Sefira calendar...? or just little houses to cut out

The big elementary-school activity this season is making Sefira calendars for counting up to Shavuos. I wanted to come up with an ingenious idea of my own for Loops – people get very clever with Sefira calendars – but lacking that offhand, I rummaged online and turned up this:

Little Boxes on the Hillside

I printed one copy with numbers and then, because there aren’t enough, covered the numbers and ran another copy (it occurs to me that you could just erase the numbers in Paint on a computer).

I’m not really satisfied with this craft as a calendar: sefiras ha’omer is a wander through a wilderness, not a stroll down a civilized street. We’ll have to come up with something better for next year. But I thought those little houses are such excellent practice in coloring and cutting and gluing and engineering that I had better share the link; so here you are.

They are technically operable boxes -- you could put exercises in them or something. Sefira is not exactly candy month.

“Bring me that horizon!”; or, random thought of a Thursday

I really think that the odd little essay toward the end of Vol. VIII may be my favorite of Rav Hirsch's essays. One seldom gets to see much of the rav himself in his writings; this essay is an exception: there he is, leaning on a ship railing, looking at the stars.

Anyway, at one point in this essay (which meanders like Iyar itself) he observes that Torah may be sailed through any weather, under friendly colors (that is, it applies in every era, to all that is good and noble in contemporary culture, and should be presented as such).

In his time, contemporary culture meant romanticism and science.

In our time, contemporary culture means the sort of fragmented idealism that gives us such interesting things as organic vegan GMO-free “strawberry cupcake popcorn,” of which we just received three bags for Purim.

Strawberry cupcake popcorn?

Actually, I rather liked it; and I like the fragmented idealism behind it; and yes, I called the day the list came out to put my name down for a swath of the PDX airport carpet.

But I like history so much that there are days when the “friendly colors” I would be inclined to hoist while sailing through contemporary culture would be the stateless and idiosyncratic colors of a pirate.

...however, stateless and idiosyncratic pirates are a flourishing part of contemporary culture. So it's all good.

Iyar, cont.

This is the follow-up to this post.
I think the one sentence I'd pick to summarize the month of Iyar is this:

"The way to Sinai lay, and still lies, only through the wilderness."
(Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Vol. I, p.158, with the permission of Feldheim Publishers)


I'm not going to elaborate on how this plays out in the different eras of Jewish history and in our own feathery era, simply because I don't have time to do it justice.

I'll just throw another line of Rav Hirsch at you.

"When we gather together in peaceful houses of God in the early summer evening hours to count our days and weeks until the joyful day of our Torah festival, we probably reflect very little on the completely different circumstances and atmosphere under which our fathers counted these days. How often did they begin the counting and then wonder whether they would live to complete the counting at all and, if so, where they would complete it!"
(p. 163)


He's talking about the era of the Crusades.

It isn't about the persecutions; it's about
The devoted, the just, and the blameless,
The holy communities that gave up their lives for the sanctification of His Name,
Who in life were beloved by Him and devoted to Him,
And who even in death did not separate themselves from Him...
(p. 141)

Portland event TODAY

Kesser's Lag B'Omer celebration

THIS SUNDAY, MAY 13, 5:00-7:00 pm

at Gabriel Park on SW Vermont St.!

Join us for hot dogs (vegetarian options, of course!),

salads and sports and a fun time!

Cost per plate: $5/kid, $7/adult, $25 family

How to Remember to Count the Omer

Get a brick.
Put it in your bed.
Each night when you count, take it out. Replace it in the morning.

If this were a different kind of blog, there would be a picture of a brick here.
And a fourteen-step DIY for decorating your snazzy Omer Brick.
I'm sure you can come up with something pretty.

Iyar is such a weird month

So far as I can make out, the underlying sense of Adar (the month which contains Purim) is something like:
I am not in control of my life; haha, Hashem is.
And that of Nisan (the following month, which contains Pesach) is something like:
I am not in control of my life; Hashem is, and I will run after Him.


I phrased these in the singular but they could also be plural: we, as a nation.


I could be right or wrong about Adar and Nisan, but here Iyar is halfway over (extra points if you saw the Supermoon on Saturday night) and I still have not a clue what this month is about.

Iyar does not have a major holiday, so there are no shortcuts to figuring it out.
It does have the minor holiday of Lag ba'Omer. But it also has a period of mourning which shifts around depending on your custom, and can even end up spilling over into Nisan, a month that is halachically happy. Totally wacky.

So here we are counting up to receiving the Torah. (These are the intermediate days between Pesach and Shavuos; but, unlike the intermediate days of Sukkos, they're not a holiday.) And meanwhile all the grass is dying for the summer and we're mourning. That's weird enough.
Then, Lag ba'Omer celebrates a cessation of the period of mourning - an odd occasion for rejoicing; and, it commemorates the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: why, in this religion full of symmetry, is he the only person with his own holiday?
And if Iyar and Lag ba'Omer are not confusing enough, you can throw Yom HaAtzmaut into the mix. Why not, go ahead and add it, as it is I'll be here till next Iyar trying to figure out what the month is about.

I'll let you know if I get it. Please leave a comment if you do.

(Should've learnt about it on Shabbos, but I learnt something from the Piaseczner Rebbe instead. Yum.  Too many pies to choose from.)