Please join Reb Zmira Lovejoy and her friend Sheryl Shapiro at this link each Thursday at 8:45 pm, April 2 through May 14, for a brief exploration of the Sefirah of the week in our Omer counting.

In ancient times, a sheaf/measure (omer) of barley was brought to the Temple on the second day of Pesach (Passover). The 7 weeks between Pesach and Shavuot (Shavuot literally means "Weeks," a week of weeks) are counted each night. This practice of counting the omer has agricultural and biblical roots in addition to being a spiritual journey from liberation (from slavery in Egypt) to revelation (of Torah on Mount Sinai).

In Hebrew, the counting of the omer is called Sefirat haOmer, and clearly the early Kabbalists were inspired by the fact that the word for counting (sefirah) is the same as the word for each of the 10 emanations (Sefirah singular, Sefirot plural) in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. They mapped each of the 7 weeks of the Omer period to one of the 7 lower Sefirot, starting with Chesed, and each day in each of these weeks also corresponds to one of the Sefirot--it's like fractals of holiness! Thus we pair our counting with an exploration of each Sefirah inside each of the Sefirot, starting with Chesed sh'b'Chesed (the lovingkindness within lovingkindness), moving to Gevurah sh'b'Chesed (the strength/boundaries within lovingkindness), and so on, through Malchut sh'b'Malchut (the Sovereign Presence/Shechinah) within Sovereign Presence/Shechinah).