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Friday April 21, 2000

It's time to stop, smell the roses and count the omer

RONNIE COHEN
Bulletin Correspondent

After the bustle of getting ready for Passover, families may need a time-out.

So the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center came up with a way to remind people to pause each day between the second day of Passover and Shavuot.

Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah, occurs June 9 this year.

"In a materialist American culture, in an otherwise frenetic world, there's nothing more relevant than stopping to take a deep breath, having a conversation with family and thinking about what it means to be a free slave," said Vicky Kelman, director of the BJE's family education project.

With that in mind, the BJE and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center are encouraging families to mark the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot by "counting the omer."

The custom is ancient. In biblical times, Passover marked the beginning of the barley harvest. On the second day of Passover, Jewish farmers would bring to the temple an offering of a sheaf of barley -- an omer. Because the counting begins on that day, the practice is called "counting the omer."

"Counting the omer is a mitzvah, a Jewish obligation," said Kelman.

"It's a mitzvah that's not well-known. One of our aims is to introduce this very nice custom that not many people know of."

For the third year, the BJE and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center have created a family omer calendar and distributed it to Bay Area schools and synagogues.

The calendar encourages children and adults to discuss Jewish traditions and themes, and to reflect on their relevance today.

Another goal is to link Passover, American Jews' favorite and most-celebrated holiday, with the lesser-known holiday of Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks, Kelman said.

"The physical liberation from slavery is what's celebrated at Passover. God rescues the Jews from Egypt. The actual going free is not completed until Shavuot, when the Jewish people stand at Mount Sinai and accept the Torah.

"We're not a people yet when we go out of Egypt. We're a bunch of biologically related free slaves. We don't become a people until we stand at Mount Sinai and agree to accept the Torah as sort of our constitution."

The family omer calendar includes seven questions, one for each week. Because May is Jewish Healing Month, some of the questions focus on healing. For example, the calendar says, "There is a Jewish tradition which tells us to talk to God in prayer for someone who is ill. When you hear that someone is sick, what can you say to God?"

And the calendar says, "In Jewish tradition, bikkur cholim, visiting the sick, is an important mitzvah. When you are sick, whom do you like to have visit you? What can you do for someone who is sick?"

Four years ago, in an effort to raise awareness about Jewish healing issues, the Jewish Healing Center designated May as Jewish Healing Month. Rabbi Eric Weiss, executive director of the center, says the center's leaders chose May in part because springtime in the Jewish calendar is rich with metaphors for healing.

Weiss has metaphorically adapted the omer counting to clients grappling with disease. He suggested counting the omer to a woman in her 40s with metastasized cancer. She was undergoing radiation therapy, five days a week for seven weeks.

"She used the counting of the omer as a model for the way she counted the days of her radiation therapy," Weiss says. "So she would say, 'Today is the 18th day of my radiation treatment, which is two weeks and four days,' which is akin to the way in which one counts the days of the omer. While receiving radiation, she would recite the Sh'ma and do meditation, by which time her daily radiation treatment was over.

"In that way, she connected her isolating experience of radiation therapy to the greater Jewish world and Jewish life," Weiss said. "Counting the omer became a personal tool for her to frame her experience of cancer treatment."

Weiss and Kelman believe Jews should use these spring days to connect with family members, discuss themes of the Exodus from Egypt and count the omer.

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