Amo
ng the odder Jew things is a ritual called “The counting of the omer.” It’s a very important ritual because something something something. OK, it’s not, but it’s commanded in the Torah (Leviticus 23:15 and 16 for you beforeskinned types) so when Yahweh says, “Do it,” you do it. Otherwise, there will be a plague, which seems to be Yahweh’s favorite hobby.
First obvious question: what’s an omer? I’m glad you asked, because I was prepared with an answer. It’s a unit of volume, analogous to a bushel, but much more Hebraic. In days of yore before the Temple got wasted, the priests there were recipients of all sorts of pelf, given to propitiate Yahweh- if you think televangelists begging for contributions claiming that the money is for God is something new, you’re a few millennia late to the party. One of the perks was omers of barley or wheat, which were required to be delivered daily between the second day of Pesach (which we talked about last week) and the first day of Shavuot (which we’ll talk about in 6 more weeks). Since pelf needed to be accounted for (Jews are punctilious about their graft), the priests developed a ritual, rituals being job security for them. Each day of that period, the supplicants would deliver the grain, then recite a prayer which ended in best Sesame Street fashion, “Today is x days, which is y week(s) and z day(s) of the omer,” with x, y, and z being sequential. The priests would then accept the grain as a gift to Yahweh, and go do some baking. Or maybe the Levantine equivalent of risotto, if they were smart. Being a priest was equivalent to being a GS-14 these days, short hours, easy work, lots of bribery opportunities, great pension.
Now, once the Temple was destroyed, what to do? This becomes a complicated story, involving certain schisms within Judaism (Pharisees vs. Sadducees, which ended up being Patriots vs Browns), deserving of a stand-alone story, and it is a story I shall surely tell when I’m not on assignment and have to keep things brief (“assignment” being “setting up cameras in the elementary school bathrooms, purely for security reasons”). But the result was the recitation ritual remained, the priests (who trended Sadducee) were cut out.
Now, this is indeed brief and boring, but even as pressed for time as I am, I can’t leave you without a small dose of death and destruction. This involves the legendary Rabbi Akiva, an uber-Pharisee who in retrospect reads like Ayatollah Khomeini. Despite the counting of the omer looking like an accounting function, the tradition is that these are days of mourning. Why? Because Akiva lost 24,000 students in either a plague or war deaths fighting Italians- it’s unclear which. If it was Italians, self-explanatory- Akiva was deeply involved in the Bar Kochba revolt against the wops, which went about as well as you’d expect. If it was a plague, it was Yahweh getting his divine panties in a holy wad about some rule or other that everyone wasn’t slavishly following. Yahweh was often a dick about stuff like that.
So because of the 24,000 ambiguous deaths, the omer-counting period is (with the exception of one day, more about which, later) treated as a period of mourning, which means no music, no sex, no shaving, mirrors covered, no TV. Being a Jew ain’t easy. It seems like every week, we’re losing 24,000 of us.
Next week, with more time on my hands, I’ll tell you gentiles about the Sadducees, the Pharisees, how they relate to constitutionalism, and how fighting over graft can really fuck up a religion. In the meantime, say your prayers and note that this is 8 days, which is 1 week and 1 day of the omer. And yes, you can actually buy an app to remind you of the daily count. Jews, smdh.
Also, since it’s fashionable, here’s a gratuitous non-Jew link.
Comments
130 responses to “Jewsday Tuesday: Omer and the Count”
I lost track, do I have to start over?
Yahweh help us, there’s actually a rule for that. Seriously.
I am unsurprised.
Ah, but you get to burn shit on Lag B’Omer.
And bows and arrows. More when it comes around.
So when do you cover how to curse the goyim and ruin the harvest? I’m only here for the blood sacrifices and the food made out of gentile babies.
In all seriousness, although I find the Abrahamic faiths to be a messy slave morality rife with compulsive brainwashing ritual and obvious psychological manipulation I find these columns very interesting, and they’re only slightly below Thicc Thursdays on the list.
I agree. I was raised in what could be called a “fundamentalist christian” household. I know nothing of the Jewish faith other than what the old testament says, which I blocked out of my memory once I became a degenerate. Very educational and interesting these posts.
“I find the Abrahamic faiths to be a messy slave morality rife with compulsive brainwashing ritual and obvious psychological manipulation”
*looks at current news from ME*
My, what a difference 5000 years makes.
Some mature, some don’t. Isn’t Islam considered an Abrahamic faith?
I was certainly including it when I said it. The ‘children of Abraham’ in my mind are Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Bahai doesn’t count.
Bahai doesn’t count
Did you tell them that?
When they become a major political and cultural influence I’ll give a shit about them.
But they have nice gardens. IN THE HOLY LAND.
I sometimes wonder what a majority Zoroastrian Middle East would look like. And I can’t help but see it as positive.
I know nothing of Zoroastrians, or Bahai. I have met a handful of Yazidis though. Pretty weird temples those folk have. The Muslims called them devil worshipers, but tolerated them. At least the ones I hung out with.
The religions of the Middle East outside of Islam are fascinating. Many are worse than Islam itself (Muhammad, for example, made sure to stress punishment for those who followed the pagan practice of burying their newborn daughters in the sand) but the historical majority religions offer a very interesting ‘what if’ in comparison to the Shia vs Sunni war we witness today.
I think the biggest difference to today is the degree of expansionism. Almost anything else would have stayed relatively confined to the region.
I supposed all the others have been beheaded ?
Hanging with Muslems and all that.
Or converted at the point of a sword.
Naa, that was in Kurdistan. The Kurds don’t take kindly to killing other Kurds even if they are Yazidis. The Kurds outside of Kurdistan, who may be Yazidis are a different story. They got slaughtered.
How does Yahweh treat someone that lies to a dying man in order to facilitate his passing?
That’s a paddlin’.
“Facilitate his passing” sounds more like “hurry up and go” rather than “ease his state of mind”.
They didn’t deny choking him in the article.
Oh my god, that is morbid and hilarious simultaneously.
The dead man will be let down when he sees, from the afterlife, that Secret Nazi President is in power and doing secret Nazi things, which will lead him to beg Yahweh for a plague of idiotic SJW’s to rampage the streets of the nation.
Really don’t think there’s going to be any begging needed for that one.
It worked!!
My favorite crazy OT story is the one where god gets mad at the Jews for doing a census, so he sends some snakes to bite them. Moses is like “what the hell, guy?” and then god says “OK build a pillar with a snake on top, and tell everyone who gets bit to look at it.”
The OT God does certainly seem like he’s running a strange cross between ‘survivor’ and ‘who’s line is it anyway?’
Ancient Israel and Egypt were essentially long-form versions of The Gong Show.
Really? That’s it? You don’t think it’d be cool to be able to animate a golem?
…
…
I don’t get it.
The way it was explained to me, is that at of it is the difference between city dwellers and nomads. City people do censuses. Sodam and Gamorah. Etc. Instead of looking at these stories from modern eyes, think stories to enforce the idea that our nomadic way of life is good, and the city dwellers, with their strange ways and strange gods, are bad people.
Gotta keep the tribe holy. Also, similar reason why you’re not supposed to “spill your seed on the ground”: if the nomads don’t reproduce quicker than the city dwellers… well it’s bad, right?
So the urban-rural divide is older than dirt…
treated as a period of mourning, which means no music, no sex, no shaving, mirrors covered, no TV.
I retract my request to be one of (((you))) I made your first lesson when I thought it was all about sex, eating and a good party.
Sounds more like a typical week in an Islamist country.
In that case, you forgot the public executions.
I’ll take the neo-Odinists any day of the week.
Speaking of which, what happened to Bear Odinsson? I miss the weirdo pagan.
Probably going to have to find some modern pagan idiocy to embrace if that’s the case.
*searches amazon for crystals, wind chimes and dream catchers
What mineral?
Two parts Plutonic quarks, one part Cesium.
The ones with the most phlogiston, of course
Hey, modern Wicca literally exists so old men can dance naked with young, gullible girls in the moonlight, so have at it.
Go on…
Yeah, I’m with Playa; you can’t just drop that tease and not give details, or maybe even pics or a link where I can join?
Long story short, modern Wicca was invented by old English men beginning in the 50s largely to attract young women to a pagan, open sex-style religion. Hell, their founder was a bloody retired civil servant who wanted to get laid.
Far as I can tell there’s no requirements to joining Wiccan communities, you just have to talk enough bullshit about nature and spirits and what-not in order to attract gullible twenty year olds.
I’m so sad I don’t remember more from the PDF Book of Shadows a friend’s girlfriend *bought online* in college so she could practice witchery without a local coven.
I do remember that you must cut herbs for healing when the moon is full and using a copper blade (preferably a sickle) and thank the plants if you want full potency and just generally not to be rude to the plants.
So, I should totally she’d my morals, start talking what I know is pure bullshit, and I too can become a spiritual guru constantly having sex with girls half my age.
With nice firm 20’s tits and ass.
Hmm.
Well, that’s it. See you suckers with your principles; you’re not going to accomplish anything anyway. I’m gonna go start a fertility cult.
Bear in mind my experience is that it’s mostly weirdo hippie chicks and goths, but if you’re into that, have at it. Fertility cults for gullible twenty-somethings are the way of the future.
Ya, but they are smelly hippy girls. I like women who bathe with crazy things like soap and water, not crystals. Not that I have not danced naked in the moonlight with a few of them, but I was young and smelly also.
Hippie girls now bathe and clean themselves up, they aren’t as doctrine as those old school natives. I got laid by a Wiccan in my early twenties and I have no complaints.
I seem to remember a female commenter at that other site that attended some of those moonlight dances and even treated us to photos. My memory is vague. Thats been years ago.
So obviously not bookmark worthy.
That was 8 or 10 years ago. I can barely keep up with current conversations much less bookmark stuff to go back over.
OT: Fun times in GA-6
I wonder who they were going to vote for.
Well there is a candidate who doesn’t live in the district either…
How is he able to run?
I really hope he doesnt get 50
He won.
Wait what? It is over already?
I wonder if this is one of those elections where, after it is over, you canvass the entire district but cant find a single person who voted that way.
Thats the way votes in Louisiana over new taxes usually goes.
The count is still going on as of this comment – and the Ossoff early voting lead keeps diminishing. There’s a lot of conflicting and incomplete counts running around.
Yeah. I spoke too soon.
The dumb fuck GOP running four major and seven minor candidates, while all the progs pour money and votes into one dude.
Man, the Clinton campaign was truly retarded.
OT
I was thinking the other day about what got me interested in derp. I think it was a story my dad told me when I was 8 or 9. I had been complaining about something stupid I had seen or heard, I forget what, and my dad says “you think that’s dumb?” and then tells me this story:
One of his first jobs was nailing crates together. So he goes to work and spends a couple hours nailing crates together, but after a while, he runs out of nails so he stops working. The boss runs over and says “what the hell are you doing?”, and my dad says “I ran out of nails.” So the boss says “well, just pound the boards with the hammer then.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I pounded those boards just like he said and got paid for it. I did not come back the next day. ”
After my eyebrows returned from the back of my head and I picked up my jaw off the floor, I was left with an awestruck feeling and have searching for more derp ever since.
He LEFT?! I would have milked that job to it’s last dime. Fucking bureaucrats don’t get off that easy!
Sounds like a union job.
No, his supervisor wouldn’t have to run over to him. there’d be a few already there.
I would have suggested disassembling the already put together crates and robbing nails out of them.
What made it even more absurd was that he couldn’t take any nails from the guys standing next to him doing the same thing.
Imagine being in a room full of people nailing crates together and you’re the only one just pounding on the boards.
Productivity insurance?
Like I said: steady paycheck, zero expectations. Your dad missed the gravy train big time.
That sort of post is seriously soul-draining.
It is, but there are worse things in life. I personally get a perverse kick out of being the smartest person in a room/building so that might have something to do with it.
Yeah, that’s interesting for maybe the first hour. Then, it’s soul crushing boredom.
Once upon a time, i had a job setting up primitive robots, computerized vacuum formers and water cutters for plastic interior parts for tractors: dashboards, headliners, and such. That was ok. But party of my job was spelling the operators for their breaks. Some parts took 5 minutes to be produced, then you’d have 30 seconds of trimming and putting it on the pallet. Stand there and wait 4 1/2 minutes for the next piece. Repeat for 8 hours.
The various wars with the Wops went as well as could be expected for any uprising by upstart yokels. There are very real reasons you can visit the ruins of the Temple and see friezes of it being looted on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Of all the various groups ingested into SPQR the only group that got stuck in the throat for good are the Jews. A very good book on that subject is “Rome and Jerusalem” by Martin Goodman. (Available in many libraries and the usual retail sources.) Or if you are interested in a book from the Roman era you can find online many pdf copies of Flavius Josephus’s book on the wars. FJ was a Judean general who after a defeat flipped sides, got chummy with his new friends and wrote about it. Josephus’s writings were hugely influential for over a 1000 years and inform many first or second hand accounts of that era.
The various “disagreements” between these ultimately led to Romans 135ce going “Fuck it Judea! Provinea Judea and Jerusalem are no more. Henceforth you are now Provincia Syria Palaestina and and the city we are rebuilding on the site is Aelia Capitolina.”
I always found Josephus an interesting historical character.
There’s a fair amount of pro-Roman propaganda in his writings, and he is somewhat self-serving. But most of his pro-Roman propaganda is basically, “Picking a fight with the Romans was a dumb idea, and I had nothing to do with it.”
Josephus was also insanely good at math. So here’s a video of a Jewish guy solving the Josephus math problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCsD3ZGzMgE
OH yeah, fair warning there is a lot of math involved.
I read the reason for the law against eating a kid boiled in its own milk was that this was a favorite dish of the Assyrians or some other enemy of the Jews.
It’s amusing that the reason some Jews won’t eat cheeseburgers is a 3000 year old grudge.
…a lot better than ham, isn’t it?
That’s no reason to not have a cheeseburger!
Where are you getting cheeseburgers made out of kids? You lost me there. Or are you talking goats?
But kid goats don’t produce milk.
neither do kids come to think of it.
Derpy made that dish up!
Mother and Child Reunion is a song whose title comes from an unkoaher chicken and egg Chinese dish in NYC.
Huh. Coincidentally, the wife wanted oyakodon tonight.
(((We))) may forget but (((we))) never forgive.
Thanks, OMWC. I don’t catch all of your (((history))), lessons, but I really do enjoy them.
Despite all the hardships and Exoduses (Exodi?), and disporas, the Jewish people have kept an amazing amount of history alive.
Question: are there any equivalent groups of people with such a continuous tradition? Egypt is surely the oldest country, but I don’t believe they have a truly “Egyptian” culture that goes back so far.
Or is modern “Jewishness” dating more from the days of the Roman Empire?
Modern Jew-ness is Pharisaic. I’ll have a lot to say about that next week.
That’s why the Sadducees are so sad, you see.
I see what you did there, sad, you see.
Do you you ave anything to say about the Essennes?
“A little later, Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75 CE), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (c. 97 CE). Claiming first hand knowledge, he lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy[7] alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He relates the same information concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality, and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath. He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings.
Umm, that sounds a hell of a lot like early Christianity.
There’s a reason for that, yes.
Exoduses (Exodi?)
Exudux
the Sadducees, the Pharisees
Lame, I was looking forward to some classy and educational Christian music and you failed to deliver.
Trigger warning: this shit is *awful*
Wow, They Might Be Giants have taken a strange turn.
Civil twilight is in about an hour.
The kids are going apeshit for pizza.
It’s a shame I have to eat it in front of them right now and then reheat it for them later.
Wow, that is cold. You are a good father. Teach them patience.
Todays lunch pizza lesson out of my new oven.
I didn’t have the fire big enough. I under cooked it. Learning curve.
How extensive is that char on the underside?
Not enough. I waited to long to deck it after I pushed the fire back.
You were going for carbonized crust?
No, just chewier.
That looks delicious.
Could use more cheese.
That looks pretty fine. Fresh mozz?
Na, I cheaped out. I am not a big Napoletana fan, but I like it well enough. I wanted to make one for my parents who had never heard the word. They liked the chicken, spinach, and caramelized onions w/white sauce though. We like americanized/bastardized pizzas in these parts.
What am I looking at there? Is that snow on the ground?
My tomatoes and peppers are already producing.
No, there is no snow here. That is flower on the table. Snow lasts just a few days where I am at. I moved out of the mountains years ago. It is better when they are an hour drive and you don’t have to freeze all winter. Trees are greening, and they are planting corn now. Have been for a few weeks I am sure. We are a month or so from tomatoes though.
*or flour. Take your pick.
Is there a reason (drink), or are you just fucking with them?
I’d say that’s reason enough
When I was young and going through “abandoning my people” (mom)-or- developing rationality (teen me) during the Apollo era the insistence of following rituals from a late stone age people helped trigger my own WTF moments. Combine that with a steady diet of Isaac Asimov, other science reading and Ayn Rand it lost me to (((the faith))). Still I could not turn my back on my family and some (((friends))) because I saw they were basically good people. It wasn’t until I had children that some serious rifts were healed. Now that both my kids have families they are putting their toes back into the pool of organized (((services))) having married within the tribe with no encouragement (or discouragement) on my part. Both their grandmothers are happy and both their grandfathers are happy ribbing me about “losing”.
Long way of saying- Mahalo OMWC for reviving memories of my childhood schooling.
A Hawaiian Jew? Well I never!
I’ll bet you have.
My husband’s best friend at Iolani was Jewish. For those not hip to the Hawaiian private school scene, Iolani is Episcopalian, and at least in those days, going to chapel was not optional. He’s now a rabbi in Jerusalem. I’m sure the two things have nothing to do with each other…
End of passover is at sundown. They’re Jewish, I’m not.
Being a priest was equivalent to being a GS-14 these days, short hours, easy work, lots of bribery opportunities, great pension
I suspect there’s a profound truth in there.
Being a Jew ain’t easy. It seems like every week, we’re losing 24,000 of us.
One of my favorite lines in Fiddler on the Roof is: “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”
+1 Jason Riley-ism
France has both the largest Jewish and Muslim populations within Western Europe and is losing 10,000-12,000 of its Jewish citizens to emigration each year. The largest recipient countries are the USA and Israel. This is the reason I ended up with a son-in-law from France. He is waiting, not altogether patiently, for the chance to trade his green card in for certificate of citizenship.
(((Hawaiians)))? Now I have heard everything. Do you do a (((poke))) bowl instead of bagel and lox?
Of course I eat poke. It is a great great food. Since I am (((tribe))) by heritage and not faith I will also eat those shellfish and octopus poke’s as well.
There is not a decent bagel within six time zones of the state. Every location I have tried is nothing more than a flabby bread doughnut.
The major population centered islands all have congregations plus the Navy hosts the congregation for the military.
Omar comin’
posted here and on the roads thread:
http://www.ancient.eu/article/638/
Also, the Silk Road was more of a trail than a road. Long distance roads of even the most primitive kind were rare up until the early 20th century.
For no particular reason: He’Brew, The Chosen Beer
http://shmaltzbrewing.com/beer/
I killed a 6-pack of Messiah brown ale while playing the State of The Union drinking game in 2011. Good times.
I use to buy He’Brew when I lived on Manhattan. It is okay. From your link they have greatly expanded their product in in the last 10 years.
So no shorn scrota?
They have a sheet to make sure you don’t notice.