May 22, 2007

Pesach to Shavuot ......

From Ruin to Renewal -

Sefirat HaOmer and the Four Days of Remembrance
The period of time beginning the second night of Pesach and climaxing forty-nine full days later with the Festival of Shavuot can be called a time of "Ruin and Renewal" for the Jewish People. The period includes the following six elements, one encompassing the entire forty-nine day span of time; the others punctuation marks of shared national grief or celebration:

"Sefirat HaOmer" - Counting of the Omer
The Biblical obligation to count the days between Pesach and Shavuot, where Pesach represents the transition from the physical "ruin" of Slavery to the "renewal" of Physical Freedom, and Shavuot represents the transition from the spiritual "ruin" of idol worship and paganism to the spiritual "renewal" of Monotheism and acceptance of the Torah.
The "Omer" is the reference point because it is the sacrifice that was brought on the second day of Pesach, and the days were counted till the time when the sacrifice of "new" wheat was brought, on Shavuot.

"Yom HaShoah VeHaGevurah" - Memorial Day for the Holocaust and for People who Acted at that Time with Bravery (27 Nisan)
The Holocaust was arguably among the most fearsome tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People in its long history, in which six million Jews, fully two thirds of European Jewry and one third of World Jewry, including one and a half million children, were murdered.
And the murderers were not a People who would normally be called "barbaric." On the contrary, the majority of the officers of the so-called Concentration "Camps" were medical doctors (!), or doctors of philosophy, or respected professionals. A degree of evil was exhibited which perhaps has never been exceeded in all of human history.
It is not true that the murderers' evil was unopposed. Tremendous bravery was exhibited by relatively small numbers of Jews and Gentiles, such as at the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jewish Community acted in concert, and by hundreds of individuals whose efforts resulted in the saving of tens, even hundreds of thousands of lives.
Although the saving of a single life is comparable to the saving of an entire world, the dimensions of the tragedy vastly outweighed all attempts to avert it, and the sweet taste of the good deeds was indistinguishable against the bitterness of the evil.

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