Counting "Up" to Something: Emor 5769

Imagine for a moment it is Dec. 31st, New Year’s Eve. You are with friends, gathered around the television watching the chaotic scene taking place in Times Square. There is a giant ball made out of thousands of panes of Waterford crystal that is slowly descending from on high, and a crowd of millions, along with all those who observe the most sacred of timezones, Eastern Standard Time, watching as that little clock in the bottom of the screen begins to countdown. Ten, nine, eight, the bottle of champagne is opened. Seven, six, five, your cell phone receives a text message from a friend far away. Four, three, two, you gather your loved-one close ready for the New Year’s kiss. One, the clock strikes midnight, Auld Lang Syne begins to play and a New Year begins yet again.
Inevitably, this is where I feel the letdown. “That’s it?” I ask. “All that waiting, the gathering of friends, the suspenseful countdown, and that’s it? So much buildup, and then with the arrival of that inevitable zero on the clock, it’s over.” But ultimately this is the unavoidable nature of any kind of countdown…it ends. The countdown itself may be fun for a little while, but it never lasts.
This is not the case however with countups. Now, you may not have heard of this term countup, and that is because it is not actually a word, but rest assured, it is something we are all familiar with. There are all kinds of countups in our lives: birthdays for example are countups (because it would be quite depressing if we were counting down); and anniversaries too. Pregnancies are an interesting case however. On the one hand they are countdowns, like the countdown to the due-date of May 15th; but on the other, more scientific hand, they are actually countups: one week, one trimester, three trimesters, all the way to forty weeks. So how do we explain this discrepancy? Is there really a difference between countdowns versus countups, or is this merely a game of semantics? I would argue that there is indeed a crucial difference between counting up and counting down, and our Jewish tradition has a lot to teach us with regard to this question.
For an answer to this decidedly deep question, lets first look to the most famous Jewish disagreement about counting up to something versus counting down to something: the arguments between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai about the correct way to light the Hannukah candles (An argument my seventh-graders who are present here today are no doubt familiar with.) In Masechet Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud, page 21b, the rabbis record an argument between the most well-known Jewish arguers of all time: Hillel and Shammai. The text reads as follows:


“Our Rabbis taught with regard to the commandment of Hannukah:
The House of Shammai says: On the first night we light eight candles, from there on we subtract one candle each night, ending with one lone candle.
The House of Hillel says however: On the first night we light one candle, from there on we add one candle each night, ending with eight candles.”

Although this Tannaitic teaching, a text dating to the time of the Mishnah, records the argument, it does not record any reasons as to why the House of Shammai did it their way and the House of Hillel did it their own way. Five hundred years later, an Amoraic rabbi, a rabbi of the Talmud named Rav Yosi bar Zavida offered his own interpretation as to their reasoning. He explains, that the House of Shammai decides to countdown, that is to remove one candle with the passing of each subsequent night, because that is the nature of the number of sacrifices listed in the Book of B’Midbar; decreasing with each day of the given festival. However, the House of Hillel bases their decidedly different countup on the rabbinic precept of:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”
So who wins in a battle between the great and ever-arguing Houses of Hillel and Shammai? Well you could ask my seventh graders, or you could simply think back to Hanukkah and our own modern practice to determine that the Halacha, the Jewish Law, almost always sides with the House of Hillel.
In a similar light, this mornings Torah reading from Parashat Emor can also give us some needed insight with regard to the holy practice of ‘counting up’ to something. In the 15th verse of the 23rd chapter of Sefer Vayikra the Torah tells us:
וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם֙ מִמָּֽחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת מִיּוֹם הֲבִיאֲכֶם אֶת-עֹמֶר הַתְּנוּפָה שֶׁבַע שַׁבָּתוֹת תְּמִימֹת תִּֽהְיֶֽינָה:
“And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering, the day after the Sabbath – you shall count off seven complete weeks.”

This verse of course is the basis for the mitzvah, the commandment of counting the Omer, one of the simplest, yet somehow most difficult mitzvot in the entre Torah. How is it simple? Easy, all you have to do is count each night, starting with the night of the second seder, all the way until we reach the holiday of Shavuot seven weeks later. You don’t have to go to home depot, like on Sukkot, or stock up with matzah from Davis’ before Passover; instead all you have to do is remember to count, each and every day of the Omer.
How is it difficult? It is difficult because you have to remember to count. In fact, the halacha even adds an incentive (or punishment depending on how you see it) to motivate you in your counting: if you miss one complete day, that is if you forget to count one night, and don’t remember until after sundown the next night…that’s it, you’re out of the game. The rabbis tell us that you can continue to count…if you want…but not with the b’racha that accompanies the performance of this mitzvah. Like the NCAA tournament each year, it’s a one and done situation. Forget one day, and you might as well pack up your bags for the next seven weeks.
And why is it so difficult to remember to count each night, one by one until the magic number of 49? Well, one answer is that it is simply not in our nature to take life one day at a time. Think about it, if I were to ask you the question how old are you? Everyone in here would know the answer to that question in terms of years, or for some in the room (Ari? Ava?) in terms of months. But how many of you could tell me the number of days you have been alive? Or, if I asked which anniversary you might be celebrating this year, most of you probably know the answer, and those that don’t will certainly be in some trouble, but what if I asked you to recall how many days you have been in a relationship with your loved one? A little harder to do, no?
But yet, I believe there are two main reasons as to why the Torah’s asks of us to pause and count each and every day out loud for a period of seven weeks. Let us categorize these reasons as the traditional and the spiritual. First, the traditional: the Rabbis of the Midrash tell us that upon the Exodus from Egypt, God informed the Children of Israel that they would receive the Torah on Mt. Sinai exactly 49 days later on the holiday of Shavuot. The People Israel were so excited by this news that they immediately began to count the days until their ultimate reward would come to them, the receiving of the Torah on the 6th of Sivan. To this very day, we engage in this important countup in order to show our gratitude for the sacred and timeless gift of the Torah.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly for me, to the spiritual:
The counting of the Omer is an enforced way of slowing down, of taking the time to notice the blessed passing of each and every day. Too often we rush through life, watching as days blend into one another, until a week passes, a month, a year. We find ourselves exclaiming, ‘Life moves so fast,’ bemoaning the fact that we didn’t stop and slow down to enjoy each day afresh. Unfortunately, the lesson of not taking a day for granted is one we all could learn from those in our community who are ill. Ask a person in the throws of a serious illness how they are doing, and they will invariably answer, “I am taking it one day at a time.” They understand the blessing that can be found in the passing of another day, and perhaps we should all try living by their example.
And so, in conclusion I return to the image of New Year’s Eve. Why is it that I always feel such a letdown at the end of an evening of counting down? I believe the answer can be found in the result. If we are merely counting down to something, than that thing, is by definition finite. It is limited. It disappears as quickly as it arrives. But if we instead count up to something, we desire it to be infinite, to be unlimited, to be everlasting. Personally, Eliana and I might be counting down to a due date, but ultimately, more importantly we are counting up to a new life with new possibilities. For our Bar Mitzvah, Max Binder, this morning, you may have been counting down to this important day for years now, but you must recognize that on this day, you actually begin counting up to your Jewish future. And finally for each of us here today, we celebrate the timelessness of Torah and the importance of each and every day when we commit ourselves to counting the Omer because:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”

And so it is with great praise to God, the Holy One who is the source of life, that I proudly say: today is the thirtieth day of the Omer.