by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.

I write these lines the morning before the final day of the Passover holiday, during the period of the counting of the omer between Passover and Shavuot and after having spent a sleepless night because of the horrific suicide-bomber attack in Tel Aviv, which has thus far claimed nine innocent lives. How can I square the headlines of the daily paper with our festival of freedom? And if indeed the days between Passover and Shavuot are a kind of hol hamo’ed (intermediate days of a festival) between our Festival of Freedom and our Festival of First Fruits celebrated in Jerusalem, how can I rejoice on Israeli Independence Day with the national threat of an escalation of suicide bombings and the existential-international threat of a nuclear Iran looming in the background?

In order to understand the message and meaning of our Hebrew calendar, we must first understand the significance of matza — the half-baked, tasteless, and flat poor cousin to the fresh and full-flavored pumpernickel — as well as the curious lack of a name for Shavuot; “Weeks” seems hardly appropriate, since it connotes the period leading up to the festival rather than to the day of the festival itself!

Many commentaries see the word matzot (plural of matza) as being identical with the word mitzvot (plural of mitzva, a divine command), since the same Hebrew letters spell out both words; then, conversely, hametz must be identified with sin or transgression. However, how does this fit into the fact that on Shavuot — which, in considering the omer count as linking the two holidays, is the climax of Pesach — we must bring two loaves of bread, specifically hametz and not matza, as our major Temple offering?

When we remember that the very first seder took place on the night of the 15th of Nissan, before midnight, before the slaughter of the Egyptian first-born and while the Israelites were still slaves in Egypt (see Exodus 12), we realize that Passover cannot possibly be our Festival of Freedom; at best, it can be the festival only of our expectation of freedom, of God’s promise that we will be free. Indeed, even after we left Egypt the next morning, we only got as far as the torrid-by-day, freezing-by-night, waterless and stateless desert — and we had not even received our Torah!

For the actual achievement of freedom we would have to await the Festival of Shavuot, the revelation at Sinai, the time when we could celebrate the beloved first fruits of our Israeli produce brought to our Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This period of true freedom and redemption remains elusive to this day; perhaps that’s why Shavuot has not yet acquired a name of its own.

But we are commanded to count the days between Passover and Shavuot, just as we are commanded to count the years between the sabbatical years and the 50th jubilee year, in both instances, the march from redemption promised to redemption realized.

The message is clear: We must remain eternally grateful for the initial signs of freedom and the divine promise that we will ultimately attain it. And we must take note of — and even celebrate — our preparations for the eventual redemption and attempt to purify ourselves for that religious and political eventuality.

And so we count the days between Passover and Shavuot, even though Shavuot remains fixed as a time not yet realized but as a goal very much worthy of striving toward. We link our seder to our vision of redemption by expounding the passage of the Bible recited by the Jews bringing their first fruits to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. And we revel in the fact that both Israeli Independence Day and Jerusalem Day come out during the omer counting, certainly as a sign that the achievement of our goal is closer than it has been for more than 2,000 years!

Although the Mishna ordains that we recite Arami Oved Avi (Deuteronomy 26:1-11) through to its conclusion, the Haggada deletes the last verses: “And He brought us to this place, and He gave us this land, flowing with milk and honey. And now behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land which You have given me, oh Lord. And you shall place it before the Lord your God and you shall bow down before the Lord your God. And you shall rejoice for all the good which the Lord your God has given you and your household, you and the Levite and the stranger who is within your midst.”

In my home celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut, I precede my blessing over the wine with a recitation of the biblical chapter of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37), followed by a recitation of these last verses deleted by the Haggada. These words serve as a confirmation of God’s having brought us back to our homeland, as a statement of hope and faith that we may soon see the restoration of the first fruits ceremony at the Holy Temple, and as a prayer of thanksgiving for what our generation has been privileged to receive — despite the external and internal dangers that still face us.

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