With Shavuot beginning on Saturday night, June 4, this is the final week of the counting of the Omer.
Today is the 45th day of the Omer, which is
Tiferet in Malchut: Balance in Nobility
May it be Your will,
Adonai our God and God of our ancestors,
to reawaken in us joy and blessing in the month ahead.
Grant us a long life,
a peaceful life with goodness and blessing,
sustenance and physical vitality;
a life free from shame and reproach,
a life of abundance and honor,
a reverent life guided by the love of Torah;
a life in which our worthy aspirations will be fulfilled.
Based on a Talmudic blessing attributed to the Babylonian sage Rav, these are the words with which we welcome each new month. As the new moon waxes, we are given this moment—this gift—of resetting. We are invited to reset ourselves spiritually and emotionally, to reset our goals and our hopes, and to reset our perspective on life and the world around us. It is a chance to reset, to perhaps find a new balance.
Today is Rosh Chodesh Sivan—the first day of the month of Sivan. If each and every Rosh Chodesh is a mini-refresh, Rosh Chodeh Sivan stands apart—imbued with additional significance and impetus for preparation. “In the third month,” the Torah teaches, “when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai.” (Exodus 19:1). This, our tradition teaches, is the day we arrived at the mountain, the site of Divine Revelation.
Our Torah offers some specific—and challenging—suggestions of what it means to get ready for revelation, which we celebrate on Shavuot. But on this Rosh Chodesh Sivan, the birkat ha-chodesh—the blessing for the new month—sparks other questions. As we prepare to receive Torah once again, what lessons do we hope to learn? How do we seek to live? And what can we do and be in the month ahead that gets us closer to a life in which our worthy aspirations are fulfilled?
—Rabbi Sari Laufer