Day 1

The counting begins

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the counting of the Omer.

הַיּוֹם יוֹם אֶחָד לָעֹמֶר

Today is one day of the Omer.

Chag sameach! Tonight the counting begins.

A quick note before we dive in: This year, our friends outside of Israel are starting Sefirah with a three-day yom tov. We hate falling behind — especially on Day 1 — so to make it easier for everyone to stay on track, we'll be jumping into the learning on Day 3, Saturday night. Until then, just count. We'll see you there. Thanks for joining!

Day 2

Count and carry on

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the counting of the Omer.

הַיּוֹם שְׁנֵי יָמִים לָעֹמֶר

Today is two days of the Omer.

Shabbat shalom! Just the count tonight. The learning begins tomorrow night.

Day 3

What exactly are we counting — and why?

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the counting of the Omer.

הַיּוֹם שְׁלֹשָׁה יָמִים לָעֹמֶר

Today is three days of the Omer.

Go deeper. Today's ideas are inspired by Rabbi David Fohrman's course Why Does Shavuot Mean "Weeks"?. Watch for the full experience, or enjoy our daily digest version here.

Welcome to the Sefirah Challenge.

Maybe this is your first year counting the Omer. Maybe you're a seasoned pro. But if you're reading this, it can only mean one thing. You're game to count. Night after night. All the way to 49. But you also want to do more.

You want to know why.

You want all this counting… to mean something.

And that's why we're here. To add that meaning together. Five minutes a day. All the way through Sefirah.

Here's the thing. What we're going to be doing, it's a little different than most of what you'll find out there on Sefirah. We're not going the classic kabbalistic route, you know chesed sheb'chesed, gevurah sheb'gevurah (and if you don't know, don't worry about it). We're not going to be picking a spiritual focus for each day. Or a character trait to work on. At least not directly.

All those approaches are great. Truly, they can add a lot to this period. But they're all from later traditions. They're a little like the icing without the cake. And we want to get to the cake:

What the Torah itself has to say about the Omer.

Here at Aleph Beta, that's what we do. We try to get to the biblical underpinning of things. And that's what we'll be doing together. Going to the source. Discovering the meaning of Sefirat HaOmer at its roots.

I think what we find will surprise you.

One housekeeping note: We'll be sending emails like this one every day. All you have to do is open them. Prefer Whatsapp to email? Join our group here. You'll also be able to find all past days at alephbeta.org, along with TLDRs in case you miss a day. We'll also be starting a new chapter every few days, so if you fall off the wagon, those are great spots to just jump right back in. Ok, enough logistics.

Let's start.

Here's something that, once you notice it, you can't un-notice.

Pesach commemorates an event — the Exodus from Egypt. Shavuot commemorates an event — the giving of the Torah at Sinai. And in between these two holidays, we count the Omer. So here's a question. If Pesach is tied to an event. And Shavuot is tied to an event. Is it possible that this time period in between is also? Could the Omer be commemorating something? Something that happened somewhere out there in the desert, between Egypt and Sinai?

Now, if it is, you'd want some clue from the Torah, right? Something pointing you in the right direction. And actually, there is one. It's hiding in the name itself.

The "Omer" — this word you say every single night — it's a unit of measurement for grain. And it turns out to be a very rare word. It's used in Vayikra chapter 23, when the Torah describes the Omer offering brought on the second day of Pesach to kick off this period of counting. And besides that? In the entire Five Books of Moses, this word "Omer" is used as a measurement in exactly one other place.

One.

And that one other place? It's in Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus — in a story that takes place right between leaving Egypt and arriving at Sinai. The Torah is describing a certain amount of food that each person was given, and it says:

לִקְטוּ מִמֶּנּוּ אִישׁ לְפִי אׇכְלוֹ עֹמֶר לַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת (Shemot 16:16)

Gather from it, each person according to what they eat — an Omer per head.

The "it" being gathered here, it's the manna. The bread that fell from heaven for the Israelites in the wilderness.

So the only other time the Torah uses this word — this word you're saying every single night — is to describe the manna. And once you see that, you can't help but ask: wait — is that what we're commemorating? Is that what these forty-nine days are about?

We'll need more than one clue to be sure. And it turns out, there are more. Two more, actually. Both hiding in the same passage in Vayikra 23 that describes the Omer offering. Tomorrow, we'll go back and look at them.

But for tonight, just sit with that for a moment. You've been counting the Omer your whole life. And the Torah may have been telling you — through a single, rare word — what you've been counting all along.

Tomorrow: Two more clues hiding in plain sight.