Day 43 of the Omer

Today we begin the last week of counting the Omer, and all during this week, as we count the last seven days until Revelation, we focus on Malchut – Leadership, beginning with Chesed in Malchut, Lovingkindness in Leadership. And this week we focus on the stars.

When we look into the night sky, we see only a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies out there that we also can't see, each of which has billions of stars. All the matter in that distant space beyond what we can see and in those stars and galaxies that we can't see formed in a way that is hard for most of us to even begin to understand – what we call the Big Bang. And it has kept on cycling and cycling and cycling, stars being born and living and burning up, and elements cycling and cycling and cycling through the universe, through all that time, and eventually into us, you and I and the other person. We are basically made of stardust.

We can't say that stars have feelings. They don't show kindness and they aren't really leaders. But it is that difficult-to-understand event of the Big Bang that led, after about 14 billion years or so, to us. And so we are here. The Big Bang is the ultimate leadership moment. It provided the building blocks of life.

There was another, incredibly minuscule by comparison, big bang of sorts when each of us was born. It was big in terms of the impact on our parents' lives, and we have been moving outward from the moment ever since. We are each a mini expanding universe. We are leaders in our own way, and when we remember how tiny our big bang was by comparison to THE Big Bang, perhaps we will remember to be kind, to show lovingkindness, even as we continue to move outward. And we may stop to wonder, for what unique effort are we providing the building blocks?

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam, asher kid-shanu b'mitzvotav, vitzivanu, al sefirat ha'omer.

Blessed are you Adonai our G!d, ruler of the universe, who sanctifies us with mitzvot and commands us regarding the counting of the Omer.

Today is forty-three days, which is six weeks and one day of the Omer.

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