SEFERIOS HA-OMER — STEPPING STONES TO HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS


          How do you understand that the
mitzvah of Sefiros HaOmer, from Pesach until Shavous, plays such an important
role in the Jewish calendar when the daily mitzvah is seemingly “merely”
counting each of these days? Another question is what are we counting for and
why do we stop the day before Shavous? If we are counting the days left till Shavous
then we should be counting from fifty down to one.  Of course there are many deep reasons and
explanations of the significance of counting but we shall try to pave a new
path of understanding into this unique mitzvah of counting each day.

            What is it that we are counting? We are
counting the days until we will offer the sheaves (omar) of wheat. On Pesach we
offered barley which is described as food for a behama whereas on Shavous our
offering comes from wheat which is considered the main staple food for human
beings. Therefore the count seems to keep our focus on moving up the spiritual
ladder from our animalistic nature (nefesh behamis) which has been created to
help us fill our basic desires and to transcend nature though acts of altruistic
selflessness.

                    Interestingly all that is
required of us in the mitzvah to achieve this goal is to count from one to
forty nine. How can the act of merely counting achieve anything consequential?
Perhaps there is a very deep lesson in as adults counting  the Omer. As children we are taught to count
in order to know how much I have. Now, during the seferia, we our counting to
know how soon I will give away what belongs to me. Parents and teachers taught
us how to count. Now during serferia, Hashem, Himself, so to speak, is teaching us not only how to count but what actually really counts.
 

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia

PESACH : RECAPTURING THE INTEGRITY OF THE AFIKOMAN

  

             It’s the night of Pesach
with all the family and guests joined together around the Seder table. After
Kiddish the Bal HaBais breaks the middle matzah, wraps up the larger piece for
the Afikomin and puts it snugly  behind
his pillow.  Later in the seder someone
points to the place of the afikoman and whispers to the child, “Snatch it now,
quickly, while he’s not looking.” The child hesitates, feeling quite shy having
been brought up with proper values of respect and honesty. This night
everything at the house looks so different. The table is much longer than usual
filled with relatives and guests — it’s white and beautiful with lots of shiny
glasses, sparkling silver. But then with a little more prodding and a burst of
courage he moves closer to the treasured hidden away afikomen, hesitating,
until some one prompts him, “Quick, grab it and run.”

For
a second, he feels afraid, but as soon as it is in his hand, he feels an
exhilarating surge of excitement and exuberance. Even after hiding it he
continues to feel energized and successful. Much later, when the child is asked
to return the afikoman, he doesn’t give it right back, being prodded by others
to first ask for a nice prize.

Doesn’t
this conduct seem a quite odd?  Here we
are seemingly allowing our small untainted children to take something that
doesn’t belong to them and on top of that extort a reward for their efforts on
one of the holiest nights of the year. How can we possibly understand this conduct?

  Perhaps we can explain this unusual behavior
as follows. Usually the yetzer hara tries to lure a person into improper
behavior through offering feelings of ephemeral thrills and excitement. Even
though we want to avoid such conduct, the problem we face is that we simply
cannot discard the yetzer hara.  As in
the well known Medrash, when the Sages davened to remove the yetzer hara and
Hashem answered their tefillos, even the chickens stopped laying eggs. The
yetzer hara is necessary but needs to be controlled. The challenge to us is to sur
mei ra
, avoid evil, yet preserve our enthusiasm and direct it to our ma’asim
tovim.  But how do we do this? 

   Perhaps, this is precisely what we are
achieving when we encourage our children to take the afikomen.  We are allowing our young pure children to
experience the excitement that is usually motivated by the yetzer hara when engaged
in risky, dangerous and thrill seeking conduct. 
We do this by giving them a controlled dose of the “taste of desire.”
As the child grows up, that spiritual inoculation that was administered
l’shem Shamayim with love will then continue to act as an antidote against the
infectious negative powers of the yetzer hara. 
Indeed, that dose of controlled enthusiasm, experienced by the child on
lay’l Pesach, will enable him to rekindle those exuberant feelings throughout
the year directing them in a positive mode while learning Torah, performing
mitzvos and ma’asim tovim.

But
how can experiencing this “controlled taste of desire” both act as a vaccine
shielding the child from learning mis-conduct, while at the same time inspiring
the him with enthusiasm for all things that are Holy? It is because of the
setting in which this “taste” is given. Let us remember, the seder night is
referred to as – lay’l shemurim, the night of watching – the perfect night for this
process to take place as it is a time when the forces of evil are subdued. 

    You may be wondering, how can this
spiritual “inoculation” continue to protect us into our adult years?   Possibly
the answer is we use “booster shots”! 
Oh, we are not suggesting that this Pesach we grab the afikoman, however
we should watch the one who is taking it and allow that “small child” inside
each of us to relive and rekindle our own feelings of inner joy and exuberance,
thereby rekindling our youthful enthusiasm in the service of Hashem.

May
we all merit soon to be able to fulfill the mitzvah of afikoman in Jerusalem at the final
geula soon in our days.

————————–

   The
attribute of exuberance and excitement was stolen by the yetzer when Adam and
Chavea did the sin. On the night of Pesach we are able to re-capture our
inheritance and return it to be used in the holy service of H. Since the yetzer
took it through theft we re-capture it, through an act that looks like theft,
at a time when the forces of evil are subdued.

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia

(BITTUL CHUMATZ) ANNULING EGO – THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL

The rain 
washed down the windshield in torrents undeterred by the wipers. The
driver wiped his bleary eyes and the world swam. Only a few more miles, he
thought and I will be able to deliver the medicine from the pharmacy and go
home.  He glanced at the directions
scribbled on a wrinkled paper.  Here’s
the turn.  There’s the house.  He wearily unlatched the car door, hitched
his jacket over his head and moved quickly through the Spring storm to the
front door.  As the door bell rang , he
heard   the sound of small feet running
in his direction.

The door opened and he blinked to adjust his eyes
to the dim light inside.  He looked and
nearly giggled, “It’s nighttime, he thought, “do you know where your children
are?”  If you don’t , they are probably
here tiptoeing one behind the other in a long uneven line, following a man
carrying a candle near to the ground, squinting as he stoops down and peers
into the back of a sofa cushion.   No one
paid attention to the stranger at the door, except for one small boy who seemed
to be

 

                                                        

motioning him to join in. The young delivery man stood there awkwardly
staring at this odd sight, early memories stirring deep within him.

What could he be thinking – this stranger? What
could he understand of this Jewish law and time honored custom of (bedikas
chumetz) – the searching for any grain product, such as bread and cake, that
has risen.  Now, we know what it is all
about, we are used to it, we understand it – or do we?

 It is  Erev Pesach.  
We have just spent weeks cleaning our homes from top to bottom, making
certain that not one crumb of chumetz remains anywhere in our realm.  We have scoured  every crevice, turned each pocket inside out
and emptied our children’s secret treasure troves of cookies and pretzels.  And just 
as we have begun to feel that unique once- a -year feeling, that sense
that we really have managed to rid ourselves of every crumb — at that  moment – we assign someone to secretly hide
(the custom being ten) pieces of chumetz throughout our homes and possessions.
Then specifically in the darkness of  the
night we make a candle light “search”– and as we find each piece, we carefully
sweep it triumphantly away with the help of a feather and a wooden spoon into a
guarded place.

Why are we doing this?  Is it merely symbolic?  What is going on?



What would this soggy stranger think, if we told him that we were
regaining our freedom with those ten pieces of bread?

Yet, it is actually true.  The night of bedikas chumetz,  like every other meaningful event in life has
three components, the person, that is ourselves,  place and time.  The Creator is referred to as HaMakom , the

   Place,  because there is no place devoid of His
Presence.  However Hashem has made room
for us and allows us and our possessions to exist in His world. When we do
bedikas chumetz, we are proclaiming that 
it is His world and we are his invited guests.  When we accept this upon ourselves and fulfill
the commandment that requires us to 
relinquish a kosher, ordinarily innocuous possession , that is when we
begin to taste freedom.  This is because
it  is difficult to pull away from the
lures of this world which can enslave us, and addict us and  remove our freedom of choice. But when Hashem
directs us to do so, and we comply, He provides us with the ability to let
go.   



The third component of this event is time
which  plays the major role in our Pesach
preparations.  It is only time that
separates chumetz from matzah, for they both start with the same ingredients,
flour and water.  Chumetz, leaven, is
created through a process of fermentation that causes pockets of air to form in
the flour and water mixture, expanding the dough and making it grow large.  Like dough, egos can also be inflated.  The leavening agents can be  money, power, vanity or fame, together with the
flattery that catalyzes them into a bubbling brew that pumps up our sense of
self importance. One extra moment can mark the difference between leavened and
unleavened –one moment can be enough to transform  the mixture of flour and water from
permissible matzah into forbidden chumetz. And it only takes but a moment of
time for us to feel achieved and

congratulate ourselves for our accomplishments thus improperly taking personal
credit for that which Hashem has given to us.



So as we make our bedikas
chumetz or any other mitzvah, we should try to do so with the un-self conscious
innocence, inspiration and joy of a child.

          Now with a better understanding of the need
for the bedika, let us ask but why search in the darkness of night? We might
think that it is not such a good idea as evening symbolizes the powers of the
dark side- the sitra achra.  However, on
this special night, we are given the assignment and ability to enter its realm
on a “search and destroy mission”.  In
those moments, that ner/candle is a holy spiritual beam that is able to
penetrate deeply to expose any sign of ego inflation. In the esoteric tradition
the Ner represents a vessel for the – shefa – the holy influence that channels
the Divine Radiance thereby illuminating any dark or hidden places, allowing us
find, identify and remove any impurities. Through the removal of any “excess
baggage” we are then prepared  to
receive  the special (kiddusha) holiness
that permeates  the night of Passover.

                  One final thought on the multifaceted
value of the bedikas chumetz. The ideal way to perform this minhag is to allow
some member of the house or close friend to hide some small portions of bread
or mezzonos. Many have the custom of 
placing ten pieces for esoteric reasons and also to insure the finding
of some chumetz in an already thoroughly clean home.  But this practical reason is not necessarily
the only explanation.

  This
hunt for chumetz is a joint mitzvah that gets everyone involved in an effort to
accomplish this task.       So in the years when my children were
young, we would use this night to send a not-so-subtle message to them.  Chumetz  would be put in places where old battles were
fought.  So, for the child who would
leave his shoes in the middle of the room for others to trip over, chumetz would
be put in that shoe.  For another

child, a messy closet
was the battle ground and she would find a piece of chumetz there.  We would all end our bedikas chumetz laughing
over things that frustrated us during the year. Pesach is a time of unity and
what better way to nurture this idealistic state than making a bedika  from within and without.  

   This
captivating ritual of bedikas chumetz,  one of the many heart warming mitzvot of
Pesach, transforms a mundane cleaning process  into a sacred and mystical rite. This creates
the atmosphere in which Pesach is renewed each year – And as Pesach is renewed
– so are we. As for the young delivery man who was standing at the entranceway,
may that glimpse into the Pesach experience be just the right “prescription”
for his transformation.

           La Shana Haba bi-Jerusalem    La
Shana Haba bi-Jerusalem

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia