The Big Count *Up*

Hey there, my name is Rabbi Jodi Gordon, and I am pumped to be joined by Rabbi Jen Gubitz as we welcome you to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times.

Hey, Jen.

Hey, friend. OMFG, what a fabulous 4-letter word. Those 4 letters really do the trick from OMFG, moths in the walnuts I used for banana bread, to OMFG, Pfizer or Moderna, to OMFG, it's finally spring. As rabbis, we have come to know that when the stories of our lives meet the stories of Jewish tradition, transformation, growth, something awesome occurs.

Jen and I are experts in the letters J and G, Jar Williams songs, Aperol Spritz, and sharing files on Google Drive. And we want to bring you to our conversations that express our love for Judaism and make it relevant in the world as we mine Jewish tradition for strength and resilience in these unprecedented times with a dose of humor, because as Viktor Frankl reflects, "I never would have made it if I couldn't have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation just enough to make it livable." This week we're talking about counting and the spirituality of waiting.

We're in the period of the Omer, the timeframe when we count from the second night of Passover until the festival of Shavuot. More on that later. But to warm us up, Jodi, what was the longest countdown you have ever sustained?

I think the longest countdown I ever sustained was the countdown to my bat mitzvah. Because I believe that I was assigned my date sometime in the year 1990 and had to count until December 4th, 1993 for that blessed event to occur. Wow. It was a long time.

That's so Long Island too. 3 years. That's just a lot of Jews at your temple. I was going to Israel when I was 16, and Jordan Trockman, who's now a psychiatrist, in California, but was from Evansville at the time, sent me a card with a countdown to our Nifty Summer in Israel trip. And I did a pretty good job of crossing off each day as the trip approached. And I think she sent it in January, and then we left in July or June, and then I left it hanging in my bedroom until I went to college. Any other countdowns?

Another very long countdown was my engagement. Josh and I got engaged in April of 2009 and got married in May 2011. So that was like a solid 2 years from deciding to get married to the actual wedding. And then, I mean, the one that felt the longest was definitely the, oh, 9 months until this baby is going to arrive. And I would say those last, I don't know, 11 days or so were probably the longest 11 days of my entire life. So You know, there's a lot of counting down involved in that whole, you know, being a human.

And growing a human. I mean, it takes almost a full year. It's 9 to 10 months. That's not small. That's not a short amount of time. And then you still have to raise them. So as Americans, we have plenty of countdowns. When sending a shuttle out into the wide expanse of space, we count down 3, 2, 1, blast off. Every year on December 31st at midnight, we count down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, happy New Year. And as the days become longer and brighter, kids count down to summer break or sleepaway camp, especially this year. A lot of kids count the first 100 days of school, and many of us count the first 100 days of a presidential administration. How we count, whether it's up or down in our personal lives, professional lives, or Jewish communal life, is fascinating to consider. So Jodi, can you tell us more about the Omer?

I would love to. So the Omer is actually commanded to us in the book of Leviticus. We begin counting this period that we call the Omer on the second day of Passover, and an Omer is actually a sheaf of one's agricultural bounty. And this ritual is a vestige of the counting of the ancient barley offering at the temple in Jerusalem. So each evening, the new day of the Omer would be announced, continuing for 7 weeks full of 7 days until we reach the 50th day. And on the 50th day, we celebrate Shavuot, the holiday in which we rejoice for having received the Torah on Mount Sinai. And it's this amazing mountaintop moment. [MUSIC] So unlike a typical anticipatory countdown, However, in the case of the Omer, we count up. With the ritual formula each night, we say, for example, today is 22 days, which is 3 weeks and 1 day of the Omer.

L'shem Yehud, Kochabrihu Ushrinteh.

In our lives, whether we count up or down, or rather how we count, says a lot about our attitudes and perspective on life. Viktor Frankl, the famous neurologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, offers the following in his incredible book, Man's Search for Meaning. The pessimist, says Frankl, resembles one who observes with fear and sadness and anger even that his wall calendar grows thinner with each passing day. While on the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively, the optimist, reflects with pride and joy on the richness of the life he has already lived to its fullest.

He continues by saying, what will it matter to him if he notices that he's growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, or the future which is in store for him? No thank you, he will think. Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past. Not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of suffering suffered. And these sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

It's such a moving image that Frankl shares, a man whose own suffering could very well have made him forever a pessimist. This story is moving because it reveals the struggle we all face as we look at the calendar on the wall or on our desk or on our phone. Sometimes we look at this calendar with joy, sometimes with regret, sometimes with relief and sometimes with awe. We wonder, how could it already be Thursday?

Where did this week go?

Or why is it only Wednesday?

Why can't the weekend come fast enough?

How is it my 15th year college reunion?

Where did all those years go?

How is it 2021?

How am I in my 20s or my 30s or my 40s, my 70s, my 80s, my 90s? How is she off to kindergarten? How am I a parent?

Or we just dropped him off at college and circled the campus in tears for hours. Where did the time go? Or this isn't where I thought I'd be in life at this age, but it's been good. I'm pretty happy.

I didn't expect to be unemployed for this long, but I still think things will work out.

The final round of chemo is tomorrow. It's been rough, but I made it.

Or I can't do more treatment. I want to choose how I spend the rest of my days.

Or he's been gone 15 years and still it feels like only yesterday.

All the time passes in but the blink of an eye, and how we count it— ripping the days off the calendar lost to the piles of refuse, or refusing to let a day pass without reflecting on his joyous moments. Joys and sorrows, it says a lot about us. [SINGING IN HEBREW] With what stance or what attitude, what perspective do you look at your calendar, Jen?

Okay. I wish, hope, dream of being an optimist and living that fully because that feels healthy. It feels hopeful. And I think I'm a pessimist. I think I suddenly wake up one day and the time has passed and I'm like, how did that happen? What was I doing? What wasn't I doing? Was I fully present? So my desire to be an optimist pushes me through some of the pessimism that I experience in certain moments in my life. What about you?

I think also, like, I am a mix, but I think I'm a controlling optimist. I feel like I have a codependent relationship with the calendar. Like, I'm constantly aware of it. People sort of laugh with me, maybe a little bit at me, that I have like calendars memorized. But there is something that gives me a sense of control or safety or security knowing what's about to happen. And so like my calendar, to say that it's important to me would feel like an understatement, but more that like it's something that needs to be really like synced into my brain at all times and that I'm sort of always hyper-aware of. So I'm not quite sure what that says about me.

Yeah. I think how we relate to our calendars talks about our relationship to time, right? Who owns your time? If you're the one that puts things on the calendar, or if you have someone else who puts things on the calendar for you, or if you have other people in your life whose lives need to be calendared in. I like the idea of being a controlling optimist and that somehow I have so many calendars on my calendar that I like the idea that actually that is a way of really really being intentional about how I use my time.

There is something, though, about the pandemic that has shifted that in a way that at first felt really scary and sort of it left me feeling unmoored. And now a year later, it feels like this sort of like this little bit of delight where, you know, like we have really full lives. That's the best case scenario, right? I have this amazing career and job that I love. I work in this congregation that has tons of things going on. I've got two young kids. My husband works, right? Like, I hear you on the lots of calendars. And pre-pandemic, I think part of that controlling part of me was about making sure that none of the balls dropped, right? If you're constantly juggling 8 different things in the air, a calendar felt to me like the safety net under which it all was protected. And then we stayed home, right? And then things existed either not at all or on a computer screen. And actually with that, there came a new freedom. And so, for instance, you know, you and I are recording this on a Wednesday afternoon, and as we're having this conversation, I am remembering that I didn't put confirmation class in our family calendar tonight. And in the pre-pandemic times, that would have meant something very different for me not being at home and my husband suddenly finding himself, you know, on his own for bedtime. Whereas tonight I'll get home and I'll say, hey, by the way, I have to sign up for confirmation class at 7. But that means I'm going to be engaged in the life of my household until 6:58. And so there is this way in which, like, I think the pandemic has helped me play, like, slightly faster and looser with the calendar in ways that are probably good for me.

Yeah, I mean, we don't have to factor in travel time now, right? So—

Hurry fest.

Yeah, no hard pants, no jeans. For those wondering what hard pants are, they're anything that are not made out of comfy material. Including jeans, slacks, corduroys. And if they have a button, they're really— you should consider getting rid of them.

I mean, buttons and zippers are basically treif.

So there's more to the Omer than how we count up or down, right? Or our relationship to the calendar, the space between Passover and Shavuot. The sages linked each week to a divine attribute. That enables us to follow along a spiritual journey as we travel from freedom to revelation. Each week, we're supposed to focus on aspects such as chesed, loving kindness, gevurah, justice and judgment, tiferet, beauty and balance, netzach, victory and efficiency, hod, glory and splendor, yesod, foundation and intimacy, and malchut, majesty. With this daily practice, we elevate ourselves just like that sheaf to that moment when we are finally prepared for that mountaintop moment. There have been some awesome Omer counting exercises this year that focus on these different divine attributes. One of them is by a company called Gold Herring, and they created this stunning Omer counter experience that you can still check out or check it out on Instagram. There's an amazing Omer counter by Rabbi Karen Kedar. Do you know of other awesome ways that one can focus on these divine attributes?

For anybody who's interested, Rabbi Yael Levi has an incredible daily email that she sends out during the Omer, which offers a text and a teaching for each day. Rabbi Levi was my spiritual director in rabbinical school, and I— there's just something about— there's like a gentleness It's like she is a regular person with this incredible ability to access something bigger than ourselves. And I, I appreciate that as a way in. So if you want to look up Rabbi Yael Levy's Omer work, it's really beautiful.

Awesome. So Jodi, which is better, counting down or counting up? Does it matter how we get to the big red X on our calendar or simply that we get there at all? Do you think it is the journey or the destination that truly matters?

Yes, and? I mean, I think the answer is yes, both the journey and the destination matter. The time that passes between Passover and Shavuot, if we're thinking about it like strictly in the framework of our tradition, it traces the Jewish people's journey from redemption to revelation, from Egyptian slavery to that moment of big capital T Torah at Sinai. And that is a huge transition and moment of actualization for the Israeli people. Both this remarkable journey and its outcome are the common trope woven throughout our liturgy and yearly celebrations. We see it, we reference it, we talk about it, it becomes encoded in how we do Jewish throughout the year.

So even if you did not begin counting the Omer, you're hearing this and you're thinking, wow, what day are we on? It's almost the 33rd day. Lag baOmer. If you're thinking, thanks for telling me, I guess I'll have to do it next year, I want to invite you to consider jumping aboard this auspicious count up. So first of all, something that's awesome about this commandment to count the Omer is that it's actually designed for anyone to do, no matter your gender, no matter your identity. And if you miss a day, you just do the next day. You can always just jump on the carousel of counting. And so I want to invite you, whenever you hear this on the 37th day, to think about this experience of counting and this— and your relationship to the calendar. If you're waiting for something, how does this rhythm of the Jewish calendar help you hold that time? Do you notice any changes in yourself? Are you aware of the season in ways that you haven't been before? And No matter how many days you do it, what does it feel like to do a daily practice and how can you hold yourself accountable? It's a really awesome metaphor for our time because counting helps us weave together hope while we may experience fear and certainly pessimism and optimism. And our work right now in this pandemic and in life is that even if it doesn't go well one day, The goal is to keep it on, try again the next day.

I really love that. You know, I'm thinking about the listener who says like, great, Omer, I'm not counting barley, Shavuot, not my holiday. So it's like, you know, what does this practice mean to you? And I think that one thing we haven't said yet is that there is this mountaintop moment that it feels like as humanity, global humanity, like we are all waiting for. Right, which is this feeling that the pandemic is over. And I think we've talked about this before, Jen, that it's not going to be like flipping a light switch, right? It's probably going to be more like of a sliding the dimmer up and down from the darkest days of the pandemic toward something more expansive where there's greater freedom and safety in being out in the world. And for me, I think that's one mountaintop moment that I think is worth thinking about, like how we count up toward it. What are the steps we take toward returning to life. This past weekend, I had an amazing experience. I got to fangirl so hard for Dar Williams. I was invited to participate in a Showing Up for Racial Justice book club group at which Dar Williams was a guest speaking about her book, which is on building resilient communities. And she has this whole incredible theory on positive proximity, right? How do you build strong, vibrant communities is you weave together, right, all of the resources, both human and natural, that make the place that you live special. And I asked her the question, how do we return to real life, right? Even that term positive proximity, for a year and a half, we have lived under the assumption that there was nothing positive about physical proximity, that it's dangerous, right, that it could get you really sick. And so zooming out from that, right, how do we go back to real life. And she said something that really changed how I am thinking about what I just described as like the mountaintop moment of being post-pandemic, which is that she thinks about it as when you're coming out of a dark tunnel, if you were to just sort of pop out at the end and step out into broad daylight, your eyes would hurt, right? You can't see all of that bright light all at once without it having sort of like potentially harmful effects. So what are the ways in which we start to inch our way out of the tunnel? How do we inch ourselves toward the light? And I think that for me is the way that I'm thinking about the Omer and what does it mean to arrive at some great new destination, whether it's the holiday of Shavuot or, right, that first time that you get to go be with friends and family and you realize, wow, this feels amazing to just be sitting here and laughing together.

So speaking of things coming into the light, it feels like we can't let this moment pass without naming the moment that is unfolding in our broader Reform Jewish movement right now.

For those who have not yet followed the story, this week news was shared that a rabbi who held prominent positions of leadership both in major Reform congregations as well as at the Hebrew Union College had been accused and admitted to significant sexual impropriety with young members of his congregation and students. And this news comes on the heels of other similar allegations against rabbis in our movement.

It's clear we're living through a watershed moment as more of these stories come to light. In this time of counting, we are really wrestling with the question of accountability and what happens when people in positions of power abuse their role.

So one thing that really stood out to me in the story, as related by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue, is how meaningful it is to the victims to finally feel heard. In this case, to have their stories told and taken seriously after more than 35 years. We've talked a lot in this episode about the spiritual experience of waiting for those mountaintop moments, And it just feels important to name that teshuvah, which we can define as accountability or as repentance, has no expiration date.

There's definitely a connection between that counting, watching the years pass from the time these women were first abused, and accountability. This moment we are witnessing now as stories are shared and a process of teshuvah hopefully begins. My hope and prayer is that others who have been victimized, hurt, or abused will see that there's value in continuing that climb upwards toward accountability and hopefully towards a time of wholeness and teshuvah and peace.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, Melech ha'olam, asher kid'shanu, Mitzvotav v'tzivanu. Aspirata omer. Aspirata omer. Aspirata omer. Aspirata omer.

This episode of the OMFG podcast was brought to you by Rabbis Jen Gubitz and Jodi Gordon, sound and musical effects by Leslie Gubitz, and featuring the Sfirata Omer Nigun, written by Rabbi Yosef Goldman, Rabbi Shir Yaakov Feit, and Rabbi Zach Fredman. To hear more music by Yosef and colleagues, check out his CD Open My Heart at josephgoldman.bandcamp.com.

Shuli, what's your favorite F-word?

Uh, fan.