Ascending the Omer Journey - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone i hope you had a wonderful seder and that you're having a great pesach i wanted to start talking a little bit about this omer journey that we're on again we are counting the omer for the second time together on the fellowship what is this about so now the obvious journey is commemorating the journey from the exodus on pesach slavery going to when we celebrate receiving the torah which is kind of funny at first glance because it's like hey yay free no rules no boss it's like you remember as a kid when you would get out of school for summer that feeling of freedom so then we're out and you walk for 49 days in the desert it's like surprise look what i got you rules and more rules you're like i'm a slave again but now just to the torah wasn't i free but of course that's not the case because you know judaism was often criticized for being under the law but we know that ultimate freedom isn't just to do whatever you want but to choose to freely accept upon ourselves the yoke of heaven to accept hashem's kingship so what's interesting is that the torah when talking about you know that journey to shamu oat focuses a lot on the agricultural aspect you know pesach is when we start harvesting the crops and chevron is when you bring the first fruits and you you know raise them up to hashem so you know there's like it seems like there's the spiritual aspect and the physical aspect and people kind of talk about those as two separate things but i think that when you think about it they're actually really connected it's like through the agricultural aspect of this you know 50-day journey we relive the process of leaving egypt because it's like you're gonna work i don't know anyone with a free ride i don't know anyone who does not have to work hard just to make life happen but are you going to work for man are you going to work for your own physical needs are you going to be working for hashem when we left egypt we turned around to accept upon ourselves obedience to hashem and every year we take our life of physical labor you know in the olden times it was only agriculture now it can be other things that you could say oh i have to work you know and i have to work for this guy and i have to do that shavuot is the representation of taking our physical efforts and labor in life and say whatever it is we're going to find a way to elevate even the most spirit physical sorry necessities of life into something holy so this is a really auspicious time to think about how we are going to elevate our life how we are going to go out of our mental slavery into living a life where we can maybe be working just as hard but raising it up and dedicating our lives to him so how do we embark on that journey i think we can find some really interesting clues just in the very name of this time spheroto omer which literally means counting the omer the root of the word counting in hebrew lee spur the root is safar in that root there are a lot of layers of meeting meaning that we can learn from so i just want to unpack this word a little bit the first level of the word is obviously to count we are counting the days what does that mean you can just technically count the days okay one two three four but if you focus on it when we think about it we meditate on it a little bit the very awareness of the counting of time the passing of time of noticing time not just letting it slip away is in and of itself an important exercise i usually try to point out the deep meaning of hebrew words but actually here i think english hit the nail on the head when we say make every day count right there's a lesson there that the very awareness brought by counting days is really meaningful because what are things that you count something you count is something precious you count your treasure right it's interesting that torah hashem is counting always counts us he dedicates a lot of time to counting us like when you're a slave your time isn't precious at all it belongs to someone else so the first most basic process of the omar is maybe just being aware of the preciousness of our time thinking when we count the omar about what a gift it is that we have this day hashem entrusted us with time to use wisely so that's one level now i'm going to digress for a second to make a little fun of ari but bear with me because i actually have a point here and i learned something from ari's little mishap so ari is a great friend and he's always trying to help people remember to say the omer but if you know ari you also know he has a funny way with the hebrew language and i'm sure he's shared with you many of his little humorous mishaps from mangling hebrew words like the time in the army when he was trying to say that he was late muharr but he ended up apologizing to his commander for being which means ugly so if you know a little bit of arya's stories you kind of have an idea of where i'm going so on the farm we have a whatsapp group for all the families and the volunteers to make sure you know we know who's milking the goats and who's taking out the sheep so ari posted there a reminder to count the omer but instead of writing the hebrew word for counting the omer he wrote the closely related but different word that comes from the same root which is listed which technically means to get a haircut so besides it being kind of a funny mistake it's even more funny because in the omare we have a tradition to not cut our hair for the first 33 days in commemoration of the tragedies that happened during this time most notably the death the deaths of the students of rabbi akiva so i wrote to arya privately i said i know you're trying to get people to count the omer but you kind of just told everyone to get a haircut on the omer which is sort of the opposite of what you're supposed to do but long story short this got me thinking that is so interesting that tied up in this word is a word to you know to cut to get a haircut what does that mean so i actually looked into the development of that world where it seems like it started to be used in the tana itic period which started around the end of second temple period going towards a little bit after the barcoka rebellion and you can find it in the tosefta for the first time in the context not of giving your head a haircut but of giving your vegetables a haircut when you can cut off like the thorny parts of your vegetables on a holiday so that's kind of what a haircut is right like cutting off the unnecessary parts examining so i was like maybe this means that within this word is the idea of cutting off getting rid of what we don't really need to be doing like what am i doing that's not necessary what are my thorny parts what are my habits that are not really adding to my life it's a process that i've been going through really deeply in the last few days because you know when we moved to the farm i was all about cutting back jeremy we're gonna live a simple life we're gonna cut back we're gonna be with the kids we're gonna leave to hustle and bustle and go live out in nature and then you know when covet came and the visits to the farm kind of dried up it opened up some time and i started to let all the things that i used to do just come creeping back in and i'm pretty much back where i started and you know it can create a feeling that's like a little bit chokey i know that sometimes jeremy will introduce me on the fellowship and he's so cute it'll say oh my wife she does this and she does that and she does this and then she does that and i sometimes there's a part of me that feels a little bit you know proud and people will write to me you guys are like so kind be like oh wow how do you juggle everything and i think oh my god if only they knew the real answer is that i do it poorly right there are times where there's a part that i think to myself maybe all these things i do make me feel like i'm somebody i'm filling up the time to justify my existence but maybe if i focused on doing a little bit less but doing it really well things would be better instead of doing a million things maybe i'm doing things that don't need to be done and if i got rid of them i could give the things that are more important their proper attention you know maybe it gives you some sort of sense of busyness or importance that you can fill the time but maybe if we focused on more time for prayer more time for taurus study time for being with our family you know maybe maybe that time would be better used so perhaps tied up in this word of counting the omer is time for meditating on what we can actually be doing less of and not more of so thank you ari for lighting that up for me now a third layer of meaning in this word from spirato omer is lisa pere which means to tell a story it's so important to have this narrative story of our life to be able to be the narrator is a uniquely free existence when you're a slave someone else tells the story of your life you're born you're gonna work for me and then you're gonna die and that's about it right to be free is to take this gift that hashem gave only to humans to be able to dream up your own vision of life to tell that story and your story is made of your experiences and the lessons that you garner from your past and how you unfold them into the drama of your future you know shaping your vision of what you feel like is your most you know potential fulfilling and godly life and you know when you think about telling a story when you read a great novel it's like you can get caught up in the story and it feels like this author must have just written with this stream of consciousness but anybody who's ever really written knows how much time actually goes into the editing thinking about what is the exact precise word i should put here what is the right sentence how should i structure this so maybe part of spirato omer is to focus on being the authors of our life both creatively but also as the editors knowing how to sit down with ourselves taking this time to sit down with ourselves to examine and make sure we are telling the story the most precisely with just the right words and just the right descriptions in order to envision the proper life now the last aspect encapsulated in this word is really interesting you're going to recognize it from the english as well it's the sapphire stone do you hear it omer sapphire in hebrew it's called sapir in the hebrew letters this the word sapphire is tied up in this root of of counting the omer you know we know that the from exodus 24 that when hashem revealed himself at sinai the the throne as it were of hashem appeared as sapphire stone and in ezekiel chapter one as well and the talmud says and when we look at the talent of the titit it's similar to the color of the sea which is similar to the color of the sky which is similar to the to the throne of glory which is similar to the sapphire stone so what is a sapphire the sapphire is symbolic of the torah the midrash says that the tablets themselves of the ten commandments were hewn from that sapphire so the sapphire it shines it's something that you don't even need to do but is done to you if you have the eyes to see it when you see a beautiful gem it just shines on you you're not doing anything you're just there to witness it so you know there's besides for the active elements of sphere at home maybe part of it is to just have an open heart and open eyes to allow the torah the light of the torah as a sapphire stone to just shine on us and do to us what needs to be done to have that open willingness that curiosity to hear hashem's message in our life so now i think these are all really cool messages that are packed into the word um and it's a wonderful time to take to do these you know practices maybe in the night when you're counting the omer or early in the morning i have to share with you guys just to close i learned so much from this fellowship um we have such we have such great friends on the fellowship that share with us their practices and so i just have to tell you guys this one story last summer we were traveling around the u.s and we got to knoxville tennessee and i got a text message to my phone from one of the members of our fellowship who had been at one of our talks and she said that she wanted to meet me in the morning at the hotel we were staying at we said to meet at 8 30 i said oh 8 30 i'm a mom of you know six i'm going to be up in early 8 30 is like the afternoon for me of course i'm a big talker the kids i guess we're so tired from driving across pretty much all of the state of tennessee in one day that they slept late 8 45 i come down i wander down to the to the hotel lobby all bleary-eyed and i see kimberly's beautiful face and she has papers and binders and notebooks and she shows me the most amazing exercise she created for the omer and she said that the reason she wanted to share this with me was because my teaching last year about spirit homeowners was what inspired this exercise she's like look at what you taught me and i'm thinking my face is saying like yes and my mind is like oh my gosh what did i teach on spherotomer last year i don't even remember how could this beautiful project possibly be the the product of my dismal thoughts that i could have never uh you know i could have never done something like this myself so she shows me this amazing exercise so here was kimberly with these organized binders and notes i enjoyed the visit so much that i promised myself and her that i will share this when the omer comes and kimberly of course gave me permission so she had this wonderful idea she takes 50 note cards for each day of the omer and tacks them up on the wall in an ascending position symbolizing going up towards you know towards our journey to sinai and on each card on the back she writes out something that she is grateful for or a prayer and on the other side she writes she waits and listens to the word that hashem is sending her for that day and writes out that word and then throughout the day meditates on that meaning and looks for guidance and wisdom on that specific word like words like faith love simplicity surrender and then she has a notebook where she writes out the process of what she goes through and what she learns through these days and she just saw amazing miracles happen throughout that process and i thought that was so thoughtful and really encapsulated the meaning of that finding that balance between the listening element of the omer and the active sort of narration counting and storytelling element of the omer and so i'm sharing that idea with you i know that maybe for some of you i just love i love that practice and i think it could be so useful for many of you and i might not be as good as kimberly maybe some of you guys are like me at hearing necessarily a word so there's you know a little tweak that some of you guys might like in there's a tradition to learn in the ethics in the mishnah there's um a book called the ethics of our fathers which some of you might be familiar with and in chapter six uh passage number six there's a list of 48 ways to be um worthy of receiving the torah which is really cool because if you start you know if you start this uh you know throughout the omer you can have the first 48 days to go through those and then on the 49th day review them and so there there's a list of different attributes that you need to work on in order to be worthy of receiving the taurus so if you don't have your own words you can try this practice with a word from from the chat from the ethics of our fathers and i think that you know so anyway these are just some ideas that i find useful and i hope that you'll find useful in trying to maximize the spiritual potential of these special days so with that i wish everyone a continued wonderful pessah and a productive and elevating omer process this year bye guys