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Friday

י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

Friday
י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

חיפוש בארכיון

Mitzvah 306) Counting the Omer

Parshas Emor

“And you shall count for yourselves on the day following the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the waving sheaf!” (Vayikra 23:15)

It is a positive commandment to count forty-nine days from the day of the bringing of the sheaf-offering (which is the sixteenth of Nissan), as it says “And you shall count for yourselves on the day following the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the waving sheaf!”. This counting is an obligation, and it is incumbent upon us to count every day, and also to count the weeks.

Amongst the roots of this commandment on a basic level are that since the Torah is the soul of Klal Yisrael and the heavens and earth were only created for Torah (as we see in the verse “if not for my covenant in the day and the night etc.) and the only reason we were redeemed from Egypt was in order to receive the Torah at mount Sinai and to fulfil its laws, as Hashem said to Moshe “And this will be the sign that I have sent you, that when you take the people out of Egypt you will serve Hashem on this mountain!”, which refers to the giving of the Torah which is a great fundamental part of Klal Yisrael as they were only redeemed for this, and it is also the ultimate goodness for them, and that is why Hashem used the giving of the Torah as the sign of redemption from slavery which was for the receiving of the Torah.

It is because of this idea that we were commanded to count from the second day of Passover until the day when we were given the Torah, to show ourselves the great will and longing for the honoured wished-for day, like a servant who counts towards the long-awaited day when he will be freed from servitude, for the act of counting shows that his only wish is to reach that time.

This is also the reason why we count from the sheaf-offering forward (how many days have already passed) and not how many days there are left until the receiving of the Torah, for that shows our tremendous will to reach that time, so we do not want to remember at the beginning of the counting quite how many days there are left until the giving of the Torah and the two-loaf-offering on Shavuos. Nevertheless, even after most of the counting days have already passed we do not change to count how few days there are left, because we cannot change the method of counting when in the middle.

This commandment applies biblically in all places to men during the time period when the sheaf-offering was brought when the temple was standing. Rabinically it applies even when there is no sheaf-offering.