Counting with Shir HaShirim
Counting with Shir HaShirim- Day 1 Central Reform Congregation A Jewish Presence in the City of St. Louis
Full count. Rabbi and his wife. Reminds me of myself. Very knowledgeable, but looks and sounds like a goof-ball. Would love to have a chat with him.
Counting the Omer: Ideas and Resources
Rabbi Margie
In the Jewish year cycle, the counting of the Omer begins on the second night of Passover. During this seven-week period from Passover to Shavuot, we embark on a journey from Egypt to Sinai. From a spiritual perspective, we leave behind old habits and paradigms that don’t serve us and wander into the unknown. We move toward Sinai — toward clarity, sacred awareness, and a blueprint for a new way of being.
During the Omer we are in the desert. We face the unknown that lies ahead, and with it, our anxieties, fears, and new possibilities.
The spiritual challenge is twofold:
- To stay in the present moment: the primary ritual of the Omer is to count each day.
- To explore and refine the inner landscape of our own mind and heart. We are then more prepared to hear new insights and wisdom when they become available (at Sinai). In the Kabbalistic tradition, we spend one week on each of seven divine attributes—generosity/love, boundaries/strength, compassion, etc—exploring how we embody these attributes.
With greater insight, we are more able to ride the waves of our destiny, and to find peace of mind, shalom bayt.
Daily practice:
Your practice might be 5 minutes a day or 30. It might include meditation, writing in response to the question posed by your chosen resource, dance or movement, or art.
- Decide on a consistent amount of time, as well as a regular time, each day—whether 5 minutes or 30 minutes or longer.
- It can include:
- meditation—of whatever form you normally practice. This includes prayer. However, whatever tradition you may follow, remember to keep the specific encounter between the two sephirot in question in mind during any meditation or prayer you carry out during/for the Omer count.
- writing—either in response to a question, or a written piece regarding that day’s association, from a chosen resource or upon returning from your meditation.
- dance/movement
- painting/drawing—one small thing a day, or a tapestry that grows over 49 days, to be offered as a gift on the 50th day.
Note: No one has ever thought of why did Moses have no gift for HaShem when he went to meet Him on the mountain? - Any other creative process that will/can express the energies of the day in the light of the sephirotic interaction.
Resources
- Middot Omer Calendar (website) Inspired by the Kabbalistic sefirot and a middot (character traits) practice, Rabbi Margaret Holub shares one invitation/ instruction for each day of the Omer on the Ritualwell website.
Videos
Definition of God and Oneness
| Rabbi David Aaron | Kabbalah Me Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsVl3uLLTa4
Books
A Way in (website) and Journey Through the Wilderness (book, kindle).
Rabbi Yael Levy offers traditional passages based on the Kabbalistic sefirot for each day. ($20)
Rabbi Yael Levy gathers wisdom from Psalms and the Jewish mystical tradition into a unique Mindfulness approach to the ancient Jewish practice of Counting the Omer during the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. This 100-page, full-color guide includes the Omer blessings in Hebrew and English, daily teachings and intentions, pages for reflections and photographs to inspire meditation. Daily suggestions for action deepen the experience of counting each day and making each day count. Using insights gained from more than a decade of her own spiritual exploration with the Omer, Rabbi Levy has created a guide for spiritual growth for beginners and those who have experience with this practice.
Counting the Omer: A Kabbalistic Meditation Guide (book)
Rabbi Min Kantrowitz offers a guide through the Omer based on the Kabbalistic sefirot.
In this unique volume, the spiritual journey of the Omer, the period between the end of Passover and the Shavuot, has been re-imagined to make it both meaningful and accessible for the 21st century. The counting of the Omer begins with the escape from enslavement to the wandering path of freedom, leading to a mystical encounter with God, Sinai and Torah. Omer: A Counting provides a daily spiritual guide for a personal journey through the Omer toward meaningful and purposeful living. Beautiful and evocative readings for each day, matched with the daily Omer blessing, offer a transformative path from Passover to Shavuot. Also included is an informative historical introduction. ($18)
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Counting of the Omer Simon Jacobson
The 50th Gate Gavriel Goldfeder
During this period–called the Counting of the Omer–Jewish tradition focuses our attention on one particular theme that is likely to show up within all types of human interaction, including marriage and dating, friendship, parenthood, and work life. ($15) 4.6 stars.
50 Days to Shavuot Counting The Omer Devotional Vol 2: The Name Above All Names Yeshua Paperback – January 10, 2021
by Rabbin/Dr. Deborah Brandt (Author)
Counting the Omer: A Daily Devotional Toward Shavuot Paperback – January 3, 2012
by William Mark Huey (Author)
Counting the Omer: A Daily Devotional Toward Shavuot is a compilation of insightful, encouraging messages that examines a passage from Psalms every day for the fifty-day Omer Count season. Each exhortation is intended to prepare you for the commemoration of Shavuot (Pentecost) at the end of seven weeks. Gleaned from the studies and notes of William Mark Huey, it is the author’s intent that God’s people can not only be energized to Count the Omer themselves–but be specially prepared to experience His presence when the Feast of Weeks finally arrives!
49 Days - 49 Words: Counting the Omer through Psalm 67 Paperback – April 2, 2023
by Juanita Weiss (Author)
It is a mitzvah (commandment) to Count the Omer (which was a measurement of barley) from the beginning of Chag HaMatzot (The Feast of Unleavened Bread) up to the Wheat Harvest at Shavuot! The command is to count weeks and days. The Rabbis see this as two mitzvot. This devotional will facilitate your experience on this journey as we examine Psalm 67, a psalm normally recited during this time because it contains 49 words in conjunction with the 49 days of Counting the Omer. We will examine each of those words as they are relevant to our world and to our walk with Messiah. Come take the journey!
Omer/Teshuvah: Poetic Meditations for Counting the Omer or Turning Toward a New Year Paperback – August 26, 2013
by Shifrah Tobacman (Author), Rachel Barenblat (Editor), Elizheva Hurvich (Illustrator) ($8)
hese poems will open your heart and spirit! ABOUT OMER/TESHUVAH "This book invites us to breathe the air and taste the nectar of the holy, moving through multi-dimensional time, encountering the sacred in the daily. in the words of Gate 38, “a rainbow of colours, a delicious sip of possibilities”!
“Each of the 49 gates of wisdom through which we walk during our seven-week journey from Pesach to Shavuot, and rather innovatively also during the seven weeks leading to Rosh HaShanah, are explored with poetic depth and insight by Shifrah Tobacman. Allow these daily gems to inform and enrich your pilgrimage! You will not be disappointed!” —Rabbi Marcia Prager, Dean of Students, Aleph Ordination Programs, Author of Path of Blessing.
The communal and agricultural roots of the Omer period make it an excellent opportunity for considering our relationship to each other, to the Earth that sustains us, and to the Source of All Life that blesses our own lives each day.
Rabbi Shawn Zevit, offers these thoughts on Omer/Teshuvah. “Raising up the motifs of each day and adding to our spiritual practice, this collection guides the reader from a mindset of scarcity and tentative self- realization through the sea of distraction and self-doubt to a mountain of possibility and spiritual vibrancy. Read these and help make each day count!”
Sefirat HaOmer - Count Within Yourself: Count the Omer Family & Adult Coloring Book with Meditations & Mystical Kabbalistic Teachings for Spiritual Growth – March 22, 2021
by Rae Shagalov (Author)
As you color, you can deeply contemplate and understand the in-depth meanings of each of the forty-nine days.
Note: Lovely book.
Omer: A Counting – March 10, 2014
by Rabbi Karyn D Kedar (Author)
The spiritual journey of the Omer, begins with the escape from enslavement to the wandering path of freedom, leading to a mystical encounter with God at Sinai, as described in the Torah.
The Counting provides a daily spiritual guide for a personal journey through the 49 days toward more meaningful and purposeful living. Beautiful and evocative readings for each day, matched with the daily Omer blessing, offer a transformative path from Passover to Shavuot.
Dance of the Omer: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Transformational Journey of Sefirat Ha’Omer Paperback – March 16, 2021
by Benji Elson (Author)
A LUCID AND DYNAMIC PATH TO SELF-TRANSFORMATION BASED ON AN ANCIENT KABBALISTIC TEMPLATE OF GROWTH.
Seven Sefirot. Seven Weeks. Seven Stages of Transformation. Twenty Minutes a Day and you will emerge a different person.
In just fifty days, Dance of the Omer will help you transform your life, your relationships, your dreams, and your clarity about your purpose in life.
THE ENTIRE WORLD IS MADE OF FRACTALS WITHIN FRACTALS. For the Kabbalists, this Divine Sacred Geometry is known as the Sefirot, the Divine Emanations that constitute the structural makeup of the entire Universe, complete with its various physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and metaphysical levels and spheres.
HARNESSING THE KABBALISTIC TEACHINGS about Color, Sound, Song, Prayer, Movement, Spiritual Archetypes, the Seven Directions, the Four Elements, the Garden of Eden, and the Cycles of the Natural World, Dance Of The Omer takes you on a Seven-Week Journey into the vibrant and beautiful, multi-colored and multi-dimensional World of the Sefirot.
THROUGH DAILY EXPERIENTIAL TEACHINGS, MEDITATIONS, AND HANDS-ON EXERCISES, Dance of the Omer brings the Sefirot to life, helping you understand them, experience them, embody them, and utilize them to cultivate internal growth and transformation. Dance Of The Omer’s beautiful, eloquent, and poetically experiential descriptions of the Sefirot’s manifestation in Reality will help you discover their manifestation in your own life, enabling you to re-align with their flow and harness their power to create profound and lasting change in your life.
The Sefirat ha-Omer Journal: 49 Days of Spiritual Reflection and Personal Growth Paperback – April 2, 2024
by Ari Notzah Bicher (Author)
Prayer, Written Reflection, and Spiritual Preparation to Receive the Torah.
- Daily Reflections
- Kabbalistic Insights
- Full Traditional Prayers
Through the Gates: A Practice for Counting the Omer Paperback – March 27, 2014
by Susan Windle (Author)
In these intricate writings—poems within letters, letters within larger letters— offering both spiritual memoir and guidance for daily practice, the poet explores the rhythms and textures of daily life, inviting the reader into intimate engagement with the mystery of life itself.
From the author’s Introduction:
These writings offer company and encouragement as you move through the practice of counting the Omer. The daily reflections and poems I’ve included are an invitation to attend to the quieter voices and subtler energies of your life, voices easy to miss in the rush-rush, flash-flash of contemporary daily life. The book is meant to be read day by day, each passage on its numbered day. For those new to the practice of counting the Omer, I include instructions on how to count the traditional way—beginning the second night of Passover, standing, after sundown, on the eve of each changing day…I recommend saying the prayers in the traditional way at the traditional time—sometime during the dark of the evening, perhaps just before bed—and counting in the formal way. Doing so, we set our intentions for the following day, and we affirm our connection with generations who have counted before us.
The important thing here is to do something with the Omer, not just think, but do. Counting the Omer by the Tree of Life is more than a mental exercise or a topic of discussion. The [days] are portals, actual gateways to a deepening and expanding awareness of an extraordinary beauty: the heaven that hovers within and all around our so-called ordinary lives. The gates open to us when we open to them.
Omer Counting Journal: A Daily Journal for Counting the Omer
between Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Pentecost), Lined Journal, 100 pgs, includes … Torah | Living Word Bible Study Resources) Paperback – Notebook, March 18, 2021
by Kingdom Khai Books (Author)
In the Hebrew scriptures the counting of the Omer is a time of reflecting, spiritual growth and transformation.