Imu Shalev: Welcome back to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha or an upcoming holiday… diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. All right, so we’ve just finished celebrating Passover. So now, it’s finally time for a break, right? We can stop thinking about the holidays, at least until June. Well, no! Because as the Torah tells us, this is the season of Sefirat HaOmer, of counting… not down, but up to the holiday of Shavuot. But what’s the real meaning of counting the Omer? How can we wrap our minds around the big ideas this time of year holds for us?

For our first two episodes, we brought you two very special pieces by Rabbi David Fohrman. But from time to time on Into the Verse, we’ll bring you hand-selected work by other scholars here at Aleph Beta, scholars who’ve learned under Rabbi Fohrman and use the same methodology. This week, we have a hot-off-the-press look at Sefirat HaOmer by Dr. Daniel Loewenstein, released here for the very first time. Daniel has a mind-blowing new take on the meaning of the Sefirah period, which he explores in conversation with our COO, Malka Alweis. Let’s listen in.

Daniel Loewenstein:  Have you ever thought about how strange the mitzvah of Sefirat HaOmer (counting the Omer) is? There are seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot, and the Torah tells us: וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם – we have to count each day of those seven weeks. That's right, there's a mitzvah to count from the number 1 to the number 49. If you've been counting the Omer your whole life, this probably doesn't faze you. But just stop and think about it. It's a commandment to count! 

Commandments help us refine our character and express our devotion to God. We're commanded to observe the Sabbath, to help orphans and widows, to honor our parents and not be jealous… and also, apparently, to count to 49 once a year in the spring. Just what kind of commandment is this?

I'm Daniel Loewenstein, and I'm happy to share with you a conversation between me and Malka Alweis, our COO at Aleph Beta, about the counting of the Omer. In this conversation, Malka and I grapple with this issue, and we turn to the Torah to look for clues about what this mitzvah is really about. I hope you'll find what we discover to be pretty eye-opening. Enjoy!

Daniel: Hey, Malka. How's it going?

Malka Alweis:  Hey, Daniel. It's going great. Good to see you.

Daniel:  You, too. I'm glad you could join me today. So Malka, what do you know about Sefirat HaOmer?

Malka:  So I don't really know anything about Sefirat HaOmer besides just the practice of Sefirat HaOmer, in terms of I've always said it, and many times where I've done the whole thing and been really proud of myself.

Daniel:  Okay. Cool. So you don't know very much about it. I also didn't know that much about it, but even with what I knew, there was a problem that was sort of nagging at me, which is: We usually assume the mitzvot have some sort of depth to them, some sort of meaning or inspiration, something you can take with you. Whatever reason we count, counting doesn't seem particularly inspirational.

1. Why Command Us to Count?

Now the truth is, this question might not bother some people, because there's this classic explanation of sefirah that gives it meaning, which is that it's a kind of lead-up to Shavuot. Shavuot is when we celebrate getting the Torah, which is a pretty big deal. So the way a lot of people understand this counting is that something big is coming, and counting is like a way of anticipating it and getting excited and prepared. And that anticipation, that's the meaning of the counting.

Malka:  The concept of counting towards something exciting is pretty intuitive. We do that in other areas of our lives. When your birthday is coming up, you start counting down as it gets to your birthday month. Ever since you're a kid, you count down until the end of the school year when summer break starts. It really is that we're counting towards this pivotal moment, the seven weeks until Matan Torah.

What's interesting, though, right away, is that most things that we count, we count down, we don't count up. So that's already one thing that's a distinction. Then the other thing is the way that we count. It feels like the counting itself seems to be significant, separate from counting down to a thing, because you don't just count. You say it in multiple formulations: It's this day, and that means this, this, and this. If you're actually counting to an event, those details don't matter at all! It just matters that there's another thing I can make an X on my calendar for. So it seems like the process itself carries more weight than just as a countdown to an end event.

Daniel:  Right. So you're already pointing out a couple of the holes in the kind of classic way of understanding why we count. One: If we're excited about something, we usually count down – six days left, five days left, four – but with the Omer, we're counting up. So that doesn't fit so neatly.

Also, when you're counting down to something, the way you count, each step of the process, isn't really important. Let's say you're driving somewhere and there are ten exits left until you get there. You might count down from ten to one, but you're not going to stop and take selfies at each one and make a big deal: This is number seven, this is number five! But with Sefirat HaOmer, the rituals we have around the counting – the blessings and the prayers, the specific phrasing – it all points to the steps of the process being very important. So it looks like we might be in the market for a new theory. 

I think if we want answers, the responsible thing to do is actually to open up the Torah text and take a look and see what we notice there. So we're going to look at the source, that’s in Leviticus chapter 23. 

2. Sefirat HaOmer in the Torah

This is the end of Parshat Emor, where we have this long section about holidays. It starts off talking about Passover, and then it moves to the Omer in verse 9.

וַיְדַבֵּר יקוה אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר׃ דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם וּקְצַרְתֶּם אֶת קְצִירָהּ 

(Leviticus 23:11)

So God says: When you come to the land that I’m giving you, and you do the harvest – so you have to bring this Omer measurement of the harvest to the kohen (priest), and it has to be offered to God. A few verses later, we're told that this Omer offering actually has a very important purpose. None of the new grain from the harvest is allowed to be eaten until after the Omer is brought.

Once we learn about that, in verse 15 we hear about the counting. 

וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם מִמׇּחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת מִיּוֹם הֲבִיאֲכֶם אֶת עֹמֶר הַתְּנוּפָה שֶׁבַע שַׁבָּתוֹת תְּמִימֹת תִּהְיֶינָה׃

(Leviticus 23:15)

So after you bring this Omer offering, so then you have to count seven complete Sabbaths, or seven complete weeks. After that, we have the holiday of Shavuot, which we hear about in verses 17 through 21. 

So we got the offering at the beginning, the Omer offering, which you're not allowed to eat any bread or grain before you offer that. Then you have the seven-week counting, and then afterwards you have the holiday of Shavuot. So that wraps up what the Torah says here about Sefirat HaOmer. 

Now, what we just read is from this section about the holidays. It started with Passover, then Sefirat HaOmer, then Shavuot. So Malka, now that we finished talking about Shavuot, if you had to guess, what do you expect the Torah to talk about next?

Malka:  To talk about the next holiday.

Daniel:  Exactly, that's what I would have assumed would be next. Okay, so now why don't you actually read the next verse, verse 22?

Malka: 

וּבְקֻצְרְכֶם אֶת קְצִיר אַרְצְכֶם לֹא תְכַלֶּה פְּאַת שָׂדְךָ בְּקֻצְרֶךָ וְלֶקֶט קְצִירְךָ לֹא תְלַקֵּט לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם אֲנִי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם׃

When you harvest the harvest of your land, do not finish off the corner of your field in your harvesting. And you shall not glean the gleanings of your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor person and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. 

(Leviticus 23:22)

So we have rules about harvesting.

Daniel:  Right, a rule about harvesting, leket and pe'ah. The law of pe'ah is that when you harvest, you're not allowed to harvest all the way to the corners of your field; you actually have to leave those over for the poor. Also leket, which is that as you're harvesting, if you drop something, so then you have to leave what you drop and let that also be for the poor people and for the foreigners.

Malka:  Got it. So it has that pasuk (verse) there, and then it continues to talk about chagim (holidays) after that?

Daniel:  Exactly. What's really so strange about that is we don't get any other interruptions here. We're in the middle of this section about laws and the holidays. We're about to talk about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Sukkot. And it's not like: Hey, you have to fast on Yom Kippur to get atonement… and speaking of atonement, here's how it works all year round! There's nothing after the laws of Passover to tell us about the general laws of chametz in the Temple. So the fact that we get the laws of pe'ah and leket here, even though, sure, they're harvest laws and Shavuot is the harvest holiday… it's still really odd.

So let's call that one of our big questions that we're going to try to figure out the answer to. Now I want to point out another clue to you, which is actually how the section on the Omer is introduced. Take a look at verse 10. We get this preamble to our laws that I found kind of interesting and unexpected, which is: כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ.

Malka:  So the idea is that this is preparation for what they will do when they get into Israel. That's the idea. So that's troubling to you because…?

Daniel:  Here's why. כִּֽי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ means that these are laws you should keep when you come into the land. What's strange about that is, like we just talked about, we're in the middle of this whole section about the holidays. Do you know how many other holidays get introduced with כִּֽי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ – “Do this when you come into the land”? Exactly none. Sefirah is the only one.

Now, maybe it's because the whole Omer process doesn't make sense outside of Israel, but then that makes it stand out even more. We have all these special times of the year that are special no matter where you are, and then there's this one extra-special one that's only special when you get into Israel. It's an anomaly, right? So that's something that I think also really stands out about the Omer.

Malka:  There's definitely some significance with that language and that idea that it's particularly כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם – it's very – yeah, totally. The reason why I actually think it's a little bit superfluous, even if it fit in, is because, if there are actual halachot (laws) instructed on the land, it's obvious that you can't do it when you're not in the land. No one's going to have the hava amina (assumption) that they're supposed to be doing this in the desert; it's totally related to the land. But there seems to be like: Hey, look at this! It's flashing lights to tell us that it has significance to the land that God is giving to us. There seems to be weight there that we're supposed to pay attention to.

Daniel:  Yes, exactly. So there are some things here that are puzzling, and nothing obvious that points to a reason for counting. But there's one more clue, one more thing that I noticed that I hope will be a key in understanding these anomalies, and to explaining how counting is actually anything but routine and meaningless. 

This clue that I'm talking about is this language of וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם – “and you should count for yourselves” – and that count being a counting of sevens. The reason it's so interesting to me is that it's actually not unique to the laws of Sefirat HaOmer. There are two other places in the Torah where we're told to count sevens, and with the same language of וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם – “count for yourselves.” We're going to deal with both, but the first place I want to take you, which is kind of the less obvious of the two, is Leviticus chapter 15, which talks about the laws of the zav. I guess let's translate it as one who experiences a flow – the word לזוב means to flow. Now, before we get deep into this chapter, I just want to start by showing you the actual parallels. So let's start with chapter 15, verse 13. 

3. Counting Sevens

The Torah tells us that if there's a man who experiences some kind of flow, but then eventually it stops and he can become clean, become pure: וְכִי יִטְהַר הַזָּב מִזּוֹבוֹ וְסָפַר לוֹ – so there's our language, וְסָפַר לוֹ – he has to count for himself, שִׁבְעַת יָמִים – seven days, לְטׇהֳרָתוֹ – from the day he stops experiencing his flow (Leviticus 15:13).

Then also, later on at the end of the chapter, when it's talking about a woman who experiences a flow – now we're going down to verse 28 – if she becomes pure from her flow, then וְסָפְרָה לָּהּ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים וְאַחַר תִּטְהָר (Leviticus 15:28). Again, the formulation of וְסָפְרָה לָּהּ – that she has to count for herself, שִׁבְעַת יָמִים – seven days. Just like we had וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם by the Omer, we've got וְסָפַר לוֹ and וְסָפְרָה לָּהּ and sevens here, too.

So I first noticed this and I thought: Okay, that seems pretty convincing. But there's always that voice inside of you that sort of wonders if it's a coincidence.

Malka:  I think at this point we kind of are past that.

Daniel:  So if you're totally satisfied, that's great. But what I just wanted to say was that one of the really interesting things that I came across when I was trying to understand zav and zavah, because I was sort of hoping that they could give an opening to understanding the whole business of counting. So I was looking for other instances of the word zav in the Torah. What I found – it's pretty interesting — there's only one other instance where we hear about the word zav. It comes up a bunch of times. It's the same phrase that comes up a bunch of times, but it's all the same; it's all one phrase. Do you have any idea what that phrase is? Do you know anything in the Torah that's described as flowing? Maybe flowing with milk and honey?

Malka:  Oh – זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ. Yeah.

Daniel:  אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ (a land flowing with milk and honey, Exodus 3:8). The זָבַת means flowing with.

Malka:  Yeah, totally.

Daniel:  What's really crazy about that is – 

Malka:  That's the only other place where it's there?

Daniel:  That's the only other place, as far as I know – I looked, I could be wrong – but it's the only other place in Torah that you have the word flow, the word זב. So here you have an instance of someone who experiences a flow, and that results in counting, counting to seven. By Sefirat HaOmer, we mentioned it's a law that only applies when you come to the land, כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ. And what kind of אָרֶץ is it?

Malka:  זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ.

Daniel:  It's an אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ – a land flowing with milk and honey. So you have a land that flows. And when you engage with that land in a certain way, then it also results in counting sevens. So that sort of clinched for me that there was something going on here.

Okay, fine. So now we've established, I think pretty strongly, these really interesting points of connection about flow, and flow resulting in counting, in Sefirah and now here in zav. In the case of the Omer, we have a land that flows, and כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ – when we get to that land, we're told וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם – you have to count sevens. In the case of the zav and the zavah, we have people who flow. And when that happens, וְסָפַר לוֹ and וְסָפְרָה לָּהּ – they have to do seven-counts. It would be pretty weird for that to be a coincidence.

So zav, the Omer, and sefirah (counting) are somehow connected. But we need to fill in the blanks. Can zav teach us something about counting? Can that, in turn, help us understand the significance of counting the Omer? To get there, I want to take a look at chapter 15 a little bit more carefully, to sort of understand what exactly a zav and zavah are. Then, if we can understand that, maybe it'll give us a little bit more precise way of understanding why sefirah, why counting, is a response to that.

So chapter 15 actually has four different laws, or laws pertaining to four different kinds of people. I think when we see how they're characterized and the structure of the chapter, it will give us some insight into the nature of zav. So let's take a look at these laws one at a time, and then we'll look at them together and see what they tell us.

So at the beginning of the chapter, we have: 

אִישׁ אִישׁ כִּי יִהְיֶה זָב מִבְּשָׂרוֹ זוֹבוֹ טָמֵא הוּא׃

(Leviticus 15:2)

If there's a man who has a flow from his flesh, so then he is tamei, impure. Then we get a lot of details about his tumah, how his tumah can be transmitted, and what things become tamei when they touch him. Then we get to the verse we read earlier, which is when he stops flowing, which is, again, verse 13:

וְסָפַר לוֹ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים לְטָהֳרָתוֹ… וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי…

 וְעָשָׂה אֹתָם הַכֹּהֵן אֶחָד חַטָּאת וְהָאֶחָד עֹלָה וְכִפֶּר עָלָיו הַכֹּהֵן לִפְנֵי יְקוָה מִזּוֹבוֹ

(Leviticus 15:13-15) 

So then he has to count seven days, and he has to go to a mikvah and wash his clothes, and then he becomes pure. And then on the eighth day, after he's done his counting, so then he has to bring two birds to the Mishkan (Tabernacle). He gives them to the kohen (priest).

So the kohen turns them into offerings, a chatat offering – a sin offering – and an olah offering, an elevation offering or burnt offering. The kohen effects atonement for him, and that is the end of that.

So that's person number one, the zav. What exactly does it mean that he experiences a flow? We're not sure yet. He experiences some sort of flow, but let's just leave it as a question mark for now, okay? 

Then we get to the next guy:

וְאִישׁ כִּי־תֵצֵא מִמֶּנּוּ שִׁכְבַת־זָרַע 

(Leviticus 15:16)

And what of a person who experiences a seminal emission? So the Torah tells us that he washes his whole body and he's impure until that evening. So this is a much simpler thing to deal with. This guy, his impurity is gone the next day. He just goes to the mikvah and he's basically taken care of. Right?

Malka:  Yes.

Daniel:  Okay, great. Then we have our third case, about a woman who's menstruating, in verse 19. The Torah says that when she starts to bleed, so:

שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תִּהְיֶה בְנִדָּתָהּ

(Leviticus 15:19)

She remains in her state of niddah for seven days. This is certainly a bigger deal than the previous case, the seminal emission. It's seven days of impurity, not just one. But when you read through the rest of the laws about the niddah, the process of becoming pure is still relatively simple. No offerings, no priest, no atonement, and no counting.

Now we get to the fourth law, which is the zavah, which is in verse 25: 

וְאִשָּׁה כִּי יָזוּב זוֹב דָּמָהּ יָמִים רַבִּים בְּלֹא עֶת נִדָּתָהּ אוֹ כִי תָזוּב עַל נִדָּתָהּ

(Leviticus 15:25)

What if there's a woman who experiences a flow of blood, just like a niddah, only it's for many days, not during the time of her period, or if she bleeds beyond what's normal for her period. So she's bleeding, but it's something beyond what's normal. So then the Torah says that she also becomes temei'ah, impure, very similar to the impurity of a niddah. However, when we get to the end of this section, in verse 28, we hear that וְאִם טָהֲרָה מִזּוֹבָהּ וְסָפְרָה לָּהּ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים וְאַחַר תִּטְהָר – so once again, when she stops bleeding, then she has to count seven days and then go to the mikvah. Afterwards, she becomes pure. But then, like the zav: וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי תִּקַּח־לָהּ שְׁתֵּי תֹרִים אוֹ שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי יוֹנָה (Leviticus 15:28-29). So she has to take two birds, she brings them to the priest, and he effects atonement for her with those offerings.

So these are our four cases. We have the man who has a shichvat zera, a seminal emission, and we have the man who has a flow – the zav. We have the woman who has menstrual bleeding, the niddah, and the woman who has an excessive flow of blood – the zavah.

Now, I just want to walk through the relationships between these cases for a minute and highlight a couple of things. So first off, let's talk about the relationship between the niddah and the zavah. When the Torah's describing the zavah, it seems to be saying that it's very similar to the experience of niddah. The defining difference is the fact that the blood flow is beyond the norm, right? It's either beyond the norm that it's happening at the wrong time, or it's happening past the time it's supposed to happen. So there's some sort of excess flow that shouldn't be happening. So niddah seems to be the case of a normal flow, and zavah is the case of excess flow.

Now, we have two cases in this chapter that deal with women and two that deal with men. So if the two cases that deal with women, one is about something normal and one is about something beyond what's normal – maybe that's true about the two cases for men, also. Maybe one is about a regular, run-of-the-mill experience, and one is about something that's beyond normal. That kind of makes sense. The case of the shichvat zera, the man who has an emission – that's not an abnormal, unexpected thing. So that seems to line up with the niddah, and the laws kind of reflect that. They both need to go to a mikvah after their period of tumah is over and then go back to normal.

If that's true, then the cases of zav and zavah probably line up as well. And that's even easier to show in the text, the way they both need to bring the same offerings and the way they both need to count. What that would mean – where I'm going with this – is: What does that suggest a zav is?

It sounds like a zav is a person who has an extra flow, meaning an extra seminal emission or an excessive amount. Something beyond what's normal, just like a zavah. Also, the way the Sages understand the law of zav, they actually – that's the way they understand it. They understand that a zav is a person who sees seminal emissions for a particular number of days. It's something that extends for a while. So what I want to argue is that the laws of zav and zavah are about excess.

Malka:  Overflow.

Daniel:  Overflow, right, exactly. In the same way the Torah describes the land as אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ. It's doing it to show you how wonderful the land is because it's so sort of beyond – it's so abundant that it's not even natural.

I think when you see the way the zav and zavah are portrayed here as beyond the norm, it sounds like the Torah is telling us that there's something almost unnaturally excessive happening here, too. Unlike the idea of זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ, though, I think that if you look at the rest of the laws of zav and zavah and kind of plug in this idea of overflow, it sounds like the excess flow they're experiencing is actually something negative.

Think about the fact that the zav and zavah both bring a sin offering, a chatat. The kohen then has to help grant an atonement, kapparah. If your body was just doing what it normally does, would it make sense to need atonement? Probably not. I think the most straightforward way of understanding zav and zavah is probably that they're actually not normal experiences. They're probably some kind of spiritual punishments that manifest in the body.

Now, I just want to say that probably, for most people, this might sound a little out there. I definitely never learned anything like this about zav and zavah in yeshiva. So I just want to point out two things that might make the theory here a little bit easier to buy. One is that we actually have other laws in the Torah that deal with spiritual punishments that show up in the body. Laws like tzara'at (leprosy). And do you know where the laws of tzara'at are in the Torah? They're right before the laws of zav and zavah. It's like these chapters are the “supernatural maladies” section of the Torah.

The second thing is that we're not the only people to notice that there's a sin-offering and atonement, and put two and two together. Commentators like the Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch – they also read that and believed that these flows were not natural, but the results of misdeeds. So we're not totally out there.

Now, if you're getting a spiritual punishment and it's an excess flow from your reproductive organs, so sort of the simplest way to understand it is that maybe you did some sort of excess indulgence you shouldn't have in the sexual domain. Measure for measure, your body responds to that indulgence with an excess flow, essentially telling you what you did wrong.

Now, there's still some ambiguity here. I don't think we know exactly what counts as excess indulgence. And we know from other places, the Torah doesn't seem to approach intimacy in any kind of puritanical way. But whatever it is, zav and zavah seem to be a response to it.

Now let's bring it back to counting. We have these people who engaged in some kind of negative excess, whose bodies mirror that back at them with this excess flow. As part of the process of atoning and coming out of that, they have to count. So counting plays a role in correcting the issue of excess, somehow.

Malka:  So your comparison would be: There's an overflow and there's a containment, and the containment is through counting.

4. The Danger of Limitless Opportunity

Daniel:  Right. I think there's actually a really great analogy that explains why counting is like a containment or an antidote to excess. Let's say a person's at a smorgasbord, and he sees all this food in front of him. He has the ability to limitlessly indulge in all that food. Now, imagine that person is counting calories. What's the experience like for him, all of a sudden? Now all that excess has a hard limit to it. It's this limitless opportunity that I've now created limits on, presumably for the sake of my health, because if I overindulge, then there's going to be a cost somewhere.

Malka:  You've identified a higher priority over the enjoyment of the food that now guides and creates a fence around your enjoyment of the food.  So you still partake, but you're doing it for this higher goal, which is your health, as opposed to the enjoyment of the food.

Daniel:  Right.

Malka:  Which is why that's probably a really good metaphor to use.

Daniel:  Thanks. Just to put it a little differently, when I encounter that sort of limitless potential to indulge, there's a danger there. And by introducing counting, I'm actually counteracting the danger by forcing myself to think about limits, instead of just conveniently forgetting about them and letting myself go. So counting can be a way of reining myself in. 

Now, I think this idea of sefirah as a way of focusing on limits is a nice theory. It explains almost everything about the cases of zav and zavah. But what would be really convenient is if we actually had some textual evidence to prove the theory, something that links the concept of counting to the concept of limits. Well, I think we might actually have that.

One of the really interesting things that I noticed was that the word לספור – the word “to count” – I believe, as a verb, the first time it's used in the Torah, or if not the first time, one of the earliest times in the Torah, is actually when… Do you remember the language that God uses when He promises that Abraham will be like the stars?

Malka:  The idea is that there'll be so many of them, like the sand by the sea and the stars in the sky, that it'll impossible to count them.

Daniel:  Exactly. אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִסָּפֵר מֵרֹב (Genesis 32:13) – there'll be so many, they can't be counted. Also, when Joseph collects all the bread in Egypt, it's described as getting to a point where you can't count, כִּי אֵין מִסְפָּר (Genesis 41:49) – there's no number for them because he collected so much. So even there, the way the word sefirah is used, it's as an opposite to something infinite and limitless. Something that you can't count is the way you describe something limitless.

So the word sefirah in and of itself is used in the Torah as a kind of foil to the idea of something completely excessive and beyond any reasonable measure. I thought that was really interesting, and it sort of clinched for me this idea that, okay, so there's some sort of excessive indulgence, and then, on the other side of it, we're told: Count. Engage in counting.

Malka:  The thing that you have to buy into in order for this to make sense, is that there needs to be a reason why the excess isn't good, and not just by virtue of the fact that it's excess, because that itself isn't so compelling.

Daniel:  Yes. Malka, what you're getting at is that we've got this whole theory that sefirah, counting, is a way of reining in excess. But you only need to rein something in when it's out of control, when there's a problem. In the cases of zav and zavah, we know what the problem is. We saw how the clues in the text point us to sexual overindulgence. But what about the Omer? Every harvest season we have to count seven weeks. Why? Is there a problem with having a harvest?

5. What Could Be Wrong with a Harvest?

So I think there is a problem, or at least a potential problem, and I think understanding it is really the key to all of our questions about the Omer: This strange addition of leket and pe'ah that we noticed, the introduction of כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ that didn't fit with the chapter, and the deeper significance of counting.

I think the best way to explain the harvest problem is actually to jump to our third instance of sefirah. We mentioned a while ago that the formulation of וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם – count for yourselves – with seven attached, shows up three times in the Torah. One is the Omer, one is zav… and there was one more. Do you have any sense of where else in the Torah – 

Malka:  We count sevens? 

Daniel:  We count sevens, and with the language of ספר?

Malka:  I don't know the language, but sevens is with Shemittah also, right?

Daniel:  Correct! We're going to take a look at the laws of Shemittah and Yovel, where we're going to see that same parallel language of counting sevens for yourself, and maybe even more than that. So let's go there, to the beginning of chapter 25 in Leviticus, and see what we notice.

So God starts off telling Moses to relay the following: כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם. So right away that sounds familiar. We get that same introduction that we got by Sefirat HaOmer, about “when you enter the land that I'm giving you.”

Malka:  Which makes sense, because it has to do with – 

Daniel:  Yeah, of course, this is completely impossible outside of the Land of Israel. Shemittah is about letting the land rest, which you can't do without land. וְשָׁבְתָה הָאָרֶץ שַׁבָּת לַיקוָה (Leviticus 25:2). So the land has to have a rest for God. You can work, do all the work in your land for six years, and the seventh year has to be a Sabbath year, a Sabbatical year for God. And in that seventh year, when the land rests, if you look at verse 6, we hear that all the fruits of the land in that year will be לְךָ וּלְעַבְדְּךָ וְלַאֲמָתֶךָ (Leviticus 25:6), it'll be for you and your servants, for the people who work for you and who are living with you. Basically, the land is open for anybody to come and eat from it.

After the Torah tells us what happens every seven years, it proceeds to tell us what happens every seven Shemittahs. It starts: וְסָפַרְתָּ לְךָ – you have to count for yourselves – שֶׁבַע שַׁבְּתֹת שָׁנִים שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שֶׁבַע פְּעָמִים (Leviticus 25:8), 49 years, seven times seven years. What happens when you finish that count? Verse 10 tells us: וּקְרָאתֶם דְּרוֹר בָּאָרֶץ לְכָל יֹשְׁבֶיהָ –  so you proclaim freedom for everyone living in the land. וְשַׁבְתֶּם אִישׁ אֶל אֲחֻזָּתוֹ – people return to their ancestral lands (Leviticus 25:10). What that means is that the land was apportioned in the Torah. We hear about how each of the tribes got a particular section of Israel, and then within those sections, each family got their plot. So you can sell land, but during this fiftieth year, whatever land you sold, it reverts back to you.

Malka:  It always reminds me of how in Harry Potter, one of the big issues is that the goblins, or whatever they're called, they observe ownership very differently than the wizarding world. They think once someone dies, it goes back to them, even though they paid money for it.

Daniel:  Right, it's considered a loan.

Malka:  Humans, in the wizarding world, it’s like, you pay money, it's yours now forever. And their concept is, no, it goes back to the original owner. I feel like that's very similar.

Daniel:  Right, really interesting. I never thought about that. So that's law number one, אִישׁ אֶל אֲחֻזָּתוֹ and then וְאִישׁ אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ תָּשֻׁבוּ (Leviticus 25:10), which is the end of the verse, which is that also, if a person had been sold as an indentured servant to make up a debt, or whatever it is, and he wasn't with his family, he was living with some other family as their worker – then he also, during this liberty year, goes back home as well.

Malka:  So when is – having just clarity, because this isn't so practical for me because it's not like I've lived it – when this fiftieth year happens, it's then that year onwards. It's not just for that year. Right?

Daniel:  Right, right. Let's say I sold land to you. In Yovel it goes back to me and it is mine. I can sell it again to you if I want. It's back to me for good now to do what I will with it, yeah.

Malka:  Interesting. So just what I'm noticing, my original hypothesis when you said, “What do you know about Shemittah and Yovel?” and my perspective was what it says and does between the relationship between God and the individual farmer, or individual person – I had assumed it was about that, that everything comes from God. 

But looking in the pesukim (verses), that doesn't seem to be the simplest, p'shat-based (straightforward) understanding of the why behind the halacha (law). When you look at the text, I think the emphasis both in Shemittah and in Yovel, as I see in the text, is very much between man and his fellow. That it seems like from Shemittah – there are three or four pesukim talking about this – the idea is all the other people; it's what it does for the communal. That, to me, seems like the general tone of these pesukim (verses), and much less to do with declarations of emunah (faith) or personal stuff to do with God.

Then with Yovel as well, it seems to be about that too, just in theory. If I was thinking about how I could ensure that people aren't going to be too stingy in sharing – I was thinking about with my kids. If I wanted to motivate people to share their toys and I promised them: Here, you're on these playdates, you have these things, share whatever you want. I promise you, he's not going to take it home with him. Or tomorrow morning it will be back in your drawer. It will allow my kids to shed their insecurities and actually play freely, without being very selfish of their possessions.

Daniel:  Yes. I think this idea of sharing, really the concern of not sharing, might be the key to everything here, because we have this theory that we count when we need to rein in some kind of problematic excess. But that only makes sense when there is an excess and it's bad. 

So what about here, with Yovel? What's the excess and what's the bad? I think you just laid it out, when you talked about selfishness and sharing. Think about this economic system the Torah is laying out here. It's saying: Once every seven years, your field, the source of your crops, your wealth – all of a sudden you're just going to let a whole bunch of strangers wander onto it and take what they want. It's crazy. But it's also beautiful. There are people out there who may not have very much, who for this one magical year don't have to worry where their food is coming from, in part because of you.

And in the fiftieth year, that kind of built-in concern for others, it intensifies. People who have really fallen on hard times, those who have had to sell their family land, or sold themselves as slaves, giving away their freedom, their future – people who are that desperate, you know what? Even though all that was paid for fair and square, they all go back. People get their freedom and they return to their ancestral lands, a place where they can start over, a source for their crops, maybe a springboard for generating their own wealth.

Now, if you just sit with that for a minute and think: Why? Why make this system? Why dictate what people do with their fields, and how long they can own their land? I think all you have to do to get a good answer to that is just think about what would happen without this system. If we didn't have Shemittah and Yovel, there's this limitless opportunity to expand and expand and expand. The land is זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ – it's a land that's brimming with potential prosperity, right there for the taking. Just think about all the things you can do, all you can achieve, all you can acquire.

But what happens to the poor, to the people who might need some help? To the person who had to give up his lands to put food on the table? What happens to the person who had to sell himself into servitude? If there's no Shemittah and Yovel… I don't know, I hope somebody will be nice to them and help them out, but it's not my problem, and they definitely have no claim on my field. That's where I pursue my dreams. 

So I think if we're looking for what the harm of excess could be, this is it right here. It's the problem that Shemittah and Yovel are trying to head off. In a world without them, how easy is it to see the pursuit of wealth, exploring the limitless possibility of the land, as something that's really my business. The land is mine, the capital is mine, the servants are paid for, and I've got ambitions. If I want to give out charity, great, power to me. If I don't want to, okay. It's a shame, but it's not my responsibility.

So the Torah comes and tells us: That's not how the economy is going to work in this land of abundance, this אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ. It's not just your business, what you do with your wealth. We're not going to be a society where growth and expansion are part of our own personal bubbles, without thinking about our brothers and sisters who may not have been as fortunate as us. No. Pursue wealth, grow, but don't let it become something limitless. Rein it in. Care for others. Every seven years, open your field and share its fruits, and every fifty years, make sure those who have lost ownership of their lands and their bodies get them back.

I also think that the way the Torah is addressing this potential pitfall of limitless opportunity – it actually goes beyond making sure the poor are provided for. I think the Torah also wants to make sure the wealthy are thinking about their God-given prosperity in the right way. Because the land and the abundance it promises… that can be seductive. It's natural to think about what you can do with this property and with that amount of capital, and how nice it would be for your family to have that.

But then this sort of counterintuitive thing can happen. Instead of all this abundance making you feel secure, like you have enough, it actually ends up doing the opposite. You get so swept up by the possibilities, they become so real. It's not just that now you can think about a bigger house or a place in the tropics; you're going to have it. You have the resources, so you're going to make it happen. When that vision of your future switches from a nice option to something you're invested in, to a need… then all of a sudden not having it stops being an option. You become afraid of losing it. You need to protect it. You might even think you need more to make your dreams a reality. So you seek even more wealth, you work harder.

So instead of your abundance giving you more freedom, it ends up kind of enslaving you. It's never enough. Think about how that would affect the way you see other people. Anyone who wants something that could get in the way – the guy who wants his land back after I bought it from him, when it's bringing in money for me, the servant who I need who wants to go free – you know what they are? They're threats. It seems so counterintuitive, but when you have so much, there's this real risk that if you don't stay grounded and you let yourself get caught up in this sense of limitlessness… then instead of sharing more, you end up being extra protective of what you have, and then you share less.

I think the Torah wants to head off that issue by instituting this giant communal process of counting during the 50-year cycle. It's like a group meditation on limits, this way of keeping everyone grounded. Like, we’ve had this opportunity to tap into the land’s abundance for a year, for two years, five years, ten, twenty – and there’s that hard stop coming up at fifty – and that just takes away that sense of infiniteness from land ownership, and it stops you from getting swept up in the possibilities, keeps your head on straight, so you can enjoy your wealth clear-eyed and not get into that place of fear and insecurity. 

6. Staying Grounded in Times of Plenty

This pitfall of amassing wealth and just leaving others behind, it's also not something we only think about over these large spans of time, seven years and fifty years. The Torah also shines a light on it within each year, at the time when our prosperity would be most in our faces… during the harvest. Passover is the beginning of this big season of bounty, when the barley crop comes in. Shavuot is the end, when the wheat is harvested. And for the whole length of this period of plenty, the Torah tells us to count Sefirat HaOmer.

We had this big question about the laws of leket and pe'ah we talked about at the beginning, right? How, at the end of the section of the Omer, smack in the middle of a chapter all about holidays, the Torah presented these laws about leaving things over for the poor while you harvest. It didn't seem to make any sense. 

If you just stop and think about it, what are these laws saying? There are people who may not have what to eat – the ani and the ger, the poor, the strangers – and I'm going to literally let them wander onto my field and take from the corners and from what I leave behind. That's basically Shemittah. "Real" Shemittah happens every seven years, but in a way, it's always Shemittah in the corners of my field. So when my ship comes in, when I'm sitting on my silo of grain, I have to share that.

Malka:  And you have to count.

Daniel:  And I have to count. Because the laws of leket and pe'ah, they make sure that the needy will be taken care of. But what about me, the landowner, and my relationship with my wealth? What stops me from going off the deep end?

Our other big question, remember, was about why the Torah introduces this section of the Omer with כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ – “when you enter the land.” We now know this aretz, this land, is an אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ, it's a land overflowing with milk and honey, a land of dizzying possibility.

Malka:  So it's easy to get carried away with it and let it get to your head.

Daniel:  Right, exactly. When we come face-to-face with this flow, this great tidal wave of excess that can really sweep us away – so we count. We make ourselves stay grounded. It's been three days since this influx, four days, five days. I'm not going to let time blur and lose touch with reality. I'm going to hold on to that sense of knowing when and where I am. Once I'm not spiraling – I'm just soberly aware that I have all this abundance, but I'm not swept up by it – then I won't develop that insecurity and fear. I'll know that I actually have enough – more than enough – and I'll be able to hear that other people need help, and not feel so protective that all I hear is a nuisance or a threat. I'll actually have room in my heart for empathy, leading me to happily share the part of my wealth that's beyond what I need to feel secure.

While we're talking about feeling secure, and that leading me to share what I don't need, think about leket again for a second. It's a law that says that when you're harvesting your crops, don't go back and pick up what you drop. לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם – leave them for the poor and the strangers, those who need it more.

So just picture the scene in your mind for a second. You're gathering the produce, you're filling your arms with it, and there's so much that you can't hold it all. So the Torah says: When that's how much you have, don't be the guy who goes back for what you couldn't carry. You've taken what's reasonable to hold. Your arms are already full without that produce you dropped, so leave it for someone whose arms aren't as full, because you should see you have enough.

So I think that's the attitude we're meant to have towards abundance, and that's what the Torah is pushing us towards with this whole idea of sefirah.

7. What Sefirah Means to Us

Malka:  So do you feel like in Sefirat HaOmer – for the modern Jew doing Sefirat HaOmer, where it's less completely related to the time of year and abundance and all of that – that there's a particular intentionality, a particular boundary that sefirah is supposed to have in mind for us? Or is it just the concept in general?

Daniel:  So when it comes to takeaways – How does this change my practice and my life today? – so it's obviously very subjective. I'm sure there are a million ways that people can find meaning in the stuff that we've been laying out here. I've actually heard a few different nice thoughts from people who’ve heard earlier versions of this material. But I'll tell you a couple of things it means for me, and maybe you'll resonate.

Number one, I think, is that in terms of our personal financial situations, the Torah clearly seems to be telling us that when we come face to face with an influx of abundance of some kind, we can get caught up in the limitless potential of it, and we need to introduce a sense of finiteness. In the agrarian economy of ancient Israel, that message would have been most important to the owners of land and capital.

So I guess the easiest analogue in our time would be for the big owners of capital today. So say you're a hedge-fund manager type, or you own a bunch of real estate. You might be making the kind of money that could leave you feeling like anything is possible. So when a big influx comes in – even if it's not an influx of wheat and barley and it's not happening right after Passover – still, the ideas behind sefirah, they all apply. There's that real chance that you'll get swept up by it and you'll end up being super possessive of it and just not be able to see how blessed you are, how fine you are, and how being generous isn't risky or scary.

So finding a way to introduce a sense of limitedness, of finiteness, to that experience, and make you feel grounded – maybe make you feel like you already have enough, and that way, kind of making it easier for you to think about the broader community – that would be something kind of in line with the spirit of these ideas. Maybe that means actually spending time with numbers, like actually taking stock of what you have and thinking about what you need, so you come face to face with just how secure you are. Maybe it's putting a cap on how much of the bounty you decide you'll enjoy – not in fear, but in gratitude – and making a plan for how you'll use the rest to help others, in the spirit of leket and pe'ah. 

Even for the not-super-wealthy, if there are moments when you encounter some analogue of a harvest – something like a raise or a bonus – I feel like for a lot of people, myself definitely included, it's so easy for that experience to become colored by insecurity… to the point where we miss the part where something wonderful happened! Like, let me put the extra right away into the retirement account, or the college fund, because I'm so worried that what I have in them now isn't enough.

I'm not saying that's not what you should do with the money. That actually sounds like a really good idea. But what does deciding what to do with the bonus feel like when it's not being driven by fear and insecurity? When you realize your life was fine before, and what you're getting now is actually beyond enough. How much happier and calmer and more generous would we be?

So if there's some way to ground ourselves when these moments come along, and not let those insecurities take over the experience, maybe that's one way we can honor the principles of sefirah.

Number two, in terms of the actual period of Sefirat HaOmer itself, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, so I have a thought about that also. So if we think about this period of the Omer, how does it start? It starts with Passover, zman cheiruteinu, the time we became free. Isn't freedom also a kind of limitless opportunity? Maybe even a more essential, more fundamental kind. Freedom means I can literally do or be anything I can imagine. There's no one controlling me. There's no limits. So in a way, there is this whole other great influx of bounty right at the beginning of the period of the Omer. Maybe the original influx, only instead of barley, it's freedom. 

So then, fast forward seven weeks, and what's happening? We're getting the Torah, this giant list of commands. Laws, policies, boundaries – seemingly the opposite of freedom. So what's that about? We were celebrating our freedom five minutes ago, and now we're celebrating giving it up? It feels like whiplash. Make up your mind! Is freedom good or is it bad? But maybe it's exactly what we've been talking about. Maybe the point is: Freedom is a wonderful thing, but unlimited freedom… that can spiral. That could hook you and transform you until you're not really free anymore, just like with wealth.

Just to illustrate that for a minute, so if we think about nowadays, the kind of freedom that's out there in the world is staggering. The access to information and education, the job market, the sheer number of communities and groups and movements and cultures anyone could join if they wanted. It all means that the possibilities for our lives and who we want to be are getting more and more unlimited all the time.

So we all have this element of limitlessness in our lives today, but the way our psychology works, it's not easy to look at all that and think: Wow, I have all this opportunity today. I'm so free to do anything. What if I were living 300 years ago? 

My friends would be my neighbors, regardless of how much we had in common. And if for some reason, I wanted to, let's say, learn Romanian, the easiest way would probably actually be to go to Romania, instead of choosing between six language services available on a magic box in my living room. And if I wanted to go to Romania, it would take weeks instead of hours. So that's my standard of living 300 years ago. 

And now? I've got my WhatsApp groups with my friends from college from all over the world. The airport's only a few miles away. And yet, despite all that that I have today, it's not easy to take it all in and say: Wow, I have so much more than anyone could need. 

Instead, I think most of us just kind of adapt to our surroundings, see everything that's out there right now, and kind of focus on what we don't have in our lives. We have these skewed benchmarks for what's enough. I'm not okay if my house isn't like this, or my followers are below this number, or I'm not this educated or this fit. We can get so fixated on these goals, get so ungrounded that if someone asks us if we can share our time or our talents or resources, it's like… Really?! I don't even have enough of those for myself.

Freedom isn't a bad thing. Just like a bountiful harvest or a land of opportunity, it's actually a wonderful blessing. But it's what you do with it, and what it does to you that counts. Pun intended.

8. Using Our Freedom for a Blessing

What God charges us to do is to embrace limits, to uphold His boundaries and rules as a way of building community, of protecting the vulnerable and of saving us from the worst parts of ourselves. I think if we experience the Omer like this, if we think about this symbiotic relationship between the boundless blessing of freedom and the necessary guardrails of Torah and mitzvot – if we reflect on that for seven weeks, what a way to come into Shavuot and really be ready to celebrate the giving of the Torah.

Malka:  It's interesting. I think a typical understanding that a lot of people have of receiving the Torah and doing the mitzvot is like, there are these boundaries for the sake of boundary. You have to listen because it's the rule, because that's what it says. But when you think about it this way, when you do it this way, it's more like boundary for the sake of freedom. Like, it's there to make the freedom better. It's cool.

Daniel:  Totally. So we've managed to kind of come full circle here. We started off talking about the popular idea that counting the days of the Omer was all about anticipating Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah), and we actually looked in the text of the Torah, and that's not really what we saw. We took a tour through half of Leviticus and came out with this idea that counting is a way of grounding us after we experience a sense of limitless possibility. Now, we're back in Matan Torah, but we're seeing its connection to Sefirah a little differently, I think.

Sefirah isn't about anticipation, which we'd normally count down for instead of counting up. It's about preparation, about getting in the right mindset, about meditating on limits and framing our relationship with freedom in the right way so that we can accept the Torah again each year with a real understanding of what that's asking of us, and why we should say yes.

Malka:  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Then also, when you think back to what came right before, Pesach (Passover), it's kind of even cooler than that, because if you look at the way that we actually practice Pesach, and the mindset we're supposed to have, and you look at Seder night, we're supposed to retell the story of leaving Mitzrayim (Egypt) and we're supposed to feel as if we ourselves, each individual at the Seder, they themselves were redeemed from Egypt and they themselves became free.

It's kind of like, you always ask the question, why do we have to feel like it was us instead of just telling the story and remembering it? This kind of adds some depth to that that I never thought about, which is that you actually need to, on a practical level, feel like it was you, so that you now can re-feel the sense of freedom with the wonder that it feels to be free for the first time – which is hard when you're free all the time, like we are, thank God. Then when you feel that new wonder of freedom, you're perfectly ready for the practical lessons of Sefirah, which come literally right after Seder, you start counting Sefirah. You're able to then actually apply this in your life, because you experienced this practically.

So yes, conceptually this all makes sense. It fits in perfectly, we learned it, and it's like, okay great, that's the big ideas that we're being taught. But then when you think about it practically, it actually works for each individual person, that you experience freedom, you can then apply these lessons and boundary, and then you can do this year over year, fresh, and it doesn't get old, because you're going to be in a different position in life. You're re-experiencing this and you can take it kind of to the next level. So it's really neat to think about it like that. I never thought about that connection in a real, practical takeaway sense like that. Neat.

Daniel:  Malka, thank you so much.

Malka:  Thanks so much, this was so great. I think what's so cool about this whole process for me, because this was my first time learning this way with you, is – especially around Pesach, people are hearing so many different shiurim and nice ideas. There are so many lessons and deep interpretations and things to learn from especially Pesach, Sefirah, this time period is just very introspective and thoughtful. But what's so cool about the way we did this is that these weren't just nice lessons. They really emerge from the text. Like, we looked at everything and we kind of tried… we didn't come in with an agenda. We kind of pieced everything together and said, okay, what is this telling us? That was just a really transformative experience for me. So that's really cool. I'm very excited to do this again.

Daniel:  Me too. Thanks again.

And thank you for joining us on this journey. I hope some of the ideas that came up give inspiration to your Sefirat HaOmer season, and beyond. Happy counting!

Imu: Thanks everybody for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that episode. This is the portion of the episode where I like to share my deep thoughts with you, my personal takeaways, as it were. But the truth is, I worked a little bit with Daniel and Malka on crafting some of the takeaways that you just heard, so I think I’ll spare you on this one. I’ll just tell you that when I first heard Daniel present this material to me, I was blown away by how the Torah can share its meaning, use sort of an orchestra of texts to convey nuanced meaning and understanding. You can read the passage in Emor that describes the laws of Sefirat HaOmer, and you can count your whole life… but I never would have thought in a million years that Sefirat HaOmer would somehow be related to the eretz zavat chalav udvash. Anyway, that’s just a really good example of the work we’re trying to do here at Into the Verse and Aleph Beta in general, just to showcase the incredible way in which the Torah encodes its meaning. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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Credits:

Daniel: This podcast was written and recorded by me, Daniel Loewenstein, along with Aleph Beta COO Malka Alweis, and edited by Evan Weiner. Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. Our CEO and editorial director is Imu Shalev. Thank you so much for listening.