The Relationship Between Pesah (Passover), Sefirat HaOmer, and Shavuot (Pentecost)

Abstract

Why does the midrash say at Pesah when Shirat Hayam, Kriyat yam suf, in parasha beshallach "Hashem appears as a mighty warrior" (ish milchamah), while on Shavuot Hashem appears as "an old man with a long white flowing beard full of mercy and compassion (rachamim)" as referenced in Sefer Daniel? The fifty days bewtween Pesah and Shavuot hold the Rosetta stone key for unlocking this mystery of Hashem's manifestations (partzufim), as emanated pleromaticaly from Hashem's distant gardens (PaRDeS/ die himmel fern garten). If as the Rambam holds Hashem is not a body (ayn lo demuth ha-guf ve-aino guf) how do we understand this manifestation of divine emanation from the sefiroth aka Lurianic Kabbalah? The shiur shows the coherent logic of this beyond logic system of emanation of Hashem's attributes expresed from the macrocosm down in the microcosm. Thus David shows it is not "accidental" that on Lag ba'omer, the anniversary of the ascencion of the Rashbi as depicted in Idra Zuta, that the sefirah on the 33 of the Omer is Hod she ba Hod and like on the forty ninth day to the fiftieth day of the Omer on Shavuoth, when Dovid HaMelekh "went upstairs" the sefirah of emanation is malchut she ba malachut. Each of the sefirot is correlated to a body part anthropomorphically Adam Kadmon, as represented in Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol's Fons Vital-Sefer Mekor Hayim.Yet the Ramban teaches us further that the key for unlocking the secrets of divine yovel .are also hinted at in sefirath haOmer, or the 49 days of the counting of the omer. Based on the pusek in tehillim that "one thousand years in the site of Hashem are a watch in the night" then each creation day represents 1000 years so that Ramban suggests based on a gemarah, biyamei hamashiach will "dawn" in the year 6000 and set in the year 7000. The Ramban notes there are 7 worlds and if each world is 7000 years than there are a total of 4900 years of temporality in the space-time continuum. The Rambam of course forbid such calculations based on the gemarah and notes the mashiach can come in harif-ayin/augen blick by the fulfillment of the objective criteria laid out in Sefer Shoftim of the Mishneh Torah in the laws of Kings and their Wars. The Ramban however does do the arithemetic and forcasts out to the year 50,000 or Sharei Binah, when all neshamot will be represented in a spectrum of the constellation of "disembodied intellects." This lecture touches on some of the secrets of sefirath HaOmer and the paradigm of the period of counting up to revelation (offenbarung) from Pesah to Shavuoth ultimately represented in the metaphysical understanding of the Ramban in Grand Yovel see Shemitah and Grand Yovel link on the Ramban Library guide

Publication Date

Spring 2021

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