“525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? How about love? How about love?
Measure in love. Seasons of love.”
I used to not like that song so much. When the whole Rent craze began nearly 20 years ago, I didn’t really get it. I actually was lucky enough to have seen the original cast on Broadway back in 1996, and after the show the four of us in my family looked at each other and said, “So? So what? What’s the big deal?” We liked it, it was good. But “amazing”? “The greatest show ever”?? We had no idea what these people were talking about.
But the question is still a good one: How do we measure a year? How do we measure our lives?
Well, we count. We love to count. (“1! 1 beautiful year! 525,600 minutes! Aha! I love it!”) We do, don’t we. We quantify everything – how many hours we spend at work, how long was our phone conversation with Mom, how much time do we have for our meeting before the next obligation; how many people attend our work events, how many people come to Shabbat Unplugged, how many people on the mailing list, in the Facebook group. We struggle so desperately for qualitative, descriptive ways to measure the level of success or engagement or connection, and in our frustration, we resort to gauging ourselves by numbers.
And maybe even more than that, we love to count down. I vividly remember listening to Casey Kasem and American Top 40 in the carpool on the way to Religious School and watching Adam Curry host MTV’s weekly Top 20 Video Countdown, before TRL diluted even that to a daily occurrence. We count down to birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, ends of school years, the first day of camp. I had classmates in rabbinical school who, from somewhere in the middle of the 3rd year, if not earlier, had begun a very precise countdown to our ordination day. And I have a colleague and friend who, from the moment the World Series ends each year, can tell you to the day, how long before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.
On one level, it makes sense. When our daily lives aren’t necessarily so thrilling or exhilarating moment to moment, we give ourselves something larger, something significant, to look forward to. It heightens our anticipation and excitement and can even make whatever that moment is more enjoyable, perhaps more meaningful. But on the other hand, aren’t we just wishing our lives away? By counting down, counting away, aren’t we negating the current moment? Are we somehow ignoring, even neglecting, the awesome potential of the “now”?
How about “counting up”? How about that?
Our tradition answers: Yes. Unequivocally yes. And that answer is the Omer.
The Omer is where we find ourselves right now, an interesting juncture in the Hebrew calendar. We are between the celebration of our freedom at Pesach, and looking ahead to the next Jewish holiday, the pilgrimage holiday of Shavuot. Like many of our chagim, Shavuot has both an agricultural and a textual, rabbinic significance as well. Agriculturally, Shavuot is the Festival of the first fruits of the harvest, thanking God for what we hope is a bounteous crop. For the Rabbis, Shavuot commemorates the moment when we received Torah at Mount Sinai. And there are seven weeks between the start of Pesach and Shavuot, which literally means “weeks.”
So we count the Omer. These 7 weeks, these 49 days.
But we don’t count down. We count up.
Why?
See, in line with the agricultural roots of the holiday, farmers were supposed to make an offering of the appropriate grain with each day of the Omer. That’s actually what “omer” means: this grain offering that accompanies each day. Instead of taking something away, we add to our cumulative offering. So that’s part of the answer: we’re building up the bounty of goodness as we prepare to thank God for all of it.
For the rabbinic element, there is even more reason for counting up. The holidays of Passover and Shavuot are commemorations of the 2 most important events in our people’s history: freedom from slavery, and the receiving of the gift of Torah. More than any other moments in our calendar, more significant even than Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, what these holidays call to mind are nothing short of what makes the Jewish people the Jewish people. Period.
So for the Rabbis, we’ve got to get ourselves ready. We’ve got to get ourselves spiritually prepared, growing, building, counting upwards, gradually elevating ourselves to Mount Sinai, to make aliyah, if you will, which, as we know, literally means “to go up.” We are to purify ourselves, clean up nice, put on our best suit, so to speak, slowly but surely, so that when we’ve finished counting up these 7 weeks, we will be ready—or at least as ready as possible—to receive the divine gift of Torah.
So, my friends, let’s count up. Let’s count our blessings. Let’s be thankful for every person, every interaction, everything we’re able to do and say and contribute to our world. Let’s change our perspective to appreciate all of these as privileges, rather than taking them for granted as things we’re entitled to. Let’s raise ourselves up, elevate our consciousness of all that makes our lives the most wonderful of gifts. And then perhaps the offerings of ourselves, what we bring to the table of life, each and every day, will be not just acceptable, as the words of the prayer go, but enriching and fulfilling—for God, for our loved ones, for ourselves.
AMEN.
