We count the Omer up and not down. Usually, we count down in anticipation of an event. The reason for the counting up is that we are preparing to become a people.
Now for a quick devar Torah.
We are now 41 days into the Omer. Every night we count upward — one day, two days, three days — until eventually we reach Shavuot and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
But it raises an interesting question.
Normally, when people are anticipating something important, they count down, not up.
At Cape Canaveral there’s a countdown for a rocket launch. On New Year’s Eve we count down to midnight. If someone is finishing a prison sentence, he counts down the days until release. When I was in the army and getting close to getting out, I was counting down the days too.
So why during the Omer do we count upward?
One answer is that we are anticipating receiving the Torah. But there is something deeper going on. The counting is not merely marking time. It is a process of building.
The Jewish people had just come out of Egypt after centuries of slavery and subjugation. Freedom is not automatic. You cannot take a slave people one day and expect them to become a free nation the next.
In fact, the Torah itself tells us this.
When the Jews left Egypt, God did not take them directly into the Land of Israel through the land of the Philistines because, as the Torah says, they might see war, become frightened, and run back to Egypt. Physically leaving slavery is easier than mentally becoming free.
Freedom requires preparation.
That is what the counting of the Omer represents. Every day the people are building themselves up internally — spiritually, morally, and nationally — preparing to receive the Torah, which in many ways functions as our constitution.
You can even see this idea reflected in political history.
The The Conservative Sensibility and other writings by George Will discuss how constitutional liberty did not suddenly appear in America overnight. The ideas behind limited government developed gradually through English history — from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution — establishing the principle that even kings are subject to law.
Only after generations of developing those ideas could the United States Constitutional Convention produce a constitution in which power was limited and authority balanced.
The Torah is teaching something similar.
To become a free people, authority must be limited, but the people must also be united around a mission and a moral purpose. That is why the Mishkan — the Tabernacle — stood in the center of the camp. It reminded the people why they had been taken out of Egypt and what freedom was supposed to mean.
Freedom is not merely the absence of slavery. Freedom is having a higher purpose.
And that is why we count up during the Omer.
Every single day we are building ourselves higher — building ourselves into a people capable of receiving the Torah and capable of remaining free.
Something to think about.
Leave a Reply