Bestselling Author Freida McFadden Reveals Her True Identity
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Counting the Omer is a 49-day Jewish practice with a week-by-week roadmap to becoming more loving, more honest and more fully yourself.
My favorite time in the Jewish calendar is almost here. Not Passover. Or, better yet, not only Passover. On the second night of Passover, we will begin to Count the Omer for 49 Days!
Counting the Omer (or as it is known in Hebrew, “Sefirat HaOmer”) is at once one of the simplest and most complex Jewish observances. No matter where we are in the world, or however high or low we are feeling spiritually, counting the Omer for 49 days provides a simple opportunity each year for every Jew to feel connected. There is a peculiarity in the practice of counting the Omer, in which even in a communal setting every person must count for themselves --- my childhood Rabbi Baruch Taub would say each year: every Jew counts, because every Jew counts.
At the most basic level, counting the Omer is about recording the 49 calendar days between Passover and Shavuot when the Jewish People stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah. But in the ancient tradition of Jewish mysticism, the seven weeks (and each day within each week) charts a journey through seven qualities of character (or “sefirot”) that can change your life:
The Omer, like Judaism, is rooted in pure chesed or lovingkindness. Sometimes, when our lives are on autopilot, we can forget the love that exists as our core essence. In week one, we wake up from isolation to building intentional relationships with ourselves, our community, and the divine.
A practical step for this week is to identify one relationship you've been neglecting and reach out, not with a text, but with a real conversation (or even a longer than usual journal entry to ourselves).
Without a container, the pure energy of love could become self-destructive. Our natural instinct to give needs boundaries, or it would be unsustainable.
This week, identify one area of your life where you've been saying yes when you mean no, and practice saying no, cleanly, without guilt.
In the Kabbalistic map of the soul, Tiferet sits at the center balancing the warmth of chesed and order of gevurah. It is the quality of someone who can be both honest and kind, neither a pushover nor a wall.
This week, notice a moment where you sacrificed truth for the sake of comfort, and try to find the more courageous middle path.
Netzach is the quiet strength of showing up, especially when we don’t feel like it. It’s the part of us that keeps going after the excitement fades.
This week, choose one small practice — learning, exercise, prayer, or even five minutes of reflection — and commit to it every single day, no matter what.
Hod invites us to step back from the relentless pursuit of more and recognize the gift of what already is. It is the capacity to receive a compliment graciously, acknowledge a mistake honestly, and find beauty in someone else's success.
This week, write down three things you're grateful for that you had no hand in creating.
Yesod is about alignment, when our inner world and outer actions match. It’s the foundation of trust, both with ourselves and others. When we live out of sync with our values, we feel it.
This week, identify one area where your actions don’t fully reflect who you want to be, and take a concrete step to bring them into alignment.
Malchut is the culmination of the journey, the ability to stand fully in our lives with presence and responsibility. It’s not about control, but about ownership. After six weeks of inner work, we arrive here ready to lead our own lives with clarity and purpose.
This week, ask yourself: what would it look like to truly take ownership of my life right now, and take one bold step in that direction.
Counting the Omer is about much more than marking time. For 49 days, we’re given a map, step by step, to become more loving, more disciplined, more honest, more resilient, more grateful, more aligned, and more fully ourselves.
Seven weeks. One small step each day. That’s all it takes to begin changing your life.
