We kregen een mooie serie tweets van een Joodse man over de betekenis van de tijd tussen Pasen en Pinksteren:
There are 49 days from Passover to the Holiday of Shavuot when G-d redeemed Israel & brought them to Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah.
The Torah tells us to “count” these days in preparation, almost like a child who anxiously counts down the days until his next birthday.
The Omer counting, or 49 days of preparation is designed to enable us to prepare ourselves to once again receive the “Word of God”.
The Omer shows us that we must make small changes in ourselves, in order to properly assimilate the knowledge of G-d. It’s not osmosis.
The Jewish people could have gone straight from Egypt to receive the 10 commandments but it took 7 weeks to prepare them for the transition.
According to Judaism, we have 49 spiritual faculties that can be damaged. The 49 day Omer is used to refine & repair our “spiritual cords”.
Each day, we focus on a “Middah” or characteristic that needs to be improved. It takes 49 full days to complete the cycle of refinement.
In reality, refinement is a lifelong endeavor. The 49 days of the Omer are a step in the journey of life preparing us for something greater.
There’s an interesting passage in Exodus (11:7) that says, the dogs did not bark at the Jewish people when they left the land of Egypt.
Dogs have an ability to sense death. In fact, dogs were the guardians of the underworld in Egyptian culture. Anubis was “god of the dead”.
The dogs didn’t bark at the Children of Israel because God himself accompanied them out of Egypt. It was a telling sign to the Egyptians.
By having the dogs remain silent, God was showing the people of Egypt that their gods held no power over the Children of Israel.
Even the dogs of Egypt were smart enough to know that Israel belonged to the Jewish people. If only our enemies were as smart as those dogs.