Volume 26 Issue 13 12 May 2017 16 Iyyar 5777

From the Head of Jewish Life

Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Emor on Omer

This week’s parahsah, Emor, presents us with an accounting of the Omer.

“You shall count for yourselves, from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer offering, seven weeks, they shall be complete.

Until the day after the seventh week you shall count, fifty days, when you shall bring an offering of new grain.”

(Leviticus 23:15-16)

The Torah further elucidates:

“You shall count for yourselves seven weeks, from when the sickle is first put to the standing crop (grain) shall you begin counting seven weeks.

Then you will observe the Festival of Shavu’ot (Feast of Weeks) for the Lord your God offering your freewill in contribution as the Lord your God has blessed you.”

(Deuteronomy 16:9-10)

The beginning of the grain harvest was marked with bringing an omer (a unit of measure) of barley on the “Shabbat” (understood by the Rabbis as connoting the second day of Passover) as a Temple offering. Upon the conclusion of counting seven weeks (shavu’ot), known as Sefirat HaOmer, the produce of the wheat harvest was brought to the Temple, serving as the concluding rite of the grain harvest. (With the discovery of the Dead Sea Temple Scroll, we learned our ancestors conducted four different 49 day ‘countings’ relating to agricultural celebrations).

Accordingly, Shavu’ot, as it appears in the Bible, is solely an agricultural festival as reflected in its names: Chag HaKatsir – The Feast of Harvest and Chag Hkbikkurin – The Feast of First Fruits.

(From Shavu’ot to Sukkot, which marked the end of the agricultural year, farmers would bring their first fruits to the Temple). Shavu’ot as Zeman Matan Torateinu (The Time of the Giving of the Torah) and marking the Siniatic revelation is a Rabbinic innovation which began to take root following the destruction of the Temple and the sacrificial rite.

The centrality of human endeavour in bringing God and divine revelation into our world, a focus of Rabbinic Judaism following the destruction of the Temple and its core tenet until today, is an idea whose seeds can be found in the Omer ritual itself, which our Rabbinic Shavu’ot came to supplant.

The festival of Shavu’ot was marked by an offering of two loaves of leavened bread (Leviticus 23:17). This concluding rite of the Omer ritual pointedly proclaimed the human role and initiative in being blessed by what God has given us. This divine-human partnership which makes for producing, securing and enjoying the bounty of nature reminds us of the role we are challenged to play in making Torah an ongoing revelation of rightful living through our mindful appreciation of the dynamic of the divine-human relationship.

A story

(Rabbinic Midrash)

What is the difference between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah?

To what can it be compared?

A king had two servants and loved them both. He gave each of them a measure of wheat and each a bundle of flax. What did one servant do? He took the flax and spun a cloth. He took the wheat and made flour. He cleaned the flour and ground, kneaded and baked it, and set it on top of the table. Then he spread the cloth over it, prepared for when the king would come back. The other servant did nothing but retained in safe keeping that which he was given.

A while thereafter, the king returned and said to his servants:

“My children, bring me what I gave you.”

One brought out the table set with the bread on the table cloth. The other brought out the measure of wheat and the bundle of flax. After commending the first servant, the king, in sadness, turned to the second servant and said:

“Woe to the servant who presents but wool and flax.”

אם אין קמח אין תורה אם אין תןרה אין קמח

If there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour.

(Pirkei Avot)