I am sitting in Jerusalem in a little courtyard full of flowers. The golden Jerusalem stone surrounds me. Loud birds are squawking in the trees and the feral cats (brought in by the British during the Mandate to deal with the rat problem) are yowling too. People passing in the street outside are chattering in Hebrew. I feel blessed to be here.
As I write, we are deep into sefirat ha-omer, the counting of the omer, which traditionally we say each evening at this time of the year. This counting remembers the barley harvest of ancient Israel, which was brought to the Temple between Pesah and Shavuot. Soon I will go to buy a sandwich, made with flour milled in the new Israel. The original harvest meaning of the omer was overlaid by the rabbis of old with a count down from Pesah to Shavuot, from liberation to law. At Pesah we are liberated from Egypt and we set out on a long journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land with no laws to guide us. Seven weeks later we receive the Torah at Sinai, whose laws and teachings shaped Jewish life and will continue to do so far into the future.
In modern Israel at this moment it feels like we are again on a wilderness march with few laws to guide us. On the eve of Yom Ha-Atzmaut, Independence Day, I attended a rally with 200,000 other folk against the Israeli government’s changes to the way Israel is governed. Last motzei Shabbat (Saturday evening) I attended a similar rally of 22,000 people here in Jerusalem. People on both sides of the argument are angry, scared and confused.
May modern Israel find a way from Pesah to Shavuot, just as our ancestors did. May we and the Israelis know only the good laws of Shavuot and eternally experience the freedom of Pesah.