Up For The Count

by Shlomo Gewirtz
Special To The Jewish Week

Shabbat Shalom
Candlelighting, Readings:
Shabbat candles: 7:19 p.m.
Torah reading: Leviticus 9:1-11:47
Haftarah: II Samuel 6:1-7:17
Shabbat ends: 8:20 p.m.

Passover’s over, so if you haven’t begun yet, start counting. And I don’t mean calories.
It happens every spring. With only 49 days from now till Shavuot, how should we newly freed slaves prepare and ready ourselves for the giving of the Torah a few weeks away? The Rabbis apply the Torah’s Omer commandment in telling us to circle our calendar each of the 49 days and be aware of where we are in ‘The Count’ every night — how many days, or weeks and days, have passed so far.
One mystical tradition links each one of these 24-hour periods to cultivating and refining important elements of our character, like compassion, say, or courage. And if that approach works for you, may you be blessed with seven weeks of uninterrupted spiritual development.
But as for me, well, I’m Omer-phobic. My head is in so many places these days that merely to remember to ‘do the count’ every day is a minor miracle ? I’m also supposed to cram in 49 days of behavior modification? But does this mean I can’t prepare for Shavuot?
I came across a Tosfot in the Talmud’s Tractate Pesachim 117b, which got me thinking. Those medieval authors caught my eye when they suggested that even though we’re grateful to God for taking us out of Egypt, it turns out we actually left with superb training and experience in construction, the 39 skills we’d need in the wilderness to erect and furnish the elaborate Tabernacle.
When I read this, I thought, how interesting, tell that to the Jews who remained behind in Egypt. No doubt they had applied whatever knowledge they had about life-threatening conditions in the desert — hunger, thirst, ambushes, pitfalls, scorpions — in making their choice to not to risk their lives by leaving. Others, the ancestors of Karl Marx, perhaps, may have believed that since the Ten Plagues had reduced Egyptians to suffering masses, there would be a change of Egyptian hearts, a new ‘Nileism,’ enough to set the stage for a redistribution of property ownership to all workers; another contribution of the Jews, the end of history, utopia!
But what probably clinched their decision to stay behind was that they didn’t really know what their skills were and how to apply them to a new economy and its uncertainties, and so when the opportunity came along to change directions on Passover night, they found themselves deciding to wait it out awhile.
Thousands of years later, after the War Between the States, didn’t most blacks remain in the land of their captivity for almost 75 years before the great migration north?
We’ve got precisely 49 days to catalogue our achievements and truly understand our skills so when the next, new, national mandate is given we can be ready for what Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik calls “the God-man rendezvous,” or, “the great, wondrous, awe-inspiring and irresistibly fascinating experience of Divine revelation.”
To be sure, I, too, spend these 49 days trying to keep up with The Count, but instead of behavior modification, I focus on behavior recollection. I pull up the memory of the Egypts I’ve been in, figuring out what I’ve done best in my life, and now, as a free person, taking ownership of these skills to do with as I wish. I document this search by describing the situations I found myself in, the strategies and tactics I used to come up with solutions.
In marking time, we mark the timeless. And if, after seven weeks of counting, I’ll have worked on only this one trait of gratitude, maybe I’ll be able to radiate as many as 49 facets of gratitude, creating a spiritual diamond over the course of a lifetime that brings its own unique, personal light to all who encounter it in the end and who radiate their own light towards me.

Shlomo Gewirtz is a career coach and author of the forthcoming, “Lose the Shmooze and Don’t Say Yes When They Offer You Coffee: The Only Guide to On-the-Spot Branding.” E-mail: sgewirtz@gmail.com

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization