The Omer Meal Offering - Rabbi Yaron Yitzchok Laderman shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the Lema’an Yishme’u podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem, yesterday we brought the—at night, on Seder night, we brought it. Before Seder night we brought the Pesach offering and ate it, and we had a wonderful, extraordinary first Seder, boruch Hashem. We were privileged to have a wonderful day and a wonderful night, with great revelations throughout the night, and now we’re in the Yom Tov of Pesach, boruch Hashem. We’re very happy and want to enjoy all the new and wonderful revelations we have in life with the Beis Hamikdash. Yesterday we brought the Pesach offering and the Chagigah offering of the 14th. Whatever remains of the Chagigah of the 14th and wasn’t served at the Seder may be eaten today as well. Today we also bring the Chagigah of the 15th, the obligatory festival peace offering we spoke about. We also bring the olas re’iyah, if it’s Yom Tov and not Shabbos. Then comes the Chagigah peace offering, so we can celebrate Yom Tov with more meat, more joy, melodies and songs throughout the day. And then we’re told that there’s another very special offering tonight, after Yom Tov. What is it? The omer offering. What is the omer offering? The Torah already says, “The omer is a tenth of an ephah.” An omer is a measure. Yes, the omer alludes to middos, our character traits. We know that, generally speaking, the omer offering is made from barley, which is animal food. All the other offerings, apart from the sotah offering, are made from wheat, which is human food. This points, in effect, to refining our middos. We have to bring the omer offering. When do we bring it? When do we begin bringing it—preparing it? After Yom Tov. We go out to the fields, where the beis din’s agents have prepared bundles of barley stalks still attached to the ground, waiting for us to do

02:17 Speaker 2 this with great ceremony, as our Sages instructed. What do we need to do? Well, first we make Havdalah and hurry out to the fields with everyone. There we see bundles of barley stalks still attached to the ground. They’ve been tied together with string to make them easier to reap. The stalks are waiting there, and we’re waiting for Yom Tov to end. Yom Tov has now ended, we make Havdalah, of course, and we stand before those bundles in the dark, at night, with torches and lanterns, perhaps even with a few melodies. Then the beis din’s agents come and ask us, “Has the sun set?” Has night arrived? Yes. They ask us each question three times, to make sure: “Has the sun set?” Let me say one thing first: Why do we make such a big ceremony of it? For one thing, the animal soul is a big part of our lives; it has its concerns. So we make a big ceremony of it to say: Now it’s time to get to work. We need to work with the animal soul. But it’s also to counter the view of the Sadducees. The Sadducees held that since the Torah says “on the day after Shabbos,” one could take that to mean that the counting of the omer always begins after Shabbos. In other words, the omer would always fall on Sunday, no matter when Pesach was. Even if Pesach fell on Monday, you would wait until after Shabbos that week to begin counting the omer. The answer is no, that’s not how it works. We have the ruling of the beis din and the view of the Sages: We bring the omer after Yom Tov. The “Shabbos” here means Yom Tov. Chassidus offers explanations of this—that it is higher than Shabbos, a very lofty level, because it is the world of Tohu,

04:19 Speaker 2 the realm of greater power and intensity in the animal soul. In any case, after Yom Tov we go to do this. We have bundles of stalks tied with ropes, or otherwise bound, in the field, and the beis din’s agents have three sickles. They ask, “Has the sun set? Has night arrived?” Everyone says yes. Then they ask, “Is this a sickle?” as you can see in the picture. Yes, it’s a sickle. Everyone says yes, three times. “Is this a sickle? Is this a sickle? Is this a sickle?” Yes. “Is this a basket?” We’ve brought a sack to put all those bundles into. Is this a basket? These details, too, are meant to counter the view of the Sadducees, including how the stalks are carried. “Yes, it’s a basket.” “Is this a basket?” “Yes.” “Is this a basket?” “Yes.” “Is this a basket?” “Yes.” Then, if it’s Shabbos—if Pesach fell on Friday, which can happen when the month is sanctified based on sighting the new moon—by the time Yom Tov ends, it’s actually Shabbos. The 16th is Shabbos. So they ask, “Is this Shabbos?” “Yes, it’s Shabbos.” “Is this Shabbos?” “Yes, it’s Shabbos.” The omer offering has a fixed time, so it overrides Shabbos. Then they say, “Shall I reap?” “Reap.” “Shall I reap?” “Reap.” “Shall I reap?” “Reap.” And they reap the bundles. What do we have in our hands now? Three groups of barley sheaves in baskets—three baskets—and we bring them to the Beis Hamikdash. There are specific sources from which we learn that this is done in the courtyard, but that is the law: We bring them to the Beis Hamikdash. I want to explain the structure of a grain kernel in a few words, so we can understand

06:25 Speaker 2 it properly. What is a grain kernel? Grain is called tevuah because it “comes” into the home; it comes into our lives. A grain kernel is made up of several parts. The outermost part, the projections sticking out from the kernel, is called chaff; that comes off in the early stages. Then there is bran, a hard layer around the kernel, and another, even harder inner layer of bran around it. Both are coverings of the kernel, not the kernel itself. Inside the kernel, fine flour and ordinary flour are mixed together. So what do we want from this kernel? We want the fine flour and the flour—and ultimately to separate the fine flour from the ordinary flour as well. We’ll see that in the later stages of preparing the omer. But the first stage is to remove the chaff and the outer and inner bran, and then reach the flour and fine flour at the center of the kernel. That’s what we want to do. These are, of course, the Shabbos labors: “The Tanna follows the order of bread-making.” So we have reaping and gathering, and so on, threshing and winnowing. Winnowing generally means tossing it into the wind so that all the chaff blows away and the heavier parts fall back down. Then comes sorting. As we said, we bring this omer and wash the stalks, cleaning off the mud from the field. They would do this in the courtyard. How did they do it? After all, we’ve only just reaped it. Usually, with grain, by the time we celebrate Sukkos, it has spent the year in the field and dried properly in the sun. We then bring it home, and it’s easier to process—to grind, to separate its parts, and so on. It…

08:28 Speaker 2 It has already dried out and is easier to work with. Here, we have just harvested sheaves of barley. The ears are still soft, and some are even a little green. How do we turn them into something we can crush and grind? What they would do in the Beis Hamikdash was pass them over the fire. They would take a special perforated vessel and move it over the fire—not on the altar. They did this in the courtyard itself, yes, so that it would become sanctified, but obviously not on the altar, because it was not yet ready for the altar. They would singe it over the fire, and the chaff would burn away on its own. Some of the bran would peel off, and the outer husk would become very hard from the heat. The grain kernels, which had been ordinary, slightly green barley kernels, now looked like roasted barley kernels. They were still hard, so we spread them out. They also give off a little moisture: they had been in a vessel, and now we spread them out in the courtyard to dry. It is important that they dry; they are very, very hot now. We spread them out in a place in the courtyard exposed to the wind, where a strong wind blows through the kernels, tosses them around and mixes them a little, and, most importantly, cools them so that we can move on to the next stage of preparing the omer offering. We take everything left of those ears of grain. The ears have now become roasted grain kernels, which have also dried in the wind, and now we grind them. We grind them the way all grain kernels are ground, and we get a mixture. We have now ground all the kernels of the omer. They broke apart because the fire, the roasting, had

10:37 Speaker 2 made them hard, and now we have bran, outer husk, fine meal and flour mixed together. All this mixture, by the way, came from eight se'ah for each basket, each sack, and the amount keeps going down, right? Eight se'ah is the gross amount, with all the parts of the grain together. Now we keep removing more and more parts. So we take thirteen sieves for the fine meal, and with these thirteen sieves we begin separating out the parts we want. At first, when we sift, the coarse parts stay on top, while the good fine meal and the flour clinging to it pass through. Then, with the sieves, we reverse that. Each sieve is finer, a little more precise, and separates things so that the fine meal becomes very, very clean. By the final stage, we are left with clean fine meal without flour. The flour here—the flour mixed in with the kernels—is not the flour we are used to buying in stores; it is dirty flour. It says there in [unclear] that this is flour used to absorb the impurities in a cooked dish. They would take it only for that purpose. They did not eat the flour itself, because it was mixed with the grain and the fine meal, and it came from a part of the kernel that was not so clean. So they used only the clean grains of fine meal extracted from the kernels. We are left with one isaron of fine meal, about two and a half kilos according to some methods, from all the twenty-four se'ah we had at the start. That is about ten percent—ten percent remains of the large amount we had

12:41 Speaker 2 at the beginning. Then comes the next stage: when we have clean fine meal, what do we do with it? We transfer it to a service vessel. A service vessel is a vessel used in the Beis Hamikdash, anointed with the anointing oil and consecrated for sacred service. Anything placed in a service vessel is subject to two very well-known rules. First, it becomes sanctified; it becomes something holy and fit for the altar. Second, if dawn passes while it is sitting prepared in that vessel, what remains in it becomes nosar, a leftover offering, and must be burned. Those are the rules for anything that comes into contact with the vessel itself: it becomes sanctified for its allotted time, its time for eating. That is why, in the Beis Hamikdash, they would actually lower the basin into water at night, connecting it to the water so that its water would not remain overnight, pass through dawn and become disqualified. We have now reached the morning of 16 Nissan. What is the order of the day? We are still in Pesach. Every day of Pesach we have a Musaf offering, the morning offering, the Menorah—everything we have each day. The regular daily order certainly remains in place. But what do we have in addition? Several more offerings. Here is how it goes: we begin with the morning tamid offering. The morning tamid, yes, a lamb in the morning. That first lamb of the morning begins all the offerings. I am speaking now only about offerings, not the other services. There are many services performed in the Beis Hamikdash; right now I am focusing on the offerings and the omer. After the morning tamid, if it is Shabbos, they also bring two lambs, the Musaf offering of Shabbos. Then comes the Musaf offering of the day. What

14:36 Speaker 2 is the Musaf offering of the day? Two bulls, seven lambs, one ram and one goat. This is the Yom Tov offering, the Musaf we mention in davening. All the animals we just mentioned make eleven—eleven animals offered as the Pesach Musaf alone. After the Pesach Musaf, we bring the omer: what we have just prepared, this fine meal. We will now explain exactly how it is brought. We also bring a special lamb for the omer, whose distinctive feature was its meal offering. And if it is Shabbos, after that, according to most opinions, we bring the bowls of frankincense from the table of the showbread; these too were burned on the altar’s incense fire every Shabbos. That was the general order of the offerings. Now let us look closely at what we do. We bring this omer, as we said. We soaked it, washed the mud of the field off the grain, roasted it, singed it over the fire, separated it from the straw, ground it, pounded it in a mortar and then sifted it through the thirteen sieves. We have reached the point where we have clean fine meal from the omer and have placed it in a service vessel. After placing it in a service vessel, we take a log of oil. We add this log of oil as we do with all meal offerings. With all meal offerings, we add the oil in three stages. First, we put oil into the vessel. That is the first addition of oil. On top of it we place the fine meal, whether from wheat or barley—in our case, barley from the omer. Then we add another large portion of the log and mix it in, knead it, blend it, yes, mix the fine meal. And afterward, the last portion of the oil we, of the oil

16:51 Speaker 2 We pour it over. This is called the oil poured over the offering. These are the three applications of oil that we give a minchah offering. That is the procedure for every minchah made of fine flour—meaning grain that has been sifted and cleaned. After that we add frankincense. We know that the sotah’s offering has neither oil nor frankincense. It is not fitting for a sinner’s offering to be adorned. Frankincense is associated with the holy matriarchs, and she acted contrary to their ways; and we do not add oil either, because this is a sinner’s offering. Our Sages discuss this: Why should she benefit from that? Well, she does benefit by not having to bring oil and frankincense, but she loses far more through the shame of the whole ordeal. With the Omer offering, though, we add both oil and frankincense. Once we have mixed in the oil and added everything, we scatter all the grains of frankincense over it. We also have to wave the Omer—it is called the Omer of waving. We wave it on the eastern or western side, according to the different opinions. In any case, the kohen takes the vessel containing the entire Omer and the oil and waves it, showing that we are now lifting up the animal soul, raising it to a level at which it can serve in the Beis Hamikdash, through the kohen—the teacher who gave us the wisdom and ability to serve, the kohen who guides us in serving Hashem. He now raises all these powers of the animal soul; he waves them. We bring this minchah to the southwest corner, and now we take the handful. We insert

18:49 Speaker 2 the hand, with the palm, close the fingers against the palm—not so close that the handful is lacking, and not so far that it contains too much, but right against the palm, in this area. We take the handful and place it in another sacred vessel. We take it from the place where there is the most oil, where it is richer. Technically, it is also easier to take the handful that way. That handful is generally the volume of two olives for an average person, about fifty-four grams by volume. We put it in the sacred vessel, then gather up all the frankincense we placed on the Omer and put it into the same vessel as the handful. Then we ascend the altar and salt it—“With all your offerings you shall offer salt”—and burn the handful together with the frankincense on the large altar fire. That completes the offering of the Omer minchah. But we said there is also a lamb. What is this lamb? It is an ordinary lamb brought as a burnt offering, like the many others brought in the Beis Hamikdash, a lamb in its first year. If it is no longer in its first year, it is already a palgas or a ram. We bring this lamb for the Omer. What is special about it? It is a regular burnt offering. What is special is its minchah: instead of one tenth-measure, the Torah requires two tenth-measures. But the oil and wine are still a quarter-hin each, three log, about 900 cc each of oil and wine. In other words, the only thing increased for the Omer lamb is

20:58 Speaker 2 its minchah. The early commentators explain that this alludes to a blessing for the grain in the fields. The Omer is “the first of your harvest,” the first harvest we make that year, and we want the fields and their grain to be blessed, along with the abundance that comes from Hashem. So we give a double minchah, two tenth-measures. In every other respect, it is a regular lamb. We bring it like an ordinary lamb as a burnt offering, divided into six parts because it is a communal offering, following the whole procedure we explained for the daily lamb or a regular communal lamb brought as a burnt offering in the Beis Hamikdash. In addition, we mix the minchah—those two tenth-measures—with three log of oil. We also bring wine. The accompanying minchah offering is burned in its entirety; we do not take a handful from it. All of it goes onto the altar, and then we pour the wine libation. That is the entire Omer offering we bring in the Beis Hamikdash. Once the Omer offering was brought on 16 Nissan, harvesting became permitted throughout the land, and the new grain became permitted—but only outside the Beis Hamikdash. In the Beis Hamikdash, the two loaves permitted the new grain. In other words, until Shavuos we would continue using old grain in the Beis Hamikdash for all the minchah offerings and other things that require it. Only when we brought the two loaves on Shavuos would new grain become permitted inside the Beis Hamikdash as well. The remainder of the Omer minchah is eaten in the courtyard. It must not be allowed to become chametz. The kohanim eat it under the laws of offerings of the highest sanctity, in whatever way they want; they can cook it, as long as it does not become chametz. And if,

23:03 Speaker 2 if it is Shabbos—if Pesach fell on Friday and the 16th is Shabbos—they wait until after Shabbos. There is a dispute about this, as there is regarding the showbread on Yom Kippur, about exactly when it is eaten. The authorities differ on these laws, and in practice we will see very soon what the ruling will be. But apparently it is eaten after Shabbos. They also said that when it is Shabbos, the bowls of frankincense for the showbread are burned only after the Omer and the lamb have been offered. May it be Hashem’s will that very soon, in our days, we see these things happen with our own eyes of flesh—indeed, “all flesh shall see”—and see the Beis Hamikdash, speedily in our days. Amen.