Today is the fourth day of the counting of the omer. Last night we talked about omer at shul, we looked at the tender shoots of omer harvested just before Shabbat. We looked at one of my favorite verses, Or zarua l’tzadik. Light is sown for the righteous, joy for the upright of heart. The word for sown comes from the same root as seed. Light is planted for the righteous, righteousness comes before joy. It is a perfect verse for the omer. The themes of Passover continue to linger as we journey onto Shavuot.
During Ma’ariv Aravim, we found three words that can be connected with Passover, umsedar, G-d who orders the stars, lilah, night which appears in the four questions, and chosech, darkness which was one of the ten plagues.
After reading the “silent meditation” which includes a line about “the liberating joy of Shabbat,” I asked what freedom meant to each of us.
It was an erudite group. Someone spoke of Janis Joplin’s song, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” We thought maybe that was enough and we could all go home. Another saw freedom as the ability to choose your own prison. One quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt, freedom includes the four freedoms: “freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear.” Since Roosevelt saw four, I wondered why it is not included in more haggadot.
Still another quoted the poem Invictus (I had to look that up!), Freedom is the ability to be “the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” At which point our youngest davvener said, “Freedom is what he said, but he said it better.” When prodded she said that freedom is being able to choose what you want to do when you want to do it. I added that I learned that freedom really means the ability to take a nap. Slaves do not have that option. We talked about the word avadim, slaves in Hebrew, and how the word for work, worship and sacrifice come from the same shores, ayin, bet, dalet. Did the Israelites exchange slavery for serving Adonai? How does this change our opinion of what happened?
In shul today we read my Bat Mitzvah portion, which includes the 13 Attributes of the Divine. This portion has sustained me for almost 40 years. (Is that possible?) It is part of how I became a rabbi and then I wrote a thesis on it. Today in the counting is Netzach b’chesed. Netzach is used in L’dor v’dor, netzach netzachhim. It carries with it the sense of eternity. So this is everlasting lovingkindness. The portion talks about this topic a couple of ways. Moses doesn’t want to go back up the mountain. He is weary. This is a stiff-necked, stubborn people. He wants to make sure G-d has some skin in the game, after all they are G-d’s people, not Moses’s. And who is this G-d anyway? G-d reassures Moses that G-d will go with him and lighten the burden and give Moses rest. We all need that reassurance. The fact that G-d promises Moses gives me hope in my own life. After Moses is back up on the mountain, G-d’s presence passes before him and we learn that G-d is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness (chesed) and faithfulness (emet, truth), extending kindness (chesed) to a thousand generations. G-d’s lovingkindness is eternal and everlasting. This knowledge will probably sustain me for the next forty years…but it is a good thing that this is a parsha we read three times a year because I need that constant love and reassurance.