Torah doesn’t give a reason for counting “omer” for the seven weeks between Pesach (second day) and Shavuot. We’re told to count, so we count!

Many of us have been counting the days, sometimes the hours and minutes, from when our social and work lives changed. (It’s been close to 365 days, 8,760 hours, over half-a-million minutes.)

We can feel that in every aspect of our coronavirus lives we have been counting up to an end that sometimes appears to be within reach, then eludes us; three steps forward, one back, two forward, three back…a macabre dance.

Yet we persevere; what else should we do? We mourn lives cut short; we question how responses to danger can be so varied; we celebrate medical advances that preserve life; we yearn for touch, for smiles. We get creative, we get despondent.

And we count. We count the ways we’ll celebrate our liberation from isolation. We count on one another.

No longer strangers to counting, we count on our tradition to help ground us, and so it is that we will count omer. Click here for a handy omer counting assistant.

Shabbat shalom !שבת שלום

Click on the image below for a printable pdf