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Making It Count:
Area Jews Find Meaning in Omer Rituals
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
Courtesy of Gila Ruskin
I n 2000, Brandeis University health
policy researcher Brian Rosman
created homercalender.net. The
concept is simple: You visit the site
for each of the 49 days of the Omer
and find a bespoke image of Homer
Simpson corresponding to each day
and its accompanying blessings.

For the eighth day of the Omer on
April 13, one can “count the Homer”
with a picture of the Simpson patriarch
sipping Duff Beer from a beer helmet.

The practice of counting each day of
the Omer, the period between Passover
and Shavuot, obviously predates the
earliest days of the internet. The ancient
tradition is a period of self-reflection
and grounding, and with it comes a
myriad of ways to observe. After all, it’s
more than just the count that counts.

“I find it a deep mindfulness practice
that calls me present to count each
day,” said Rabbi Yael Levy, the rabbi
emerita of Mishkan Shalom and
creator of Jewish mindfulness teaching
program A Way In.

Levy counts the Omer in the tradi-
tional way: First saying a bracha, then
counting, then meditating on the day’s
aspect of human nature and emotion.

She’s gone on trips to the desert to
count the Omer and has friends who
mark the days by wearing a different
color. “It’s important to play with these
things,” she said. “It’s important to
enjoy them.”
Counting the Omer can have numer-
ous spiritual benefits, Levy said. The
ritual has origins in agriculture, with
“Omer” meaning “sheaf,” the measure
of grain taken to the Temple in
Jerusalem. The Omer was an opportu-
nity to pray daily for a good harvest and
rainy season.

Even though many Jews, like Levy,
are no longer agricultural people, the
ritual can reconnect people to the earth.

“May we be aligned with ourselves in
“Climbing Mt. Sinai - Counting the Omer,” created by Rabbi Gila Ruskin, is a mosaic Omer counter.

relationship to the earth and all people
that are caring well for the earth, so the
earth is able to yield this produce, and
rain comes in its time,” Levy said.

Susan Windle, a Philadelphia-based
writer, authored “Through the Gates:
A Practice for Counting the Omer,” a
collection of letters and poems she
wrote in her first few years of counting
the Omer.

A Jew by choice, Windle began
counting the Omer in 2008 at a spiri-
tual training before she converted and
found that the practice caught her
by surprise.

“The reason I do this is because I
literally fell in love with the practice and
with the people that I was practicing
with,” she said.

Windle wrote a poem that she shared
with friends, first one for every week of
the Omer, and, in the following years,
one for every day.

Each of the seven weeks of the Omer
corresponds to one of seven sefirot, or
divine emanations outlined in Kabbalah,
or Jewish mysticism. Each day of the
week corresponds with a middot, or
Jewish virtue. The days and weeks of
the Omer form a matrix and create a
specific theme or attribution of God, to
focus on for each day.

The Omer can also be a chance to build
community. Rabbi Gila Ruskin, formerly a
congregational rabbi in Baltimore, had a
congregant create an interactive Omer
counter out of plywood that sat on the
synagogue bimah.

Inspired to create her own, Ruskin
crafted a counter out of mosaic tiles,
with each sefirah and middah of the
Omer marked on a different color-coded
tile, forming a set of stairs leading to
Mount Sinai. She covered each tile
with drywall tape and, every day, the
children from the congregation would
tear off a piece of tape to reveal the tile
underneath. Though Ruskin led a Reform commu-
nity with little background in Jewish
mysticism, the ritual still had spiritual
meaning. “The concepts of liberation and revela-
tion are not just religious concepts,” she
said. “There’s something that we all
have in our lives.”
Counting the Omer can be accessible
to any Jew who wants to practice it,
Ruskin argued. For those not familiar
with or interested in its religious origins,
the Omer can simply be a lesson in how
to wait patiently and thoughtfully.

“Any of us could be in a situation
in our lives, where we’re waiting for
something, that you’re waiting for a
diagnosis; you’re waiting for a baby
to be born; you’re waiting for your
mortgage to come through. ... There’s
so many different situations, and it’s
good to have a ritual to do when you’re
in the process of waiting,” Ruskin said.

Though Jewish tradition dictates that
if one forgets to count the Omer one
night, they can pick it back up without
saying the blessing for the subsequent
days, Windle suggests beginners don’t
focus on the technicalities of the ritual.

“Don’t worry if you miss a day
because other people are counting and
holding it up for you,” Windle said. “Be
gentle, enjoy it, explore it. See what
happens.” ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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