Counting Our Days: The Practice of Becoming

By Rabbi Stephanie Kennedy

May 1, 2025 • 3 Iyar 5785

We are living in the in-between — these tender, holy days between Passover, the story of our liberation, and Shavuot, when we will once again stand together at Sinai, ready to receive Torah.

The Exodus story didn’t end when we crossed the sea. It was only the beginning of the harder, holier work: the practice of becoming.

Our tradition offers us a ritual for this liminal space. Each night, we count the Omer — marking the days from freedom to revelation. What began as an ancient agricultural practice, counting the days from the barley harvest to the wheat, became something more — a spiritual discipline, a daily reminder: freedom is not only the absence of oppression. Freedom is the invitation to ask: Who am I becoming? Who are we becoming together?

It’s easy to rush through these days, to count down toward the next milestone, the next arrival. But the Omer teaches us not to count down, but to count up — not toward an ending, but toward readiness. Toward the people we’re called to be.

Each day is an invitation to stop, to breathe, to notice: How am I showing up in this world? Where am I growing? Where am I stuck? What is crying out for healing — in me, and all around me?

In a culture obsessed with speed, achievement, and arrival, the Omer insists on sacred slowing. It reminds us of the uncomfortable, essential truth: that becoming takes time; that the work of transformation is slow, deliberate, and ongoing.

And as we journey toward Shavuot, toward that memory of standing together at Sinai, may we remember: Revelation doesn’t live only in the past. Revelation happens whenever we make space — space for learning, for listening, for tenderness, for truth, for love.