Counting the Days, Making You Shine

 Ever polished a day?  Have you ever gotten a “day shine” (as opposed to a shoe shine).  What on earth is he talking about, you’re probably thinking.  Well, in Hebrew there are many plays on words, because Hebrew is a rich language, and many of its words have meanings and sub-meanings and hints and allusions.  This is especially true of words in the Torah.  Our sages taught that there are 70 (Torah-true) ways to interpret every aspect of the Torah.

Here’s an example:  In the section of this week’s Parsha that teaches us about the festivals, the Torah tells us about the Mitzvah of the “Counting of the Omer:”  Usefartem lachem… you shall count for you… seven weeks.  This is the Mitzvah to count the seven weeks, 49 days, from the second day of Pesach to Shavuot.  The word “Usefartem” means you shall count, but it also has another meaning.  The three letters samech fai and reish are related to the word “sapir,” meaning sapphire, implying a shining stone.  

(*Pardon the Interruption* We need some cars for our summer program.  Would you have a car you can donate?  Used car values, and therefore also tax write-offs, can be pretty hefty, if the organization you donate the car to uses the car as opposed to selling it.)

Chassidus, the soul of Torah, finds a deep message in this double meaning.  In addition to the simple translation of “you shall count for you,” usefartem lachem means “you shall shine the ‘you’.”  The message here is that the Counting of the Omer helps us purify ourselves.  

How is this connected to counting seven weeks and 49 days?  Creation and person are intertwined by divine design.  There are seven days of the week corresponding to the seven emotions of a person.  We each have seven emotions, love, fear or awe, compassion, and more, that drive our lives and actions.   But the emotions are very complex, and each emotion is itself comprised of seven emotions.  So for example if a parent disciplines a child, that is “awe of love.”  

So the seven weeks, each comprised of seven days, represent the 49 complex emotions.  On Pesach, we celebrated a great spiritual revelation.  The Jews were slaves in Egypt, in a place of depravity and spiritual darkness, and, as we say in the Haggadah, Hashem Himself went into Egypt to redeem them.  A short time later, the Jewish people stood before Hashem at Mount Sinai and received the Torah, and along with it the mission to illuminate the world with Hashem’s light.  

How do you get from one extreme to the other?  Hashem gave them 49 days, one day per emotion, to transform themselves and bring themselves out of the darkness of Egypt into the light of Torah.  

This is a process that we try to recreate every year.  The days of the Omer are the opportunity for us to connect to that spiritual energy that allows us to truly transform ourselves, to harness our emotions and take control of them, so that we use our talents and abilities to bring goodness and light to the world.

So the Torah tells us two things: Count for you - the days, and, shine the you - the emotions.   That is, polish the days and make them shine, so that when Shavuot comes we will be in a spiritual state to once again internalize the receiving of the Torah.