Rabbi Rocki Schy

For the past few weeks or so, like many American Jews, I’ve been feeling increasing amounts of worry.

I worry for specific individuals I know in Israel, about innocent people just trying to live their lives, about how the situation in the Middle East will affect global antisemitism.

When I was working with a religious school in Dresher, Pa., in 2015, I taught a high school class about Israel.

I remember talking to my students about antisemitism and Israel. I told them they would be expected by the non-Jewish public, as Jewish young adults, to have a high degree of understanding about the conflicts in the Middle East, and they might even be expected to justify their beliefs or legitimize their Judaism by speaking about Israel in a specific way.

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With Pesach and Shavuot now concluded, we’ve completed the period of the Jewish calendar during which we count the omer.

This ancient timekeeping mechanism finds new life each year as we number the days in between these two holidays. In ancient times, we used an actual omer — a piece of barley — to track the days between these chaggim, while worshipers traveled to the Temple.

Today, the counting of the omer is a more symbolic practice. We keep a mental tally, rather than a pile of barley.

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