And you shall count to yourselves from the day after the Shabbos [i.e., the day after Pesach] from the day of your bringing the Omer offering which is waved, seven Shabbosos – complete and perfect they must be”. (23:15)

“When are they perfect? When they do the will of The Omnipresent.” (Midrash)

Nothing in this world lasts forever. Everything has its time and then passes. Even the heavens and the earth will pass into nothingness. Nevertheless, everything that comes into the world has a certain period of existence, however short or long. However, there is one thing in the world for which the concept of ‘span of existence’ has no meaning whatsoever. It is no sooner present, than it has already changed, passed and is no longer. That thing is Time itself. Every second as it emerges into Creation, in the blink of an eye, it is gone. Time passed is no longer, and every second becomes immediately and at once, the past.

Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin comments: “Man, however, through his actions in Time can give Time itself a substance that makes it eternal. An action gives the time in which that action is being done the substance and the character of the action itself. So if time is used to do a mitzvah, to do a kindness, or to learn Torah, then because these things are eternal in themselves, they in turn eternalize Man’s time. This is what the Midrash means when it says “When are they (the weeks) perfect? When they do the will of the Omnipresent.” The Counting of the Omer is a paradigm for the years of the life of Man – the “Seven Shabbosos” allude to “The days of our years have in them 70 years” (Tehillim). The mitzva of Counting The Omer demands that “complete and perfect they must be.” When those hours do the will of Hashem, then Time itself stays eternally concrete and substantial.”

Chadash – new grain – was forbidden to be eaten before the Omer Meal Offering was made in the Temple on the sixteenth day of the Month of Iyar. This was usually done no later than midday so even those who lived far from Jerusalem could assume by that hour that theOmer had been offered and it was safe to eat from the new grain. In post-Temple times daybreak of the sixteenth day marks the time that new grain is permitted by the Torah. The Torah teaches that when the Omer cannot be offered the ban on Chadash is in effect only until the beginning of the sixteenth. But Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai instituted a decree to prohibit Chadash the entire sixteenth day. His reasoning: We look forward to the Temple soon being rebuilt and the Omer being offered. If we permit eating Chadash this year from the beginning of the day, people will say that they can eatChadash next year from daybreak as well, when in truth they must wait for the Omer to first be offered.

In Mesechta Rosh Hashanah (30a) this point is expanded upon. If the Temple will be built on the sixteenth no problem will exist, for daybreak already made Chadash permissible. If it will be built before the sixteenth then the Omer will have been offered by noon. Why then was the decree for banning Chadash all day long? The answer is that Rabbi Yochanan was afraid lest the Temple be rebuilt just before sunset of the fifteenth (the first day of Pesach) or the night of the sixteenth, which would not allow enough time to reap the barley and process it into flour before the end of the sixteenth. Rashi, however, raises the question as to how the Temple could be built on a holiday or at night when we know from Mesechta Shavuos (15b) that these are times when such construction may not take place? His answer is that only a Temple built by human effort has this restriction. The Temple of the future, however, will descend from Heaven.

Prepared by Devorah Abenhaim

 

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