The revealed side of the Torah is the foundation for this deeper learning, but the revealed side is not the Torah’s end.
Like with all of the other commandments, Sefirat HaOmer is loaded with Kabbalistic significance. Without the Kabbalah, we would not know what we were doing when we wave the lulav or blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. Yes, there are simple explanations, but someone who only familiarizes himself with surface reality, resembles a swimmer who is afraid to put on a mask and stick his face in the water. If you tell him there is a whole beautiful marine world below the waves, teeming with all forms of life, he won’t believe you because he has never experienced this deeper, inner world for himself.
As the Dylan song says: “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS, DO YOU, MR. JONES?”
To see and understand the hidden depths of the Torah you have to open your eyes and learn what lies under the surface. The revealed side of the Torah is the foundation for this deeper learning, but the revealed side is not the Torah’s end.
Again and again in his writings and public proclamations, Rabbi Kook called for a deeper learning of Torah, something vital to the uplifting of the Israelite Nation at the time of Redemption:
“The revelation of the secrets of Torah in the last generation, in order to purify the hearts and to fill the minds with noble thoughts, whose source lies in the secrets of Torah, this is an absolute necessity in the last generation to insure the survival of Judaism” (Orot HaKodesh, Part 1, Pg. 141).
In his holy proclamation, “The Great Call,” Rabbi Kook wrote:
“Dear brothers, Sages of Torah, and influential scholars! We too acted foolishly and sinned! We studied and researched the sources; we debated the fine points of the Talmud and discovered new insights; we wrote and explained; but we forgot Hashem and His might. We failed to hear the words of the true prophets, the exalted voice of our eternal sages, to hear the voice of the Tzaddikim (righteous ones) and Hasidim (saintly ones), the sages of Mussar, and the possessors of the secrets of Torah, who called out and proclaimed in the most strident of voices, that in the end, the river of Talmudic analysis would turn arid and dry if the deep ocean of Kabbalah, and the Torah’s inner understandings, weren’t constantly drawn into the learning – the waters of the knowledge of Hashem, the pristine waters of pure faith which flows from our inner souls, and which stream forth from our life source,” (Orot, pg. 101).
Elsewhere in the book Orot, Rabbi Kook writes:
“The secrets of Torah bring the Redemption and return Israel to its Land, because the Torah of truth in its mighty inner logic demands the complete soul of the Nation. Through this inner Torah, the Nation begins to feel the pain of Exile and to realize the absolute impossibility for its character to fulfill its potential as long as it is oppressed on foreign soil. As long as the light of the supernal Torah is sealed and bound, the inner need to return to Zion will not stir itself with deep faith.”
When it comes to Sefirat HaOmer, look in your prayer books. At least in the prayer books in Israel, you will see adjacent to each day of the counting, two mystical words like Hesed of Hesed, Tiferet of Gevorah, or Hod of Tiferet. These words are from the Kabbalistic world of the Sefirot. Each day of the counting, we are called upon to rectify another sefirah, or channel of spiritual blessing. This is an integral part of the process of inner purification that we are to undergo as we approach the holiday of Shavuot.
We are not only to mention the day, but also to undertake the detailed, laborious toil of perfecting our character traits and the channels of celestial blessing that are directly parallel to them. Just as a marionette puppet is connected to the hand above, or just like the keys of a piano are connected to the chords inside the piano’s lid, we are connected to universes of spiritual worlds which we don’t see but which exist all the same, influencing our lives in the profoundest ways.
Our words and actions strike Heavenly chords above. Each time a key is hit, a different sound is produced. So too, each time we improve a character trait, a channel of blessing is cleansed in the spiritual worlds above, releasing a flow of blessing upon us and upon the entire world since each individual is connected to the cosmos as a whole. If this inner process is just some Kabbalistic mumbo jumbo that doesn’t exist, as some unfortunate souls have the arrogance to claim, then why is the following recitation written in every serious prayer book:
“May it be Thy will before You, our L-rd, our G-d, G-d of our Forefathers, that in the merit of Sefirat HaOmer which I counted today, that all the damage I have done to the sefirah of (such and such day) will be rectified, and I will be purified and sanctified by the holiness of the upper world, and through this, a great flow of blessing will go forth to all of the spiritual and physical worlds, and will rectify our physical and emotional drives, our intellectual spirits, and our Divine souls from all of their pollutions and blemishes, and leave us sanctified with Your exalted holiness, Amen, Sela.”
Obviously, as the talented but confused Jew, Bob Dylan, used to sing: “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS, DO YOU, MR. JONES?”
My advice? Study the writings of Rabbi Kook. There is much more happening to the Nation of Israel in our time of Redemption beyond the daily problems and headlines. If you want to know what is really going on under the day-to-day surface events, Rabbi Kook provides the goggles you need to wear to see the total magnificence of Hashem’s Creation and His guiding hand in Jewish History. From the Exodus until today, His Divine Providence and interaction with Am Yisrael has never ceased.
