The Omer and Eternity

hourglass

There are quite a few differences between adults and small children and we don’t come out on top of all of them. Children are inexperienced, but open-minded, free and creative in their thinking. They lack preconceived notions of how things ought to be, which is why they have the ability to see things in ways that adults don’t. Someone once pointed out to me that if a baby were at breakfast one morning and their mother’s chair suddenly rose up and began floating 3 feet off the floor, they would not be perturbed or find it remarkable. If the Martians came in from the spaceship, the baby would gurgle at them like anyone else who walked in off the street.

Babies also don’t remember yesterday (or last week) and they haven’t thought about tomorrow. They are not concerned about what they want to “be” in life and they aren’t weighted down by responsibilities, prejudices and long-term thinking. This is all to their benefit and is part of what makes a child’s laughter and creativity so delightful.

On their hand, they also don’t care if they sit in their own poop. They can’t be trusted to keep money in a safe place (like a 401K, ha!) or to think about making dinner. They’re usually quite selfish, so they haven’t thought about dinner for anyone else, either. True, they have no prejudices, but they would also walk off the balcony or into a busy street because they have no prejudices against fast-moving cars, either.

Even if we grow the baby up to be a teenager or a college student, we still find a different perception of life and time than adults. True, college students have learned to be responsible (in SOME ways) and are thinking about their lives in a holistic way, but in the full bloom of youth, their thinking is all prospective, all about what I WILL do with my life. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in an essay called “Counting Time”, writes that “Youth’s time awareness is future-oriented…for the youngster, to exist is to surge forward, to behold a vision, to reach for that which as yet is non-real, to hope and to quest and to be committed to the morrow etc. The young person is a searcher, a quester, a planner.”

On the other hand, “the time-awareness of the old person is centered on the past…for the elderly to exist is to remember, to re-experience a myriad of events, to contemplate the non-real that was once very real… The old person [is a ] a reviewer, a meditator.”

Rabbi Soloveitchik contrasts youthful thinking with old-age thinking, based on the example of King Solomon, Sh’lomo ha-Melech. In the Midrash (Yalkut Shim’oni, Kohelet 965), it says that S’hlomo wrote Song of Songs in his youth because it’s the way of young people to write passionate songs[1], Proverbs in his middle years because it is the way of those in the middle to contemplate and analogize[2], and Ecclesiastes in his old age because it is the way of old people to reflect back, to think of their regrets and to tell others what is, in the long run, a waste or good use of time and life.[3]

From my perspective – in the middle, Proverbs, stage of life[4] – I would want to find a way to bridge the two, to somehow incorporate the prospective and perspective, the flow and the ebb, the energy and the experience. I would want to retain a child-like wonder and unbounded enthusiasm for new projects, but acquire the wisdom to know my limits and to be pragmatic in my choices. It should be possible to tie together the past (seen from old age) and the future (seen from youth) into a self-aware, Janus-like present. If the past is the thesis and the future the antithesis, the present must become a synthesis.

For Rabbi Soloveitchik, this is one of the enduring lessons of the counting of the omer, the 49-day count that links Passover and Shavuot, the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah.:

“The experiential merger of past and future, of recollection and anticipation, is symbolized by the process of counting…any act of counting embraces retrospection as well as anticipation. I look backward and am aware of what I did last night, and I look forward, and I know that the counting tonight is not the final one.” (Festival of Freedom, p.178

Each night of counting establishes an undeniable present. Today is only and can only be one day within the omer. It has its own press release (today is the 30th day, which is four weeks and 2 days of the omer!) and its own identity. In Kabbala, Jewish mysticism, each day of the omer has its own unique code, a permutation of the eternal elements of divinity. The unique DNA of the 30th day of the omer (“gevura she-b’hod”, power within splendor) is a unique signature, a cocktail of spiritual energy which is never duplicated within the count.

However, it can only exist within the mathematical continuum that supports it. Elsewhere, Rabbi Soloveitchik explains why someone who has missed one whole day of the omer can no longer fully count with a blessing. Even though each day is unique and has its own blessing (and may even be its own mitzva), since it can only exist on the bridge of time between A and B, if one section is missing, it no longer works as a bridge.

If you think about it, this is an apt metaphor for the history of the Jewish people. Each generation represents its undeniable present, concerned with its own needs and challenges. And yet, the existence of our generation (our “day”) presupposes the yesterday of a previous generation. Who better than the post-Holocaust generation to know how fortunate we are to even be here? And the existence of our generation MUST also pre-suppose the tomorrow of our children. We must make sure to count and make our choices count today so that the counting of tomorrow may be done full-throatedly, without reservation and without surcease. May we make the choices that will enable a future of counting – until the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore – for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Shabbat shalom!

[1] e.g. “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” 1:2
[2] e.g. “to understand a parable and a riddle, the words of the wise ones and their puzzles.” 1:6
[3] e.g. the end of the matter, when all is said and done: fear God and keep His mitzvot, for this is the measure of man.” 12:13
[4] I am tempted to say that I am still in the bloom of youth, but I am afraid that I will be mocked by my students for wishing I was still in college. Plus, the dvar Torah works out best this way.