According to the teachings of the Torah, history does not unfold along a time-line but a time-spiral. Rabbi Natan of Breslov, an 18th century Jewish mystic and spiritual leader, teaches that time does not progress an in exclusively linear fashion - that the past, so to speak, repeats itself in the future but in a new form. ![]() My life has a beginning a middle, and an end, and the shape time made as it unfolded was a straight line, a "time line" so to speak. Yesterday was the past, today is the present and tomorrow is the future. For most of my life I conceived of time as being a linear progression, one day following the next. The shape of Jewish time is also different. The holidays themselves and the stories they recount and celebrate are not just stories, they are metaphors for the inner journey of the soul as it travels throughout the year. I discovered that the Jewish Calendar is a time-map, in which a person experiences the sacred of qualities of time, and the landmarks which make up this map are the Jewish Holidays. Time is inherently meaningful and pregnant with purpose that influences that which exists in time. From a Jewish perspective, time itself has an essential quality or qualities to it. This is very different than the Jewish perspective of time. If I did find time periods meaningful, it was a purely personal subjective experience. The astronomical reality of the seconds, minutes and hours that made up my day, the days that made up my week, which made up my month, which made up my years, which added up to make my life, were were also inherently void of any meaning. Growing up, time in a sense was existentially empty, there was no essential quality to it, time did not inherently matter. One of the things I learned was that the Jewish calendar and its view of time was very different than the one I am familiar with. I decided to extend my visit to Israel and to study the Torah in order to go deeper into its wisdom and find out more about Judaism as a spiritual path. That in the same way the Dalai Lama is a lineage-holder in the Buddhist tradition and practices the Dharma of the Buddha, I was a lineage-holder in the Jewish tradition and could practice the Torah of Moses. ![]() I met rabbis and teachers who showed me that what I perceived to be mindless rituals were actually part of a Jewish mindfulness practice, but that I needed to understand them in the right context. I discovered that Judaism is a spiritual path. Then, when I was 21, I traveled to Israel and discovered a Judaism that I had never seen before - that being Jewish was much more than a cultural identity or an old, dusty religion. I was an uninformed Jewish boy from New Jersey, and I thought Judaism was a cultural accident connected to a boring and mindless religion. In order to understand the deeper significance of the mitzvah of counting the Omer, I want to share with you a bit about myself and the Jewish calendar.įor me, growing up Jewish basically meant bagels and lox, the Holocaust and my Bar Mitzvah. ![]() ![]() Sefirat HaOmer is associated with the mitzvah of declaring out loud what day of the Omer it is, starting from the first day after Pesach and counting up to the 49th day. For instance, Rosh Hashanah is associated with the mitzvah of blowing the shofar, and Passover is connected to the mitzvah of eating matzah. Each Jewish holiday is associated with a certain guidelines as well as spiritual practices, known as mitzvot. Sefirat HaOmer can be translated as "Counting the Omer," and in ancient Israel, during Temple times, a special harvest of barley, the first of the season, was cut the night after Pesach, to be offered 49 days later on Shavuot, this is known as the Omer offering. The holiday of Pesach is associated with the Jewish people's liberation from slavery, and the holiday of Shavuot is associated with the gathering of the Jewish people at Mt. According to the Jewish calendar, we are now the in 49 day period of time between Pesach and Shavuot that is known as Sefirat HaOmer. I want to share with you something really deep.
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