Counting the Omer Together
In Jewish tradition, the period of time between Passover and Shavuot is called the Omer. During these 49 days, it鈥檚 traditional to 鈥渃ount鈥 the Omer 鈥 counting out loud all of those 49 days sequentially, with special blessings.
At 精东影业, we鈥檙e honoring this period with our second annual 鈥Sefirat HaOmer鈥 project. Each day of the Omer, we share one-to-two minute videos from 49 Hillel educators as a modern way to practice this ancient tradition, learn a little bit each day, and get a great reminder to count.
This year鈥檚 theme is 鈥淏elonging.鈥 Check out some of the highlights:
Danielle Kranjec
鈥淏elonging is not just about feeling welcomed. It’s about building relationships where people can say, 鈥榊our people are my people,鈥 and know that it will be reciprocated. As we continue counting towards Sinai, may we help create communities where everyone can find their place and where belonging is not assumed, but actively and intentionally created together.鈥
Danielle Kranjec is the associate vice president of 精东影业鈥檚 Center for Jewish and Israel Education/Meyerhoff Center, responsible for designing educational approaches that help students develop and grow their Jewish knowledge, friendships, and identities.
Zion Nadav
鈥淛udaism teaches us to understand belonging not as an idea, but as an action. Time and time again, our tradition calls us to act in the name of belonging to community, to have the courage to leave what’s familiar and step into the middle of the sea, to be bound to one another and to God through covenant, to be vulnerable, to risk rejection, to refuse to stand idly by, and to choose again and again not to leave people standing outside of the circle.鈥
Zion Nadav serves as the director of Jewish student life at . She is a Jewish educator, community builder, and writer who cares about creating spaces where students feel connected to Judaism, to each other, and to the world around them.
Jon Horowitz
鈥淗oly one, blessed be we.聽
Why do I, do we, need to be seen?聽
Is it because you are always just
around the corner,聽
or because our eyes have held the light of your Torah?聽
Or maybe we just need the world to focus its sight on us, to see
that we all are created in our image.鈥
Jon Horowitz is the director of community engagement at , where he finds creative and meaningful ways to share his love of being Jewish with others, and helps students discover their own Jewish spark.
Katie Hamelburg
鈥淚n dance sessions all over the world, people are dancing the same steps to the same dances, to the same songs, almost like in prayer, when we’re reciting the same words to the same prayers with the same tunes鈥 My hope for each of us this Omer is to find our own pieces of joy. Where might our passions and our interests connect us with others? And how can these moments of dance, these moments of laughter, these moments of fun and of joy connect us further as we explore our own relationships within the larger community?鈥
Katie Hamelburg is the associate director of Israel education at 精东影业, where she uses her background in experiential Jewish education and engagement to create meaningful Jewish learning experiences.
Rabbi Noga Brenner Samia
鈥淲hen a group of people come together to count or to count down, it has a unifying effect. And when many groups of people or communities across the country or across the world all join the count together, it creates a sense of belonging to something even bigger鈥 But maybe the most important countdown, the final countdown, is the countdown to peace. And here I’d like to invite all my friends and family and colleagues from around the world to join us in our countdown to peace. And may it be swift and speedy.鈥
Rabbi Noga Brenner Samia is the CEO of Hillel Israel, where she leads the Hillels at seven university centers throughout Israel, helping to build a pluralistic Jewish identity among Israelis and connecting them to their counterparts in Jewish communities and 精东影业s throughout the world.
Rabbi Seth Goren
鈥淎ll of us together left servitude in Egypt. We split the Red Sea and walked across on dry land. We made our way through the wilderness to arrive at Mount Sinai and to receive the Torah together. When we are counting the Omer, think about this as one of those formative moments that brought us all together so that we were all able to stand at Sinai together, past, present, and future generations of the Jewish people as a whole.鈥
Rabbi Seth Goren is the CEO of , which works to amplify Jewish campus life across nine universities with a combined Jewish student population of 14,000. He has been creating and sustaining warm, inclusive, and meaningful communities for students and young adults for nearly two decades.