With Shavuot beginning on Saturday night, June 4, this is the final week of the counting of the Omer.
Today is the 44th day of the Omer, which is
Gevurah in Malchut: Strength in nobility
Each year, on Yom Ha’Zikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day), I tell the story of the tour guide who led a Rodeph Sholom School eighth grade trip which I was privileged to join as their rabbi. Standing at Har Herzl, the military cemetery in Jerusalem, our guide looked around at the graves and tried to explain to the students what Memorial Day means in Israel. Glancing at me, he apologized for what he was about to say and then said: “Here in Israel, Yom Ha’Zikaron is holier than Yom Kippur.”
“In America,” he continued, “you have barbecues and sales; it is a beach day. Here, everyone knows someone who has died, everyone feels the pain and the loss. Here, it is solemn, meaningful—it is holier than Yom Kippur.”
As a country, the United States is not good at mourning, not good at acknowledging grief. My friend Rebecca Soffer—co-founder of Modern Loss, co-editor of “Modern Loss: Candid Conversations About Grief,” and author of the brand new “Modern Loss Handbook”—writes that “Western culture doesn’t necessarily value vulnerable conversations. We’re expected to be tough as nails—where the hoped-for response to, ‘How’s everything going?’ is ‘Couldn’t be better!’ Where it’s more convenient for everyone if you have all the answers, all the time—and if you don’t, you’d better make it look like you do.” Or, we think that it is different here—we are such a big country, the per capita loss isn’t the same, and so we are not all affected. Only, Soffer reminds us that, “there’s something called a bereavement multiplier which suggests that for every person who dies there are nine people who are directly affected by that death—emotionally, psychologically, physically, economically and/or financially.”
Today’s sefirah—the attributes for this 44th day of the Omer—are strength in nobility: the very things we praise in our soldiers, in those who die in the name of freedom and liberty, both here and abroad. Today is business as usual here in the United States, with the exception of banks, post offices, and offices being closed for a “day off.” It is also a day that families are grieving, remembering, aching. Maybe your family is among them. Even if it’s not, take a moment today to honor the strength in their nobility. Take a moment in front of a lowered flag. Take a moment for their grief—if not your own.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer