What TBJ means to... us all.

From Rabbi Freedman

The counting of the omer is a curious tradition. It has numerous explanations all of which are true and none of which fully explains the reason. The main reason comes from our traditional take on our history, that we marched from Egypt to Sinai to receive the Torah. Time it took? Forty-nine days, a week of weeks, and we remember that march with great excitement as we look forward to receiving Torah again.

The counting of the omer is a semi-mourning period for some Jews. Why? Again, there are a number of reasons all shrouded in mystery. The most popular is that we are in mourning for a number of Rabbi Akiva's students who died of a plague but "plague" is probably code for military defeat at the hands of the Romans. This is the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion, an attempt to cast off Roman oppression and return to Jewish sovereignty. It didn't work. The folk custom of counting the omer as being a mourning period is a persistent memory of that catastrophe.

But for us, that explanation along with others just doesn't hold historical water and the idea of eternally mourning these deaths seems odd. Why them? Why not others? Surely we've had other catastrophes. Something about that explanation just doesn't work for us. That's why, instead, we try to focus on the positive idea of marching toward Sinai and why we've given up the idea of it being a mourning period.

But then again...

In traditional communities, the omer is a well known and observed time period. For us? Well, let's be honest. Many people reading and participating in this blog either had no or only a vague idea of the omer. Nothing motivates the Jewish community to remember like sadness. Happiness? Joy? Not so much.

And that's a shame really. When I think of what TBJ can mean, I see it as a place to celebrate uplift. I see it as a place to celebrate our values and connect ourselves to something larger than ourselves to give our lives meaning. I see it as a way of bringing joy and comfort and, frankly, fun. I fear, though, that worry and guilt and sadness and mourning are more motivating. How come we have so many more people here for Yom Kippur than for Purim? I'm glad you're here for Yom Kippur but you should try Purim. It's a lot more fun. Counting the omer is a mystical march towards the beginning of who we are as Jews. It is a march toward receiving Torah, that thing which has shaped your behavior for last 3000 years. TBJ is just the latest location to live out that Torah so that you don't just be Jewish but that you live Jewish. That's what membership in TBJ means to me.