What Counts?

Waiting and anticipation comprise huge parts of our daily lives. We wait for the bus, for an appointment; we anticipate a trip, a Pesach Seder, completing a tractate of Talmud, the beginning or end of the school year, a good bar of chocolate(or, for some, a good bar, period), for the phone to ring, for that letter to arrive, for that right person to appear. When he became blind, the great John Milton wrote that the mere act of patient waiting can also be a means of serving G-d: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” In the current post-Pesach season of Sefiras Ha’omer, we anticipate the Revelation at Sinai, counting the days between Pesach and Shavuos. But the ultimate of all waiting is the Rambam’s twelfth Principle: achakeh lo bechol yom sheyavo. A Jew waits every day for the Messianic redemption to arrive.

Recently, a new kind of waiting made its debut. Just before the new baseball season, the Atlanta Braves baseball website featured an Opening Day Countdown Clock. It displayed how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds remained before that blessed day would arrive. The clock was in perpetual motion, until, on the last day, for example, we saw the comforting news that there remained only four hours, 20 minutes, and 12 seconds before the first pitch.

And then, in the midst of all this eager anticipation, another set of counting made its appearance: Sefiras Ha’omer, during which we count the 49 days from the second night of Pesach until the Sinai Revelation of Shavuos, in fulfillment of the u’sefartem lachem commandment in Vayikra 23:15 to count seven full weeks between Pesach and Shavuos.

Two sets of counting, two modes of anticipation. Mah nishtanah, how is one counting different from the other? The obvious difference, of course, is that one set looks forward to a season of fun and games while the other looks forward to the giving of the Torah.