness, and to make use of

29:54 these great days of counting the Omer to sanctify and purify ourselves. And, as we said in the prayer, “May abundant blessing flow through all the worlds.” Because the moment a Jew illuminates and refines himself—makes himself shine—he illuminates the world as well, and the world becomes a world of light. “May abundant blessing flow through all the worlds.” And may the Merciful One grant us the merit of seeing the Beis Hamikdash rebuilt, speedily, speedily in our days. Amen, selah.