Sefirat HaOmer period

What would you expect to grow from an untilled field? Thorns and weeds. It would take a miracle for useful crops to grow. If a store is left unattended, the inventory may be stolen. Certainly, no profit will be made. This reflects a dynamic woven into the...

By the Grace of G‑d In the Days of Sefirah, 5739 Brooklyn, N.Y. Mr. & Mrs. England. Greeting and Blessing: This is to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence, and may G‑d grant the fulfillment of your heart’s desires for good. Appropos of the prese...

On each day of the 49 days between Passover and Shavuos, it is customary to study a page of the Talmudic tractate Sotah, which consists of 49 pages. But the origins of this custom are immediately called into question: The Talmud existed well before the ag...

On the sixteenth of Nissan, the second day of Passover, we begin counting down the days until the festival of Shavuos, a practice with origins in the Jewish people’s redemption from slavery. As soon they left Egypt, the Jews began to eagerly count down th...

Time just marches on, and we can neither slow its march, nor speed it . . .

An hour-long excerpt from a 1982 satellite broadcast of the Rebbe’s pre-Passover gathering on the occasion of his 80th birthday (11 Nissan, 5742).

In Anxious Anticipation “When you have led the people out of Egypt, you will serve G‑d on this mountain.”Shmos 3:12. Recalling this Divine promise to Moshe Rabbeinu, from the moment of the Exodus, the Jews eagerly counted the days until they would reach M...

Each Person as an Individual As has been mentioned,See the sichah to Parshas Shemini in this series and the sources cited there. the counting of the omer is a preparation for the giving of the Torah. Therefore, directly after the 49 days of the omer, we c...

The mitzvah of counting the Omer is to count the days from Passover until Shavuos, when the Omer offering was brought in the Temple. Each day has a purpose. Whether it leads up to the Omer offering or it is an ordinary day of life, we must look at the clo...