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Hi, everyone. Welcome to Identity Crisis, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, creating better conversations about the essential issues facing Jewish life. I'm Deborah Bearer, senior faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and I'll be filling in for Yehuda as your host this week. We're recording on Friday, May 1, 2026. I have a confession to make. I have never successfully counted the Omer. The Omer lasts for seven weeks, from Passover to Shavuot. I always start off strong, but let's be honest, it's not that impressive to remember the first night. After all, we start counting at the Seder, a communal meal that literally has a guidebook, the Haggadah, telling us what to do and say and in which order. Sometimes I remember to count all the way through the end of Pesach, but then, a few days or weeks in, I inevitably fall off. 49 days is a long time as Passover recedes into the distance and Shavuot feels like it's not even on the horizon. Yet I forget. Without the structure of the holidays, I fall into the rhythm and distractions of normal time so completely that I even forget that I have forgotten until I find myself in synagogue, staring at the blessing in my Sidur. Oh, right. I think the Omer. What day are we on? This kind of forgetting is built into the structure of Jewish life. It's a problem that our sages anticipated, not just with the Omer, but with misfot or commandments in general. The very first chapter of Pirkei Avot admonishes us to build a fence around the Torah, a logic designed to address the challenge of forgetting. For example, if I do not carry my wallet on Shabbat, then I will not be able to spend money. Even if I forget, it's Shabbat and that spending money is prohibited. Given this framework, it's not surprising that Halachah anticipates the challenge of forgetting to count the Omer. The Shulchan Aruch teaches that those who miss a day can rejoin the count, but that they should omit the blessing. Even those who, like me, perennially forget are still invited to participate. And yet, I do think part of the problem lies with me, and not just my memory. Over years of failing to count, I have never enlisted any kind of aid. I do not have an Omer counter. I did not set a reminder on my phone. I haven't even asked my husband, who is far more reliable about these things than me, to count with me, thereby relieving the need to remember on my own. Part of my struggle is finding an anchor within this practice. Research suggests that it takes six to nine weeks on average to form a new habit, such as exercising regularly, drinking more water, or, although this was not part of any research study that I could find, counting the Omer. Ironically, by the time the habit forms, the Omer is over. Just when I might have finally mastered the practice, it ends. So what was the purpose of counting in the first place? One possibility is mindfulness. Counting the days to Shavuot. We reenact an aspect of the wilderness journey to Mount Sinai. Spending these weeks anticipating revelation can create a new appreciation for Torah covenant and our bonds as a Jewish people. Many Jews have embraced a different kind of mindfulness practice around the Omer, using it as a time for reflection and self cultivation. A kabbalistic tradition connects each day and week of the Omer with a different sphera, a divine attribute or emanation. Contemporary guides reframe this meditation on the sfirot through the modern language of self improvement. Today, for example, is the 29th day of the Omer or Chesed Sheba Hod kindness within either splendor or humility. Depending on how Hod is understood, an Omer guide might prompt me to reflect on the ways that I lack humility and how that constricts my capacity for kindness or my ability to make space for others. On the one hand, this self reflection helps to deepen the practice of counting, providing an anchor point in the wilderness of distraction that can overtake these seven weeks between Egypt and Sinai. On the other hand, I have always felt wary of melding mystical theology with self improvement. How did these esoteric ideas enter mainstream Jewish practice? What changes when a framework developed to help us contemplate the nature of God is turned inward toward the contemplation of the self? The Omer seems designed to guide us through a period of transition in the Jewish calendar. Historically, it became a period of partial mourning, marking the deaths of Rabbi Akiva's students in rabbinic times and many more Jewish lives lost during the Crusades. The integration of these histories seems to point us outwards, to our people and our past, to Torah and to God. But the popular practice of meditating on this firot seems to direct us inwards. Is this focus on self improvement original to Kabbalah and its approach to the Omer? Or did a shift occur when these practices of an elite group became more mainstream? What is gained and what is lost when esoteric knowledge like this becomes popularized? And does the Kabbalistic tradition itself offer any kind of guide or corrective to these shifts. I'm excited to explore these questions with our guest today, Professor Daniel Matt. Daniel is a preeminent scholar of Kabbalah, and his work has introduced many people, including myself, to core Kabbalistic texts. His masterful translation of the Zohar, published by Stanford University Press, has been rightly hailed as a monumental contribution to Jewish thought. His most recent book, a biography of the Prophet Elijah, as part of the Yale series Jewish Lives, won the inaugural Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Book Prize. Daniel taught for many years at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and he currently teaches courses on the Zohar online. Daniel, I'm so happy to have you here on the show.
