I have a story: [adapted from Torah Lab, Rabbi Yaakov Haber] It’s about an American soldier who helped liberate one of the Nazi death camps. None of the soldiers were prepare for the death scenes they came across. For the living – well, they were starving … and there were hundreds and hundreds of desperate children. The Americans worked fast. They set up huge pots of soup; the children quickly lined up. One soldier noted a young boy at the end of the line. The child was in for a long wait, but he was patient. The soldier made eye contact with the child. Then, because the child was so hungry and had such a long wait, the soldier decided to just walk up to the boy. The soldier and the boy couldn’t speak to each other – they didn’t know each other’s language. But the soldier spoke the language everyone understands – he hugged the boy. Guess what happened after that? Everyone lined up for hugs! The children were so hungry for human connection that they actually gave up their place in line to eat and waited for hugs! Then they lined up to eat. They got both love and food. What a story. It speaks directly to our deepest needs. Food keeps us physically alive. Warmth and caring … keep our souls alive. Warmth and caring … make us human. … Further, I came across the story while learning about the ritual of the omer… Hmm, nice, meaningful story and archaic ritual – what do they have in common? Let’s talk about the Omer itself. Every year at our evening services, we dutifully rise and count the days that we’re bringing grain offerings to Hashem. We’re going to do that in a few minutes… We’ll read from Leviticus 23: 6: “And you shall count from the next day after the festival, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven shabbatot shall be complete.” We count each and every day between Pesach and Shavuot. We tie the exodus directly to the Giving of the Torah. In the process of counting every day … WE MAKE EVERY DAY COUNT. According to the sages, every day has a quality of its own. The day that is just now passing is the twentieth day of the omer. The sages assigned this day the quality of “foundation within harmony” or better yet, “bonding in compassion.” Why give this a day of its own? Isn’t compassion easy? Compassion on its own is easy – if it doesn’t make demands. Bonding can be hard. Bonding means we feel another’s joys – and pain. We cannot have real compassion if we do not bond with others. When the soldiers set up the food so quickly to feed the children … yeah, that was compassion. But when one soldier took it upon himself to hug a boy – to make him feel like a special human being – that was a deeper component of compassion. And so, when we counted the twentieth day, we could focus on learning to bond and to exercise compassion. Yeah, we should do that every day – but how realistic is that? Torah teaches us that we really must take ONE DAY AT A TIME. Every single day is a special unit And really, we don’t have to go by the mystical descriptions of what each day portends. We CAN FIND one quality that helps us grow. WE CAN find a different characteristic – a focus -- for every single day. Suppose you have a tendency to gossip. Maybe FOR ONE DAY the task could be: watching what we say … and whether our words could hurt someone. Or … for one whole day … remember: I was created in God’s image. And ask yourself: DO I treat other people like they, too, ARE created in God’s holy image? Or … am it looking at the garden and focusing on the weeds. NOT EVEN NOTICING the wonderful plants and flowers coming up. Wouldn’t it be better if for ONE WHOLE DAY, we made it a point to look at the whole picture? We just might find … that we really do have a lot more flowers than weeds. Isn’t it great? Torah OBLIGATES us to make every day special. Let’s see how we can use our tradition to make the coming day – the twenty-first – Shabbat! – special. For this day, we focus on nobility within compassion. Our compassion must be even more than a bonding experience; we must help people in a way that maintains their own dignity. Not even just the needy: for Shabbat, for the twenty-first day of the Omer – we should focus on TREATING EVERY PERSON as if they were created in God’s own – holy – image. As we make every day special – as we use every day for learning and growth – we expand the holiness inside ourselves. We grow towards the Holy One and make ourselves worthy vessels for the Divine Revelation we celebrate on Shavuot. And now, in the spirit of holiness and God’s love – let us rise to count the Omer….