The 2023 Every1Counts collection has ended. Thank you to everyone who participated! We donated 546 lbs. of food to Feeding Westchester! That’s over 450 meals for the food insecure in our community!
Thank you!
Dear all,
Shalom and Chag Samaeach!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
At Yom Kippur this year we started to count our year in measures of boxes of oatmeal, cans of beans and cups of rice donated to the local food pantry. At Purim we blotted out the name of Haman with groggers of pasta boxes. Now as we move into the season of Passover we are reminded of the line in the Haggadah “let all who are hungry come and eat” and begin a 49-day campaign to feed those in our community who are having difficulty feeding themselves.
The biblical word for measure is omer. In Bible times, the Jews used to take a measure of barley, called an omer, to the Temple in Jerusalem as a sacrifice to God to say “thank you” for giving them a good harvest. From the second day of Passover until the festival of Shavuot, we count each day for seven weeks and each day in ancient times an omer of barley was brought to the Temple. This period between Passover and Shavuot is called the “counting of the omer”. At Passover we escape from Egypt and spend 49 days traveling across the Red Sea, through the dessert to the base of Mount Sinai where we receive the Torah. The journey from slavery to Sinai moves us as a people from slavery to chosen-ness and with chosen-ness comes responsibility.
As you have heard many times our responsibility to the world is to repair it, Tikkun Olam. As the Israelites did so many years ago by bringing a daily sacrifice to the Temple we would like to invite you to count the seven weeks of seven, the 49 days, from Passover to Shavuot, from slavery to freedom, by collecting your own daily sacrifice of food or tzedakah.
We have created an omer counting kit for you through a generous donation towards this project.
Click HERE for the printable kit.
L’shalom,
Cantor Margot E. B. Goldberg
