Parashat Emor: Counting Our Blessings

That woman in the supermarket who told me, “Enjoy your kids now; it goes by so quickly,” was certainly right. It does go by quickly. But what are we to do about it? How can we hold on to the moment, to appreciate its fleeting, precious character as it flies by?

Maybe that is the purpose of sefirat ha-omer—the counting of the 49 days between the holidays of Pesach and Shavu’ot. We are in the midst of this counting right now (about half way through), and the commandment to do such an official count also happens to be in this week’s parashah, Emor (Lev 23:15).

The counting is done each night with a blessing followed by an official pronouncement of the count, for example: “Today is the 26th day of the Omer, which is 3 weeks and 5 days.” (It’s around now that the math gets too complicated for me).

Why count these days? The Torah connects the counting to the grain harvest. We count from the beginning of the barley harvest, celebrated on Passover, to the beginning of the wheat harvest, celebrated on Shavu’ot. The sixteenth century Italian biblical commentator Sforno suggets that the purspose of this counting is to remind people daily to be thankful to God for the harvest, to remind them that the bountiful blessings they are receiving from the land all ultimately derive from God.

Counting is a way of stopping, in the very midst of the bounty of springtime, to note our good fortune and be mindful and appreciative of it. Counting implies that each thing is to be valued and appreciated on its own. That is what it means to count our blessings, to note each one and give true thanks, in the knowledge that it could have been otherwise. It means to be conscious in a daily way of the preciousness of that day of life, that day of food, and that day of our children’s lives.

It’s true. It does go by quickly, our children’s childhood, and life in general. Counting the Omer teaches us that the proper response to such life blessings, to the good fortune of food and children and life, is to be present and aware of the blessing which is each passing moment, and to give thanks to the Source of blessing.

As Psalm 90 says, “Teach us to count our days rightly.”