Sefiras HaOmer - The Inner Meaning in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Have you noticed the special prayer we say every evening along with the counting of the Omer? It’s a very special prayer, and we say things in it that we don’t normally say with any other mitzvah. You don’t find words like these. For example: “May I be purified and sanctified with the holiness from Above, and through this may abundant blessing flow through all the worlds to purify us and sanctify us.” These are extraordinary phrases, extraordinary sentences, and we find them specifically in the mitzvah of counting the Omer. So a simple question arises: What is so special about this mitzvah? On the face of it, it seems like the simplest of mitzvos: counting. There’s no special deed here, nothing unusual to do, no special action. Just count the days. The Torah gives us this 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”; you count forty-nine days, until the fiftieth day. The fiftieth day is Shavuos. That’s it. Count. Surely, it seems an extremely simple mitzvah to fulfill. And yet this particular mitzvah has a special prayer that tells us there’s something much deeper here. There’s something about 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. Especially the month of Iyar, which we’re in the middle of now: among the wonderful things we’ve already discussed about this month is the wonderful fact that on every single day of it, we fulfill a special mitzvah that exists 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 essence of counting the Omer. One explanation is more closely connected with the Exodus from Egypt. The second is more closely connected with the Giving of the Torah—precisely the two festivals between which these days fall. We might call the first explanation more a matter of “turning away from evil,” and the second more a matter of “doing good.” Both explanations have deep roots in our sacred sources. They are grounded in the Midrashim, the Zohar, and the great Rishonim, as we’ll discuss. Along with that, there is the special, profound meaning that Chassidus gives these days, this period. What exactly are we doing during these days? Well, as we said, we find two general explanations in the books. We’ll begin with the explanation brought by the great Rishonim in the name of a Midrash. Although the exact location of this Midrash isn’t known, this is how the great Rishonim quote it. The Ran brings it at the end of Tractate 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. According to this explanation, 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 told the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu—when Moshe Rabbeinu came to the people in Egypt and gave them the good news that they were going to leave Egypt—“When you bring 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 the Exodus was to reach the Giving of the Torah: “You will serve G-d on this mountain.” We’re told that 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

04:51 days. Another Midrash says—as I mentioned, the commentators quote these Midrashim—there’s a version in one place that says Moshe Rabbeinu revealed to them that it would happen fifty days after the Exodus. So, starting immediately from the day after they left Egypt, they began counting those fifty days. They counted the days until that long-awaited day, expressing their great longing. As the books put it, “Like a servant longing for shade.” In other words, a servant who senses that freedom is coming counts the days until he’ll finally be set free. It was the same with the Jewish people: to leave behind their servitude under the yoke of Egypt and 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’s the Midrash’s explanation. There’s more to it, as brought in Sefer Abudraham. He and several other great Rishonim bring a continuation of this Midrash. It’s very interesting, and it explains the idea with a parable: A man was imprisoned. For whatever reason, he had been put in prison, in a place that was very filthy, corrupt, and lowly. Then one day, a message came to him from the king. The king told him, “In the coming days, I’m going to take you out of prison. I’ll change your clothes and dress you in royal garments. And what’s more, you’ll see—I’ll give you my only daughter as a wife.” The Midrash says: This is exactly what happens during these days. The Jewish people were in Egypt, “the nakedness of the land,” imprisoned under the harshest forced labor. Then the good news came through Moshe Rabbeinu, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, that the time had come to leave

06:53 Egypt. “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 Torah is described as “an inheritance of the congregation of Yaakov.” “Do not read it as morashah, ‘an inheritance,’ but as me’orasah, ‘betrothed.’” So to speak, the Torah is the bride of the Jewish people. And then the good news arrives. The Midrash says that when this man received the good news, he already began to feel excited and happy. 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’s exactly what happened with the Jewish people. The Exodus from Egypt was a passage from slavery to freedom, from darkness to great light, an escape from the prison of Egypt: “I brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” Then, throughout 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. So when Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah to the Jewish people, among the mitzvos we received was the special mitzvah mentioned in Parshas Emor: from the day after the Shabbos, the day after Pesach, after the offering of the Omer, we must begin counting 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 we prepare to receive it with the longing a Jew feels for the Torah. A second explanation is found in the Zohar and is also brought by the great commentators. The holy Ohr Hachayim brings this Zohar in Parshas Emor, as do other great commentators. “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbos.” The Zohar says that this is about leaving behind the impurity of Egypt, going from impurity to purity. As we see in the Torah in Parshas

09:09 In Parshas Metzora, the Torah tells us about a woman during her period, when she is in a state of niddah impurity. She has to go through a process called “she shall count seven days for herself”: the days of niddah, followed by what are called seven clean days. Only after counting those days does she go to the mikveh and become permitted to her husband. This is also a metaphor for Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. The Zohar compares Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people to a groom and bride. Here, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the groom and the Jewish people are 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”; “I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride.” 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 reaching the fiftieth gate is irreversible. You cannot get out. Hakadosh Boruch Hu had mercy on the Jewish people and protected them, and when they reached the deepest point of impurity, its forty-ninth gate, 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, Heaven forbid. Had the impurity of Egypt reached the fiftieth gate, there would have been no way out. Then this great thing happened: Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought us from 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 attained as they left Egypt. And that is, in fact, the seven weeks. Just as a woman counts seven days and then

11:13 becomes pure, here Hakadosh Boruch Hu asked for not seven days but seven weeks. As the Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh says in the parsha, this was because the Jewish people were much more deeply immersed in impurity, so seven days were not enough. They needed seven weeks—seven times seven. Through the work of those seven weeks, each day the Jewish people left one gate of impurity and entered one gate of holiness. After seven weeks of working on themselves to become clean, to prepare, to refine and purify themselves, the day arrived: the fiftieth day, the day of the Giving of the Torah. Then came the purification through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu purified and sanctified the Jewish people. And then came that wonderful festival, the day of the Giving of the Torah, when the union, the marriage, took place. That is what Shavuos represents: the wedding day of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. “Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai,” and Hakadosh Boruch Hu betrothed the Jewish people and gave us the Torah, the Ten Commandments. That was the coming together, the bond between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So here we have two explanations, as we said. According to the Zohar and the commentators who cite it, counting the Omer is about purifying ourselves: leaving behind the impurity of Egypt to prepare for the great day of the wedding of the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. According to the Midrash and the commentators who cite it, as we mentioned, it is also preparation for the Giving of the Torah, but in a positive sense: the longing that shows how the Jewish people love, anticipate and eagerly await that longed-for moment of the Giving of the Torah. In fact,

13:28 these two ideas are alluded to in two words that recur in the special prayer we say each evening together with the counting of the Omer: “to purify us” and “to sanctify us.” That is the difference between purification and sanctification. Purification is from impurity. Holiness is something else altogether. Holiness points to something elevated, something different: Divine holiness. That is what we are saying. Counting the Omer has the aspect of “to purify us”—to cleanse us of the evil, the kelipah, the darkness and the impurity we took on in Egypt. And “to sanctify us” means preparing for the wonderful Divine holiness revealed at the Giving of the Torah. This is the tremendous longing of a Jew during these days: counting the days, sanctifying himself, preparing and becoming ever more refined, so he can be a vessel for the great light of the Giving of the Torah. So these are the two sides of receiving the Torah. Chassidus now gives us a new depth to this whole subject. Very nice—but what is the actual work? What are we supposed to do during these forty-nine days? What does it really involve? What does it mean for us today? After all, the Torah is eternal. The mitzvos we observe are not merely symbols of stories from the past. The mitzvos are alive today, and every mitzvah has meaning in our daily lives. As we discussed in connection with Pesach and the Exodus from Egypt, Chassidus teaches us that the Exodus is a real experience a Jew goes through each and every day. As the Tanya says in chapter 47, “In every generation and on every day, a person must see himself as though he left Egypt today.” The Exodus from Egypt is not just about a country or an event that happened in the past. It is something real that happens today. Egypt represents constraints. Egypt represents all our inner constraints: the animal soul and the impurity of the world

16:04 that surrounds us. Leaving Egypt means leaving constraints and limitations, leaving the inner Egypt that each of us must leave. And this is something that happens again and again. In the yearly cycle, that is Pesach. Every festival represents something essential in a Jew’s life that we then live with throughout the year. But there is a time of year when we receive it. On Shavuos, for example, we receive the Torah. We study Torah every day, but when do we receive it? On Shavuos. A Jew receives the Torah then 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 redemption, release from our inner constraints. That is what happens in the Exodus from Egypt. So what, exactly, does counting the Omer 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: a G-dly soul and an animal soul. The G-dly soul is “an actual part of G-d Above.” It is the holy soul that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives every Jew, a soul wholly focused on G-dliness and cleaving to G-dliness—an actual part of G-d Above. But we also have an animal soul. The animal soul is, as its name suggests, animalistic. Self-interest and material things are what draw us; from that animalistic side come the yetzer hara and negative character traits. A Jew is made up of both these souls. As we said, the Jewish people in Egypt were immersed in its impurity, in the lowest, most degraded constraints and limitations. The animal soul surrounds you

18:17 On every side. You’re completely trapped within those confines and limitations. You’re not free; you don’t feel the light of your neshamah, you don’t feel your love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You don’t feel your connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I feel nothing, zero. I feel my own selfishness, my own wants, my own desires, my own pleasures, and that’s where it ends. Then the long-awaited moment of the Exodus from Egypt arrived. What do we say in the Haggadah on Seder night? “The King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, revealed Himself to them and redeemed them.” The extraordinary Divine revelation at the moment of the Exodus awakened the entire Jewish people in an extraordinary way. It’s like something that happens to each of us at times. Sometimes it happens only rarely: some great miracle occurs in our lives, or there’s an instance of special Divine providence in your life. Sometimes you experience an awakening. You were somewhere when something special happened, at some special event, and your heart opened. You felt a special awakening. There’s a special moment when we feel something very, very deeply, some spiritual, Divine force urging us: Wake up. We experience an extraordinary awakening. These things happen. That was 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 of the Exodus. During those weeks they saw the great miracles. They saw His great kindness. They saw Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s great love. Hashem passed over the doorway; Hakadosh Boruch Hu saved the Jewish people through all ten plagues, through everything that happened there. The moment of the Exodus arrived, and among the Jewish people there awakened

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 Exodus from Egypt. It’s a moment of coming to your senses, when we open our eyes and feel: Wow, there’s truth here, 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, flee all the darkness, break away from all the... all the materialism, and draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And then comes stage two. That was stage one. For a moment, that 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 the animal soul, the yetzer hara—a moment after the great miracle, it goes back to sleep. 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. As soon as it passed, I went back to being myself. The G-dly soul, which is “an actual part of G-d above,” was ignited. It caught fire. It receives this... this awakening. It wants to act, but the animal soul comes back to life, back to its familiar reality, and promptly falls asleep again, or just carries on with its animalistic ways. These are also things each of us can see in our own lives. Each of us has special moments when we experience a particular awakening. For some people it happens on Yom Kippur; for others, on Seder night. For others, it happens at special times during the year, when the soul awakens. At that moment I’m filled with an intense desire to flee all my darkness and evil, the impurity and the sins, and

22:39 to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—an extraordinary awakening of teshuvah. But a day later, 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 is Sefiras HaOmer telling us? Why is it called Sefiras HaOmer? The omer was barley. The Torah tells us about the offering of the omer on Pesach. On the second day of Pesach, they would go out to the field and harvest barley. Interesting. Matzos are made from wheat. That’s what a person eats on the first night of Pesach: wheat. On the second day of Pesach, the offering was barley. As is well known, the Gemara in Pesachim says: wheat is human food; barley is animal food. In terms of the soul, human food represents the G-dly soul, and animal food represents the animal soul. That’s what the Torah is telling us. The first day of Pesach: matzah, human food. The G-dly soul awakens. The Divine revelation of Pesach night—“The King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, revealed Himself to them”—brings about an immense awakening within 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. But that’s only the G-dly side of us. We have an animal soul too. Fleeing won’t get you very far. Once that awakening fades, you’ll return to the same state. And here begin forty-nine days devoted to the animal: animal food, the omer, barley, animal food. We refine our material nature, refine our animal soul, correct our bad character traits. During these forty-nine days, a person needs to look at himself, examine himself, look at how he behaves, and ask: How do I become more of a human being? How do I become more refined? What

25:10 are the things in me that I need to correct, refine, and work through, so that I become more gentle, more sensitive, more inclined to give—in every trait, in every area? That’s what we mean when we speak of Sefiras HaOmer: seven weeks corresponding to seven emotional 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 negative traits and seven positive traits, like in Pharaoh’s dream: seven healthy cows and seven unhealthy cows. There are seven holy traits 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. Along with that comes the tremendous longing of a Jew who knows that the giving of the Torah is approaching. Then there will be a Divine revelation: the Torah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us is His wisdom and His will, through which a Jew can come together with Hakadosh Boruch Hu and become one with Him. That’s the wonderful thing a Jew waits and longs for, 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 bodies and our animal souls along with us. We’ve 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 Himself, revealed Himself to them,” as we say in the Haggadah. This happens every year on Pesach: that wonderful Divine revelation. It awakened us and gave us the strength of “the time of our freedom.” During the month of Nissan, a Jew lives in an atmosphere of Geulah, especially on Pesach, especially on Seder night. And then comes the stage when you’re told: My friend,

27:19 You need to work on your animal soul. It, too, needs to be brought into the... into the picture. Both the body and the animal soul need to be part of our service of Hashem, and that is the special work we do during these days. “And you shall count for yourselves.” Here we come to a wonderful saying of the Alter Rebbe, which he said in the name of his teacher, the Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid of Mezritch said: The word “usfartem” means “you shall count,” but it also comes from the word “sapphire.” Radiance and brightness are expressions of light. The Zohar says, “The heavens declare the glory of G-d.” It is not only that they “declare” in the sense of telling a story; they also shine, like a sapphire. Sapphire is one of the stones of the Choshen. It is a shining, bright stone, a diamond, a kind of earthly diamond. That 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 bringing light, refining ourselves, bringing clarity into our souls. We have an immense soul, we have tremendous powers, we have a Divine soul, “an actual 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 “usfartem”: to remove the dirt, remove the coarseness, remove the fat that has built up around it; to refine and illuminate our body and our 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, when we will see in a tangible way—as we discussed, these things happen every single year, and they happen in a real and essential way in our lives in this world—the Divine revelation of receiving the Torah, and receive the Torah with joy and inwardness,

29:54 to make use of 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 when a Jew brings light into himself, refines himself—sefirah—he also illuminates the world, and the world becomes a world of light. “May abundant blessing flow through all the worlds.” And may the Merciful One grant us the building of the Beis Hamikdash speedily in our days. Amen, selah.