Physicists teach us that the movement of time is constant through space.\u00a0 It moves on and on with the precision and consistency of the finest timepiece.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 At times reassuring.\u00a0 Other times maddening.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 We measure our lives by these perfectly precise segments.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 Sixty to a minute.\u00a0 Sixty minutes to an hour.\u00a0 Twenty-four hours to the day.\u00a0 A week.\u00a0 A month.\u00a0 A year.<\/p>\n
A lifetime.<\/p>\n
Yet how terrible a lifetime measured with the same uniform sameness as this constant movement of time!<\/p>\n
It is true, the clock is as relentless as time itself.\u00a0 No amount of argument, resistance, or protest can slow it.\u00a0 Time is an objective truth but, fortunately, God has seen fit to create man with a different, subjective quality; we have been created to engage with the world and with each other in such a way as to animate and give meaning<\/em> to our experiences within the context of time.\u00a0 Certain moments and days are more significant than others.\u00a0 The birth of a child or grandchild.\u00a0 A wedding.<\/p>\n How we use <\/em>time matters.<\/p>\n Time, as rendered by the physicist, is precise and constant.\u00a0 Jewish time is anything but.\u00a0 The Jewish week is not a measure of seconds by minutes, by hours and by days but rather a continual crescendo rising to the Sabbath.\u00a0 With the Sabbath\u2019s arrival, we celebrate joyously only to reluctantly say farewell at havdalah<\/em> before we start the cycle again.\u00a0 With our celebrations and rituals, our Jewish year is an uneven temporal landscape, where festivals and holidays, solemn observances and fasts alter the meaning and significance of what might otherwise be just another day or season, just another moment in time.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n During no period are we any more conscious of the movement of time toward <\/em>a festival as we are now, during the sefira<\/em>, the counting of the Omer.\u00a0 Each day, as we count the period from the second day of Passover through Shavuot.\u00a0 Each day, rather than measuring the ticking of time, we are to mark the day with the counting of the Omer.<\/p>\n We are not unique in counting in anticipation of a special event.\u00a0 What bride \u2013 in any culture or place \u2013 does not count in anticipation of her \u201cspecial day\u201d?\u00a0 However, in this counting, as Rabbi Shraga Simmons notes in his article, \u201cMake the Omer Count\u201d (Aish.com), most people, in anticipation of a special day or moment, count \u201cdown\u201d toward the celebration.\u00a0 Not Jews.\u00a0 Not during the counting of the Omer.\u00a0 We count \u201cup.\u201d<\/p>\n Is the distinction important?<\/p>\n To a people who find meaning in a single letter in a single pasuk<\/em>, of course the distinction is important!\u00a0 Before addressing that importance, Rabbi Simmons suggests we first need to consider why <\/em>God waited fifty days from our redemption to delivering to us the Torah.<\/p>\n His answer is that we were not yet spiritually ready to receive the Torah.\u00a0 After generations of slavery in Egypt, we were not only subjugated, but we were in a society well-known for its immorality, immorality that could not help but seep into our consciousness even without our participation in it.\u00a0 We needed time to distance ourselves from both.<\/p>\n We needed to progress slowly, one step, one day at a time.\u00a0 It is interesting to note that unlike other observances and holidays, the Torah does not give a date for Shavuot, just that it takes place at the end of fifty days.\u00a0 The lesson Rabbi Simmons takes from this is that we are to \u201cget there\u201d at our own pace.\u00a0 One step at a time.<\/p>\n In counting the Omer, we are counting toward a personal and spiritual goal.\u00a0 We are building up<\/em> not counting down<\/em>.<\/p>\n And then, during our sefirah<\/em>, our counting, we pause.\u00a0 We pause to celebrate on the thirty-third of the counting (Lag BaOmer <\/em>or Lag LaOmer<\/em>) and the at the culmination of the counting, Shavuot.<\/p>\n Pause?\u00a0 How can we pause?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t the counting like time, constant and unchanging?\u00a0 And why at Lag BaOmer when the Torah makes no mention of the holiday?<\/p>\n One reason for the holiday is that it is the passing of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.\u00a0 Another, is the link between Lag BaOmer and the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n In both cases, we see a clear example of finding meaning and significance in a moment in Jewish time.\u00a0 Meaning and significance is the way that time \u201cslows\u201d.\u00a0 We count time and find meaning in the events that define moments in time.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Anticipation focuses us on a moment in time.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, a special event itself can be seen as a culmination of anticipatory moments.\u00a0 We look forward to a moment and then\u2026 we arrive.\u00a0 This is when we celebrate a siyum<\/em>.<\/p>\n In Judaism, we learn that our accomplishments are reason for joy and religious satisfaction. \u00a0For a religious and learned Jew there is no greater joy than that found in celebrating a siyum<\/em>; celebrating the privilege of having had the opportunity to complete a significant part of Torah.<\/p>\n And yet\u2026 and yet\u2026 just as time does not stop we find that we never enjoy unbridled <\/em>joy when we celebrate a siyum<\/em>.\u00a0 I have often wondered at the strange, mixed emotion of the siyum<\/em>.\u00a0 There is joy, absolutely, but also something else \u2013 an anxiety, a sadness, a sense, perhaps, of depletion.\u00a0 Why should a moment of such joy and accomplishment be tinged with any kind of negative emotion?<\/p>\n Even in our moments of joy, when time seems to be the repository of such powerful meaning, time is still time.\u00a0 It cannot be what it is not.\u00a0 It moves on, relentless.\u00a0 So, in addition to our accomplishments, there is the awareness of finality, of passing a moment of which the long road of life has fewer and fewer ahead.<\/p>\n Our ability to anticipate is diminished, not by the anticipation itself but by our awareness that the road ahead is shortened.\u00a0 It is a blessing to celebrate an eighty-fifth birthday, but can one celebrate such a birthday without the awareness that, unlike when he was a young man of twenty, there cannot be more than a handful of such moments yet ahead?<\/p>\n It is as if, while listening to a brilliant pianist practicing, it was possible to hear the soft echo of the metronome growing louder.\u00a0 The constant, steady beat intruding just enough to enter one\u2019s awareness, even as the beauty of the playing remains dominant.<\/p>\n The genuine Jew wants not only to celebrate the joys of yesterday, but even more to anticipate the hopes of tomorrow.\u00a0 But the awareness of time continuing cannot help but begin to color that anticipation.<\/p>\n With age comes wisdom and with wisdom comes greater awareness.\u00a0 I know a man who, when gazing at his friends and family that had gathered to celebrate his daughter\u2019s wedding, felt a clouding over his heart.\u00a0 Even as he enjoyed the event, an event he and his family had anticipated for many months with ever growing excitement, he knew that the moment was passing and there was no way to hold it.<\/p>\n So, we count; we engage in our personal sefira<\/em>.<\/p>\n The question for each of is, do we count ba<\/u>Omer <\/em>or la<\/u>Omer<\/em>?\u00a0 Do we count on <\/em>the Omer or do we count to <\/em>the Omer?\u00a0 Is it a difference without distinction or does the difference point to a profound understanding about time and the meaning we seek in our lives?\u00a0 Like anything else, what might appear to many to be an insignificant alteration has the potential to teach us powerful lessons.\u00a0 Inherent in the small \u201cgrammatical\u201d difference between these two formulations is the question, do you count to the current moment or do you count beyond, do you count forward<\/em>?<\/p>\n The b\u2019racha <\/em>for the sefira <\/em>is the same in either case, but it is important that we count to know where we are\u2026 and where we are yet to go.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of our greatest sages, including Rav Soloveitchik and the Brisker Rav understood this.\u00a0 They used both expressions.\u00a0 After all, life is a combination of all there has been and all that is yet to come.\u00a0 The power of the siyum <\/em>is that it captures both at the same moment, filling us with both joy and the ache of knowing that time will continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Physicists teach us that the movement of time is constant through space.\u00a0 It moves on and on with the precision and consistency of the finest timepiece.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 At times reassuring.\u00a0 Other times maddening.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 We measure our lives by these perfectly precise segments.\u00a0 Tick, tick, tick.\u00a0 Sixty to a minute.\u00a0 Sixty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":44208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[355],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lag-baomer"],"yoast_head":"\n