Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Sefiras Ha'Omer, what does it mean?
12:03 PM | 
Posted by
Rabbi Chaim Coffman |
Even though there may be the simple explanation of why we do a particular mitzvah, nonetheless there are many hidden explanations as well. For examples, the mitzvah of blowing the shofar, the Rambam writes in the Laws of Teshuvah Chapter 3 Halacha 4) that even though the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is really a Divine decree written in the Torah, there is a hint as to why we do it. The reason is because we are sleeping most of the year in our performance of mitzvos and the shofar helps wake us up to get back to our true selves. There are other mitzvos as well like eating matzah on Passover or sitting in a sukkah on Sukkos that the reasons that we do these mitzvos are pretty clear. What about Sefiras Ha'omer? The reason why we count days, weeks seems to be extremely hidden and unclear why we do it.
The Torah tells us to count 7 weeks and each week we count seven days..but why? When we count the days, are they good days or bad days? There are a lot of things we could do in a day and what we can fill it with so why count the seven weeks with seven days seven times?
The Sefer Ha'Chinuch in Mitzvah 306 tells us: "The foundation of the mitzvah is that the essence of the Jewish people is to keep the Torah and because of the Torah the heavens and earth were created as well as the Jewish people. The reason that the Jewish people were redeemed and came out of Egypt was to accept the Torah on Mount Sinai and keep the mitzvos that G-d gave us.
We are then commanded to count from the day after the first day of Passover until the holiday of Shavuos (the day of the giving of the Torah).The reason that we count up until the day of the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people is to show out happiness that G-d freed us and took us out of Egypt.
We therefore count each day, then the week and the day until you reach "That Day!", the day that G-d gave us the Torah and the ability to keep His mitzvos! Each day is significant because it relates to the past (all the miracles that happened in Egypt and our leaving Egypt) to our status as a nation that saw G-d face to face at Mount Sinai to be His people to perpetuate His message for the world, ie the Torah!
May we use each day productively!
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