Going to the market today a perilous adventure? While I once trusted a standby shopping list, including apples, bananas, milk, pasta, veggies, etc., now, every trip to the market results in distraction and in total sensory overload - head spinning, knees giving way, colors subtly blending together, sounds vibrating in your head. Too many choices! Now when I go to the market, to avoid this overload - and get what's needed in less than half a day's outing - I either take a highly detailed report, itemizing each item, its manufacturer, size, and quantity, or I simply take the previous week's list, hold my breath, close my eyes, and RUN, grabbing only those few, most essential items with the hope of no distractions or run-ins with appealing new products. AND THEN, wait, the item's no longer kosher!!! Every decision is complicated!
There are too many choices today! What do we want? What do we need? What is right and what is wrong? How do we negotiate the simple decisions, much less the critical ones? And what allowance does freedom make regarding these choices? Is the whole world available to us or are there limits?
Pesach is about redemption, but redemption as a means, not an end in and of itself. Our redemption is as a result of Moses' experience of God and the burning bush, as an affirmation of his instinctive sense of an overarching justice that transcended Pharaoh's power. Moses makes a series of choices, including defending a Hebrew slave at the abusive hand of another. These choices to act in the sight of injustice were as a result of a sense, a feeling, that the behavior he was witnessing was simply wrong. God's appearance to Moses in the wilderness affirmed for Moses that there was a greater, overarching power, and in the God of Israel was the definitive authority. Moses initiates our redemption, and as experienced anew each Passover, facilitates our ever renewing relationship with the God of Israel as Ultimate Adjudicator. Moses had all of Egypt's bounty available to him and yet he set limits, discerned between what was permissible and what is unacceptable, and acted according to what was just. Moses set freedom into an ever continuing context of choices and decision making.
Upon our renewed experience of redemption from slavery, from the second night of Passover until Shavuot, we express our gratitude to God through the counting of the Omer. This counting recalls the offering of a specified measure of barley that was offered to God in the Temple in Jerusalem. This counting is a choice to imbue each day between Passover and Shavuot with holiness. This strand of days shimmers as Passover and Shavuot become linked as a golden clasp - our freedom through Passover's redemption shining brightly next to the purpose of our freedom, the acceptance of Torah and its actualization in our daily lives.
The Omer is a transformational act which, according to the Sfat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter (1847-1905)) helps correct Adam's transgression in the Garden of Eden. Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result of this transgression Adam and humanity were punished, as stated in Bereshit, the book of Genesis (3:17), such that, with anxiety shall you eat all the days of your life. Today's symbolic counting of the Omer-offering to God is recalled in the context of Israel's historic relief that the sight of the Omer must have brought. The Omer-offering was only possible if the barley harvest succeeded. The offering was testament to the harvest's bounty, and thus Israel's anxiety for its sustenance was eased.
The Omer restores joy to Israel as it represents God's presence in the fields of our labor and at each cherished meal. Though very few of us toil for our food, we should concern ourselves with our planet's ability to grow food. Through the Omer, the line between Good and Evil becomes clear, for the mere act of taking the product of our hard work and associating it with God's love sensitizes us to greater humility and awe, shaking us from our self-centered instincts, and bringing us perspective on the fragility of our condition. Freedom is the Omer-offering. Freedom is this counting, and freedom is the understanding that the bounty of field, the abundance of the flock, is achieved through a partnership with God. And our Freedom is a sequence of choices that preserves this holy partnership.
Torah, as we come to know through the Omer, is a joyous process, and a process involving commitment and discipline. Torah is a practice. And Judaism is awareness and action. The enjoyment of our grain harvest requires that we winnow chaff from the precious grain, easing away the good from the bad - a paradigm for Torah, a constant process of decisions and choices.
Freedom for us must be an expression of choices within the limitations and potentiality rooted with in Torah. As we read regarding the Laws of Kashrut in the final paragraph of this week's Torah portion, Parashat Shmini:
For I am the Lord your God that brings you up out of the land of Mizrayim, to be your God: you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. This is the Torah of the beasts, and of the birds, and of every living creature that moves on the waters, and of every creature that creeps on the earth: to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten. (Leviticus 11:45-47)
We are instructed through Torah to make distinctions, to choose, and to be holy because God is holy; elements of life are categorized as Kosher or traif, fit or impermissible. Through categorization, we elevate the common to the level of the profound, we participate in a conversation, in a process that in and of itself is transformational beyond the outcome of the specific decision. We set limitations through the often-difficult process of choosing, and we bring Torah to life in this world, elevating the mundane to the realm of godliness. But how do we take our renewed sense of freedom and actualize it in our personal and communal lives? How are we moved by God to act differently, to act better, in this modern world, with its many layers of complexities and endless choices?
As we have begun to count the Omer, may each of you link your newly affirmed freedom to the life sustaining bounty of Torah-instructed decisions and may our Freedom lead to good choices!