Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 12 Iyar, 5783. 27th Day of the Omer

Today’s portion in the Torah is all about the Omer.  Which is exciting as we enter into the second half of counting the Omer. We were reaching up to the midway point – the 24th and 25th days of the Omer (Tiferet and Netzach of Netzach) focused on the compassion and endurance of endurance.  These themes are crucial as a fulcrum to understanding love.  Yesterday, we focused on the humility of endurance, and today is about bonding.

What I love about the Omer – is it connects the liberation of the exodus of egypt and the giving of the Torah on Shavuot with love.  Each day we are given a lesson about love.  Both, the freedom and liberation of love and the direction and boundaries of love.  Love this week is all about endurance.

I think when we hear “I fell out of love” there is an element of this that challenges the idea of endurance.  Now, this isn’t to say there are unhealthy connections to love.  When we explore this idea of “bonding of endurance” one of the more unhealthy aspects is this idea of “trauma bonding.” We endure things out of this bond we have.  And this is unhealthy.  A good article on trauma bonding is here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-sobriety/202109/what-is-trauma-bonding

Trauma bonding is NOT what we are discussing when it comes to the bonding of endurance with love.  Here is what Chabad has to say about this:

Bonding is an essential quality of endurance. It expresses your unwavering commitment to the person or experience you are bonding with, a commitment so powerful that you will endure all to preserve it. Endurance without bonding will not endure.

Exercise for the day: To ensure that your new resolution should endure, bond with it immediately. This can be assured by promptly actualizing your resolution in some constructive deed.

Now reading this. If we ignore all of the other contexts of the themes of the Omer (love, discipline, compassion, humility, and dignity) you might think Chabad’s comments on bonding of endurance play out to support staying with someone who is abusive.  But these themes and concepts are not meant to be isolated as we live them.  We explore them in isolation to add depth to our understanding of love.

We sometimes “lose” the feeling of love (Righteous brothers anyone?) But the bonding of endurance pushes us to look past the feeling of love – and endure.

But all of this starts within.  When we “lose” the feeling of love for ourselves? That’s where we need to commit to enduring that with ourselves in order to bond with ourselves.  When we endure, we fall in love with who we are.  We build resilience.  We build capacity to love ourselves and others.  and we set boundaries to avoid bonding over trauma.

What are you working on today that you need to bond with? For me? It’s my eating. I am resolving to endure hard things without needing to find comfort in food.  I am being compassionate for myself – and at the same time, I want to resolve to push through the difficulty.  Bond with myself. And that is one of many ways I am learning to love who I am.  With compassion. Humility. Dignity. Discipline. Love.

What are your thoughts?

This is from my commentary a year ago:

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 10 Iyar, 5782

Today is the 25th day of the Omer

Todays portion is really interesting because we are learning about the period of time which we currently find ourselves. We are going to study the two current festivals we find ourselves between and the counting of the Omer.

Todays portion starts with Hashem talking to Moses and telling him to tell Israel to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the festivals of God.

Hashem goes on to explain that just like the Sabbath (each Friday night to Saturday sundown), these festivals should be observed to the same degree. These are intended to be holy celebrations.

The festivals are connected to the agricultural cycle- Passover is a time when produce ripens, Shavuot is a time when the harvest comes, Sukkot is the completion of the harvest season.

It’s almost like Shavuot is our Memorial Day, and Sukkot is our Labor Day. Even in our current culture we have built our lives around this similar schedule – although robbed of its Jewishness.

So let’s get back to the passage – Passover is up first. We are given the mitzvahs of Passover. Read my Torah thoughts from two weeks ago, and you can see my thoughts about Passover. I want to focus on the Omer.

First, we learn about the Omer offering. Hashem tells Moses that when we come to the land He is giving us, and we reap its harvest, we should bring an “Omer-measure” from the first of our reaping to the priest.

The priest should wave the Omer in front of Hashem on our behalf. It should be waved on the day following the first rest day of Passover. And on that day, we should additionally offer up:

1. A perfect lamb in its first year as a burnt offering
2. It’s associated meal offering of 2/10ths of an Ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a fire offering
3. A quarter hin of wine.

We are also told that until this day (the first day following the rest day of Passover) we should not eat bread, parched grain flour or parched kernels from the new harvest.

Finally, we are told this isn’t just about the promised land. We are told this is a mitzvah throughout our generations In all the places we live.

So. Why don’t we do this? I am not sure I have an answer.

Finally, todays portion closes with the counting of the Omer and Shavuot. This is the season we are in right now.

The Torah says following this first day of Omer offering (the following Day after the first day of rest of Passover) we are to count seven weeks. We should count up to but not including 50 days. The day following the seventh week.

Now it’s interesting. We are today in the middle of the 25th day. 24.5 days have passed since the day of the Omer offering and 24.5 days are in front of us until the 50th day starts.

So we are right smack dab in the middle. Between the ripening and the harvest. The ripening of liberation and the harvest of liberation.

And on the 50th day, we are told to bring the first meal offering from the new crop to God.

Think about this. Liberation ripened on Passover. But we don’t bring the fruits of that liberation until Shavuot – 50 days later.

What journey are you on with liberation today? Take comfort that we are halfway there!

And what are we to bring on the 50th day?

1. From the places we live, we should bring bread that is designated for a higher purpose! 2 loaves made from 2/10ths of an ephah of fine flour. Baked leavened since they are the first meal offering to God.
2. With the bread, we are to offer 7 perfect lambs in their first year. One young bull. Two rams. These should be a burnt offering
3. One male goat as a sin offering.
4. Two lambs in their first year as a peace offering
5. The priest should wave the two lambs with the first meal offering bread as a wave offering before God. This should be done while the two lambs are still alive. This is unlike a normal peace offering which is of a lesser degree of holiness.
6. We should declare this day (the 50th day) a holy celebration for us. We should not perform any manual work. It’s an eternal statute in all the places we live, throughout our generations.

Let’s stop for a second. We are called to celebrate Shavuot everywhere. Why don’t we? Even as a Jew, growing up in a conservative synagogue- Shavuot was discussed but we never really “celebrated” it. Passover? Sure. Rosh Hashanah? Sure. Yom Kippur? Sure. Sukkot? Yup. But Shavuot really didn’t seem to be a big deal. maybe that’s my perception as a kid; but I know I didn’t have to take off from school for Shavuot.

The portion today closes with this:

7. When we reap the harvest of the land, we should not completely remove the corner of our field during harvesting. It should be left for the poor. Nor should we gather the individual stalks of the harvest that have fallen; those should also be left for the poor and the convert.

There is an interesting note from Rabbi Meir Simchah of Dvinsk about this practice:

“Why does the Torah make mention of the gifts left over for the poor in the middle of detailing all the festivals? After the Torah commands us regarding the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot), which is associated with the giving of the Torah, we are told immediately about the moral obligation to give charity to the poor to stress that the Torah comprises not only suprarational decrees and spiritual matters, but also a deep sense of humanitarianism.”

I really appreciate this thought. As we recognize today being the middle of this period of our own personal journey of liberation and freedom, it would be easy to hyper focus on ourselves. Yet we are called to also think of others on this journey. How are we focusing on others at the same time we journey within?

Those are my thoughts. How about you? What are your thoughts?