Wedding of all Weddings!

Reflections on Sefirat haOmer

by Daniel Nakonechny, Beit El

11 Iyar, 5766

Although we descended into Egypt for a limited amount of time, since we were there by God's decree, we gradually settled into accepting our surroundings and becoming comfortable with Egyptian culture and complacent with our own values.  Egypt seized upon our indiscriminate behavior and forced us down into the depths of their spiritual degeneration, plunging us towards a bottomless chasm.  When we finally caught, we hung, suspended and teetering, covered in all the accumulated filth of our plummet, literally on the brink of annihilation.

It was then and there in our utter debasement that God, Himself, actually reached in and brought us out.  There at that obscure point in creation where we were almost beyond recognition and seemingly devoid of any redeeming attribute, where we could not have been absolutely any further away from stature and substance, meaning and being, God and holiness, there it was that God said, "You're mine!  You are the people that I want.  You are the people who are going to receive my precious Torah."  In an instant He pulled us out of obliteration in Egypt and set us down in the desert to commence our journey.  Our destination, Har Sinai, was to be the wedding of Am Yisrael and the Torah.

The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh in his commentary on the Torah asks an intriguing question: When God took us out of Egypt why didn't He take us directly to Har Sinai, instead of placing us in the desert and making us spend weeks traveling?!  He elaborates and asks, "How can it be that God, God who was so compelled by one overwhelmingly passionate desire - to wed us to His holy Torah, how can it be that He could delay the intended nuptials by even the least amount of time?!  The way was too long?  Don't we know that when Eliezer went to find a wife for Yitzhak God shortened the journey?  And if he shortened the journey for the wedding of the son of Abraham, then surely for the wedding of all weddings He'd do less?!!!"

The answer, explains the Ohr HaChaim, is the chasan, the holy chasan.  How can you bring a holy chasan to his chuppah in his condition?  God says, "I know that he's holy but does he?  If he looks at himself what does he see?  Does he know who he really is?  He needs to be restored and cleaned.  He needs to prove to himself that he really is the holy person that I know he is.  He needs time to get ready."  So God deliberately guides the holy chasan - Am Yisrael - on a seemingly roundabout journey from Egypt to Har Sinai.

This ultimate of incredible journeys is captured for us in the Haggadah in "Dayenu", but for our forefathers it wasn't quite the happy song that we sing.  There were fabulous moments of ecstasy and exhaltation and dire times of quandary and despair.  Every step of the way God challenged us to find ourselves.  Every step of the way His great love and goodness kept flowing and pouring forth, sometimes like this and sometimes like that.  At every moment and in every way possible He kept telling us who we are and what we are; how beautiful and holy we truly are.  We so much wanted and He so much needed us to believe Him and what He was telling us.  And we did - Aaaah! Gevaldt!  Is it really true?!  It's so great, so wonderful! … and we didn't - But who am I?  Why me?  I'm not worthy!  And back again and over again.  It was so confusing.  We said "enough, dayenu; you've given us too, too much!  Mamash, dayenu already!"  But God couldn't stop, and God didn't want to stop.  After all, there's going to be a chuppah and the holy kallah and the holy chasan, and after the wedding there's......

It almost didn't happen!  Mamash, literally right before we get to the chuppah disaster strikes.  We get cold feet.  We don't know if we're really interested in the holy kallah, if she's for us or we for her.  And while we're trying to sort out this dilemma who should show up to help us - Amalek!  Amalek HELP US?!  Amalek?!  (With friends like Amalek you need enemies?!)  Amalek sizes us up and says to himself, "These misfits don't even know what they're all about.  What a waste!  The way they're going no one's going to miss them!  I'll do the world a favor and get rid of them!"  And so Amalek starts to take apart Am Yisrael, the holy chasan.

Our victory over Amalek was the turning point not only for us but, especially, for the world.  The turning point for us because it was the commitment that God had been waiting for.  It was that beautiful moment when we realized just how holy we really are, and just how much we wanted the holy kallah - our holy kallah.  We looked back along the incredible path that we had traveled and we saw just how much we had accomplished and how much we had changed.  We finally realized and admitted that if we had anything to do about it there was no way this side of heaven that we weren't going to stand under that chuppah!  (Indeed, adds the Ohr HaChaim, that once we realized who we are and how much we wanted and needed the Torah, then it was exactly the very next day that we reached Har Sinai.)

The turning point for the world, as the Ohr HaChaim teaches us, because God, the Torah, and the whole of creation were literally beside themselves with waiting for the chuppah to take place.  The anticipation and suspension were incredible!  This wedding of weddings - where heaven and earth are going to be joined in matrimony - was not going to be merely the most fabulous chuppah ever.  It was even more magnificent than that.  It would be the actual moment when the purpose of all creation would come together and begin.  Gevalt!

Our holy ancestors who went out of Egypt were so blessed, and we are equally blessed because, you see, everything that our forefathers did we do, also.  Just as they brought Torah into the world we continue to bring Torah into the world.  Just as they brought in Shabbos we continue to bring in Shabbos.  In fact, despite the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash and our long exile, we have all the Yom Tovim that they had: Rosh Hashanah and Yom HaKippur, Succot, Pesach, Shavuous, Rosh Chodesh, Chanukah and Purim.  Even if critical parts of ritual can no longer be fulfilled, nevertheless the essence, substance, and meaning of these days has not changed.

Here we are now between Pesach and Shavuous, the period when we do the mitzvah of 's'firat ha'omer' (counting the omer).  This mitzvah relates directly to counting days accurately in order that on Shavuous we can bring the first new grain (wheat) offering of the year in the Beit HaMikdash.  Obviously since we no longer have a Beit HaMikdash, we shouldn't be doing this mitzvah of counting, but we do.  Why?  The Ohr HaChaim points out that in giving this mitzvah the Torah states that the counting is "for you" (i.e. for your sake).  What does this mean?

The Ohr HaChaim explains that the journey from Egypt to Har Sinai was a period of purification and growth in order to bring us to the necessary level of sanctity so that we could receive the Torah.  When we left Egypt (Pesach) and went to Har Sinai (Shavuous), the days of our journey are the struggles in which we brought out the holiness in ourselves and in the whole world.  Those days turned these days, the period of time between Pesach and Shavuous, into days of purification and growth.  In stating that the counting is "for you", therefore, the Torah intends for us that the period of 's'firat ha'omer' is meant to be a time of purification and growth, and we are commanded to measure it [in expectation].

Every year at the Pesach Seder we must see ourselves as if we, too, are actually going out of Egypt.  Annually, then, the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuous are the time when we travel anew the journey from our becoming a people to our fulfilling [for the whole world] the purpose of creation.  Just as it was then so, too, now these seven weeks become a time of purification and growth as we prepare ourselves for this most awesome and wonderfully magnificent event - receiving the Torah.

Surprisingly despite that seemingly we know what awaits us, we, too, experience much of what our ancestors did on their journey.  The agonies and ecstasies, the doubts and confirmations, they are still there. The most poignant proof of this is that just as they did then Amalek arises now to meet us exactly at the moment when we question most agonizingly our whole essence and purpose of being.  It is no coincidence that just at the moment when we, Am Yisrael, struggle that Amalek acts; no coincidence that when we - who are responsible for all creation - hesitate that Amalek comes forth to destroy.  (It is in this light that the Hagaddah teaches us that the attempt to destroy Am Yisrael wasn't only when we left Egypt but that every generation faces destruction.)  Just as we chose God and Torah when we were in the desert and thereby acquired the strength to overcome Amalek, so, too, every generation has to make this commitment in order to continue to overcome.

There has never been any other choice for Am Yisrael and neither have we ever wanted any other choice.  To do so is to ignore or deny just who we are, what we are, and to whom we, alone, are responsible.  In creating the world God chose us to be His people because, in contradistinction to the whole world, we are the singular nation that was and is willing to choose God.  It is upon the basis of our choice that God committed Himself to creation.  In our moments of greatest jubilation and exhaltation, and in our bleakest, darkest moments we have never ever wanted anything more than to reside in God's holy illumination.  More importantly, as a nation we have never ever despaired that God's holy light and love will have dominion in this world, and that the world, too, will reside in His light one day.

Some thirty-five hundred years ago we had almost sunk entirely into the ultimate of moral and spiritual quagmires when God reached in and brought us out.  We are taught us that often you have go very, very deep to reach the hidden and the holy.  In our journey to Har Sinai we learned to reach very, very deep for all the blessings, all the sweetness and love that are the essence of our being.  It was there - so very deep inside us - that we found the holy partner for God's holy Torah.  Every single Jew there opened his and her heart and this opened the heart of Am Yisrael.  The heart of Am Yisrael became the vessel into which God was able to place his light and love and Torah in this world - from His heart to ours.  FIFTY DAYS after leaving Egypt we stood under the chuppah at Har Sinai.  It was the greatest day that the world has ever known.

The Ohr HaChaim teaches us that we count the days from Pesach to Shavuous because we are getting ready in great anticipation - not for the anniversary - but for the wedding!  We're counting the days because this time the chuppah is going to go on forever.  This time the guests will be staying forever.  Blessings and sweetness and love are going to fill the heart and soul of the whole world and overflow, and time will stop.  There will no longer be any need for tomorrow.  It will all be One.