The Mystical Significance of 49: Counting the Omer Between Passover and Shavuot

Counting the Omer:

Time spent with the Teacher moved more quickly than anyone would have liked. Yet, no matter how little time we had, his words burned into our minds and our souls and remain with us always . We all hear his voice to this day speaking to us from the inner quiet of our being.

He said, "The number 49 is a significant number. There are 49 days between Passover and Shavuot which Jews counts in a commandment known as "Counting the Omer." Know that there were seven days of creation, and therefore this number represents perfection and completion.

If you multiply 7 x 7 we arrive at purification which is expressed in the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot when the Torah was revealed in all its majesty to humanity. Had our people accepted the Torah as it was given to Moses, then Moses would have been the channel by which the "Messiah force" would have changed everything. In a twinkling of the eye, the next universe, the world to come, would have super-imposed over this imperfect world. Temporal time would have turnedinto the eternal time line.

This purifying time was also a representation of the need for us to learn to control the seven basic emotions that make all of us human.

Love (hesed in Hebrew) includes anything that pertains to this powerful emotion. Hesed is the first week, or the first seven days of the 49 days between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot.

The second week in counting the Omer is gevurah, which is the opposite of love--discipline, focus, and channeling.

The third week in counting the Omer is tiferet--the week of harmony and compassion. Though related to the first two weeks, it goes far beyond that. It is the first stage of empathy and compassion, not only for your own people or family, but also for strangers and even those who do not deserve mercy.

Netach is the week of victory, but in order to have victory over self, you need fortitude, ambition, and endurance.

Hod is splendor which causes the emotion of humility--the knowledge of the smallness of self in contrast to the "All". This balances Netzach.

Yesod is the sixth week and it is an emotion that causes bonding which is another step on the road to complete empathy. It is more than experiencing something from the outside, it is the foundation of becoming what you observe by bonding with it.

The final week is called Malchut which is Nobility or Kingship: This is nobility of character, directing one's phsyical nature to become subservient to his or her spiritual nature. In in our own individual way, we can each become so much more by bonding with the Noble Eternal Light . We can bring about the redemption of ourselves as individuals and the universe in which we are all fellow travelers.

On the Way to the Promised Land

One day the Teacher was explaining the significance of the confrontation between Israel and Amalek, which happened after Passover, when Israel was on their way to the Promised Land.

He then asked , "Why didn't Moses take part in this first battle that G-d commanded Israel to wage against Amalek?"

Knowing that this question was rhetorical, we remained silent and waited until he continued.

"Because Moses knew that the battle was to be fought on two levels, the spiritual level and the physical level. R. Simeon teaches us in the Zohar that Moses didn't participate in this war because it was necessary for him to concentrate on the spiritual level. This war was the most critical battle fought between the forces of light and dark; even more important than the coming battle against Gog and Magog. Not only did Amalek attack Israel on the physical level. Amalek attacked the Holy one, Blessed be he, on the spiritual level."

The Teacher continued. "It is written in the Torah that Moses sat on a stone and Aaron and Hur held up his hands. Aaron represented the attributes of Grace and Hur represented the attribute of Strength, and Moses, between the two, became the living representative of Faith. The Torah further teaches that when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. When he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed. Here we are speaking of the right hand which he held above the left representing the spiritual Israel. Remarkably, when Israel ceased praying Moses couldn't keep his hand up at all! This teaches us that even when the priest spreads out his hands at the sacrifice, the physical Israel must co-operate by praying.

"What we can learn from this is clear. Israel must fight the forces of darkness on the physical level but never let that fight distract them from fighting the same forces on the spiritual level. No war can ever succeed by force of arms alone, but only by a balance in which there is perfect coordination between the spiritual and the physical."

The Beginning of Wisdom is Silence

One day, the Rabbi was asked to explain who should be allowed to learn the Hidden Wisdom.

"There are several schools of thought," he explained, "Some teach that only men over the age of 40 should learn. Others say that teaching women is forbidden. Yet others claim that only those well versed in the Talmud should be allowed to ender the Garden."

He remained silent for a while to let us think about what he had said, then continued, "Listen to me closely. The Wisdom is there for all, men and women, young and old, learned and ignorant. There is only one pre-requisite for learning the Kabala and that is a desire to learn. It is not necessary to understand anything at all when being introduced to the first levels, since the student is only drinking from the well of knowledge to satisfy an instinctive thirst that he or she doesn't understand yet. The thirst is known…yet not understood. They are much like nursing babies who don't understand either the source of their nourishment, or how it will be absorbed into their bodies.

"They only know that they are thirsty. The light of the Ain Sof responds to that thirst like a Mother…giving freely and nurturing all who search for it, unlimited in its ability to quench thirst. For this reason, I never search for students. A student must come to me, as a wanderer in the desert to a cool spring, drinking instinctively from the life giving waters without questioning or understanding anything beyond that basic need. Only later, when he has quenched his thirst, will he be called upon to transfer this hidden wisdom to others.

"If he doesn't share with others, he will explode from selfishly retaining the unending wisdom, and will be forced return to the same shattered un-enlightenment that drove him to the well in the first place.

"So the desire to receive should be in order to give or influence…and the timing of this step is critical to the student, since it must happen when he is full almost to the brim, but before his 'container' bursts."

It took me awhile to formulate my question. "How do you know when to reject a person who comes to you to learn ?

"A true seeker doesn't come to me with pre-conceived notions of Kabala, re-incarnation, ego or a desire to change the physical by using the meta-physical. As I said before, the true student comes because of a thirst, which he or she, cannot identify. A false student will always try to teach rather than learn, to influence rather than be influenced, to assert his or her own ego rather than to receive, to tell rather than to ask.

"They never seem to learn that the beginning of wisdom is silence."

From the Teacher to David: The Unity of God

I asked the Teacher to explain why divine name ELOHIM in Hebrew is in the plural. Why isn't God called called"EL" in the sungular form? The Teacher answered me like this:

"The Zohar teaches us that Rabbi Simeon, who wrote the Zohar, received a prophecy and this was it:

"When the most Mysterious wished to reveal Himself, He first produced a single point, which was transmuted into a thought, and in this, He executed innumerable designs, and engraved innumerable gravings. He further engraved within the sacred and mystical lamp a most holy design which was an edifice issuing from the middle of this thought. This is called in Hebrew "MI" (WHO). This thought became matter by creating a vessel for itself ("ELEH" in Hebrew or "these" in English). The letters of these two words intermingled to form a complete name ELoHIM. And once combined the name remained forever, and this was the word upon which the world was built.

"In his vision, Rabbi Simeon also understood saw that the sin of Israel as recorded in Exod. XXXII, 4--the making of the golden calf--further alludes to this mystery when they said "Eleh (these are) thy Gods, O Israel."

About ths golden calf, the Teacher said:

"The main sin of the Israelites was not only in making images, but also in interpreting God as a plurality. They did not understand that there is no plurality at all, only the combining of separate concepts into a unity.

"All is one. God is n everything and everything is in God."

From the Teacher to David: The Coat of Many Colors.

One day the Teacher spoke about Joseph in the Bible and the coat his father Jacob made for him. Jacob made the coat for Joseph because Jacob loved Joseph his youngest child so much. It was a special coat, a Coat of Many Colors.

"As you know", the Teacher said, "The salvation of man comes through two forces. One is called 'Savior the Son of Joseph' and the other is called 'Savior the Son of David.' Can anyone here tell me then, the significance of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors?"

His deep blue eyes searched ours, meeting our gaze, one at a time. No one answered.

"I will tell you the hidden mystery of this thing." And then he looked at me, "You Rabbi David, have studied art in the world's universities. Tell me…what is color?"

"Is it when invisible light becomes visible to our eyes?" I asked.

"And when there is no light source?" he asked, smiling.

"Then there are no colors, only black or darkness…" I said hesitantly.

"Exactly!" he said, "And this is what the Coat of Many colors was. To the enlightened, it looked like the rainbow representing the light from all the various worlds, or levels of spirituality, to the others…darkness…it was black…a bitter joke, for they were blind to it.

"So Joseph put on the coat of many colors and went to his brothers in the field.They were jealous of the coat for two reasons. First, Joseph was given this gift by their father, which meant Joseph was above them on the spiritual plane. As they only saw a black garment, the brothers asked one another, "Who is this Joseph who claims to have a coat of many colors? He is a liar and a fraud!"

"The second reason the sons of Jacob were jealous was because their father loved Joseph more than he loved them. Their envy made them blind to the brilliance of the coat. Their envy also made them blind to the colors of Joseph's aura and the light of the Creator with which Joseph was encompassed.

"So the sons of Jacob cast their youngest brother Joseph into the pit (which represents an attempt at throwing him down from the spiritual heights represented by the coat) leaving him in total physical darkness while they decided his fate.

"Judah, the eldest and most spiritually aware, had indeed seen the light of the coatand pleaded with his brothers to release Joseph. But they were intent on killing him and extinguishing this light from the world of men. However, they sold him into slavery in Egypt instead which represents the lower realms of spiritual darkness. In this way, the brothers hoped that darkness would completely extinguish the light of Joseph and the light of his coat which was meant to be a spiritual sign for all the nations.

"Then the brothers took the coat, still just a black rag in their eyes, and soaked it in the blood of an animal, to show their father that Joseph had been killed. The light, if there had been a light, was now extinguished. Upon seeing the cloak their father refused to be consoled and went into prolonged morning. He mourned, not for his son alone, but for what Joseph represented. Joseph represented another chance at raising the world of mankind to the level of Messiah, another chance of repairing of the broken vessel. Had they accepted Joseph and the coat he wore, the world would have evolved into a higher world. The tikun or spiritual repair of the world would have been complete.

"But for every unjust action, there is always a reaction which brings a tikun. Just as Joseph was sold into slavery, so were the descendants of Jacob's sons, the Israelites. During a severe famine in Israel, the Israelites went down to Egypt. Enticed by a vision of plenty, they became slaves like Joseph. The first part of their tikun or restoration was the years of slavery that they had to endure. They endured this until Moses, another Savior Son of Joseph came to lead them back into the light.

"Blood was placed on the doorposts during the exodus from Egypt as a sign of Joseph's Coat of Many Colors soaked in an animal's blood. The tikun for this evil action was also given to Israel for Joseph's sake. By the sign of blood on doorposts, the angel of death did not take the firstborn of Israel as punishment for what had happened, and took instead the first born of Egypt.

"Each culture and every nation has in every generation a Savior Son of Joseph to lead them out of the darkness because this salvation is one of choice…one of free will.

"However, the final salvation, or the Savior Son of David, is not a matter of free choice, but a forced evolutionary change of the spirit. Happy are those who make the choice offered us by Joseph before that final and terrible day."

The Teacher to David: Why We Were Created

I once asked the teacher why we were created and I was blessed to get his answer:

In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth. So that is the first sentence in the Book of Genesis which is about the beginning of the world.

But consider, for a moment, why Genesis, the first book of the Torah or Bible, begins with the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet rather than the first? Wouldn't it be logical for the creation of everything to start with the first letter, which is aleph?

I said, yes, that would sound logical.

He said, "The reason for the aleph א is that it is open on all sides, meaning it is the symbol of an expanding and contracting universe. Consider the big bang theory. The constant expanding and contracting of all, which is called in the Kabala, גדלות can be translated as greatness as well as expansion. It's opposite called צמצום or collapsing, or folding in onto itself, is also necessary for the expansion of the universe and has been going on for all of eternity.

The Torah starts with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet ב and there is a small dot placed inside the letter to the left. But it is blocked above, blocked below, and blocked to the right. Remember that Hebrew is written from right to left which indicates two things.

One, that our reality was created within the expansion and contraction of all things for a purpose.

Two, do not look to the past for answers or above or below. Look only forward since time is a linear 6,000 years set aside from eternity, which is timeless.

Three, the dot indicates that there were worlds or realities that came before and it is sufficient for us to understand this without trying to explore concepts outside of our reality.

Therefore, as you have learned before, we must concentrate on the time reality made available for us, which exists within and yet is apart from eternity, in order to repair the primordial soul, which we spoke about earlier.

"And after this period of time, what will become of us?" I asked.

"We will have fulfilled our destiny." He smiled, and would say no more at that time.

spirituality information from the Teacher to David 2

He remained silent for a long time and finally I asked if he would explain what he meant that in the beginning there was only one Soul.

"Yes, in the beginning, there was just one Soul which was the united soul which is the collective of all beings created by the Eternal, Blessed be He.

This original soul had only one duty: to water the garden. That is, to be a channel of the Eternal Light, bring it into the world of Matter, filling all things with Eternal Life. This is what the Wise call: "The desire to receive in order to create." This was the primordial state of the Primordial Man."

Suddenly his piercing eyes looked at me and he asked a strange question: "Can you drink the ocean dry?"

Confused by the question I stammered and told him that I could never hold that much water.

If you could be a pipe, you could draw on unlimited water as long as you kept nothing for yourself. It is just so with the Eternal Light. Like the ocean, if you plug the pipe, the pipe will explode when it is filled and no longer functioning as designed. This is called by the Wise 'The desire to receive in order to receive.' This then is what happened in the beginning. The Primordial Soul was shattered into infinitesimal pieces and scattered over the 6,000 years allotted by the Eternal for this reality.

Each speck of the Primordial Soul has a memory inside of it: of the "past" as we understand it and also of the "present" and the "future".