The supply of matzah (unleavened bread) which the Jewish people brought out of Egypt--enough for 60 meals--was exhausted on the 15th of Iyar, the 30th day after the Exodus. The people complained to Moses that they have nothing to eat. G-d notified them that He will rain down "bread from heaven" to sustain them (Exodus 16; see "Today in Jewish History" for tomorrow, Iyar 16).
A few months prior to her death, Empress Catherine I, the second wife of Peter the Great, expelled all Jews from Russia.
Rostov-on-Don, Russia, was home to 14 Synagogues and many communal institutions. With the encouragement of local Russian officials, a wave of anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) swept the city on the 15th of Iyar of 1883.
In preparation for the festival of Shavuot, we study one of the six chapters of the Talmud's Ethics of the Fathers ("Avot") on the afternoon of each of the six Shabbatot between Passover and Shavuot; this week we study Chapter Four. (In many communities -- and such is the Chabad custom -- the study cycle is repeated through the summer, until the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah.)
Tomorrow is the thirty-first day of the Omer Count. Since, on the Jewish calendar, the day begins at nightfall of the previous evening, we count the omer for tomorrow's date tonight, after nightfall: "Today is thirty-one days, which are four weeks and three days, to the Omer." (If you miss the count tonight, you can count the omer all day tomorrow, but without the preceding blessing).
The 49-day "Counting of the Omer" retraces our ancestors' seven-week spiritual journey from the Exodus to Sinai. Each evening we recite a special blessing and count the days and weeks that have passed since the Omer; the 50th day is Shavuot, the festival celebrating the Giving of the Torah at Sinai.
Tonight's Sefirah: Tifferet sheb'Hod -- "Harmony in Humility"
The teachings of Kabbalah explain that there are seven "Divine Attributes" -- Sefirot -- that G-d assumes through which to relate to our existence: Chessed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malchut ("Love", "Strength", "Beauty", "Victory", "Splendor", "Foundation" and "Sovereignty"). In the human being, created in the "image of G-d," the seven sefirot are mirrored in the seven "emotional attributes" of the human soul: Kindness, Restraint, Harmony, Ambition, Humility, Connection and Receptiveness. Each of the seven attributes contain elements of all seven--i.e., "Kindness in Kindness", "Restraint in Kindness", "Harmony in Kindness", etc.--making for a total of forty-nine traits. The 49-day Omer Count is thus a 49-step process of self-refinement, with each day devoted to the "rectification" and perfection of one the forty-nine "sefirot."
Links:
How to count the Omer
The deeper significance of the Omer Count
There are two sorts of inner convictions of the soul, this thing we call faith.
Unbound by the confines of space and time, your soul sees a reality your mind cannot fathom. From that vision seeps down a conviction that G-d is with you, that He is good, and that there is really nothing else but Him.
Not because you understand. But because your soul sees that this is so. And she sees with a clarity and certainty the flesh eye could never attain.
Nevertheless, a higher vision means there are two and not one: There is you and there is the vision you perceive. And if there are two, two can be separated.
So that, when darkness and confusion swells and storms, threatening to rip you away from your G-d, a higher vision is not enough.
That is when you need to reach to the very core of your soul. Not to that place in the soul that sees G-d, but to the essence of the soul that is truly a part of G-d.
To say, "This is my G‑d. I am His, He is mine, and we are one."
"And so, nothing can stand between us."