Yes, my friends, it's that time of year again for the Omer Counter to show up on my blog.
Have I mentioned how cool my dad is? He wrote it for me.
<-------------------------- over there on the left-hand side bar.
Busy with Pesach and Spring Break so just a quick post. Read about the Omer from last year and I'll be back shortly with some fun posts about Pesach and the joy of spring!
I'll also be part of TweetingTheOmer, much like TweetTheExodus (same crew) only less stressful intensive. So join me there!
The story is wrapping up at TweetTheExodus - come by for the final words....
My newest favorite Pesach joke:
There once lived a king who had an favorite advisor. The other advisors objected because he was a Jew.
The King accepted their argument and ordered him to convert. The advisor obeyed the king, and converted along with his whole family. But it made him so depressed and despondent, that he went to the king and said, "I'm a Jew. I can't change who I am. Do whatever you want with me but I've gotta go back." The king had no idea that his advisor felt so strongly, so he told him to go ahead and be a Jew again. "Your counsel is just too valuable to me to lose." The advisor, overjoyed, ran home to tell his wife. "We can be Jews again!" he shouted. His wife looked at him and said, "Couldn't you have waited until AFTER Pesach?"
Some more jokes:
Why did the matzah quit his job? Because he didn't get a raise.
Who is behind Pharaoh's evil empire? Darth Seder
What did the Red Sea say to the Jews when it parted? Nothing, it just waved.
What's the difference between Matzah and Cardboard? Cardboard doesn't leave crumbs on the rug.
The way we approach the Exodus story is bibliodrama at its finest. In each generation, we turn the story over and over, looking for ways to insert ourselves into the story. Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav taught that “the exodus from Egypt occurs in every human being, in every era, in every year, and even on every day.” How do we understand the Exodus? And what if we were to experience the Exodus in our own day, in our own time? And how would we transmit the story? We’ve moved beyond tablets.
Oh yes we have.
We're Tweeting the Exodus, and let me tell you, it's quite a ride so far!
I woke up this morning to these alerts in my Google Reader:
It's like a dream - I can't believe my name popped up on the Wall Street Journal website. It's a great article, even though I think that the point of TweetTheExodus is a little bigger. This isn't just about fun, but it's really about creating something new, about expressing ourselves in a way that speaks to our generation, and find new meaning in the story.
I'm proud to be a part of this experiment in telling an old story in a very new way, and I think that it has such a great potential. So far, as I write this, there are 780 793 (it changed while I was writing this post!) followers of the @TweetTheExodus account, and I really believe that's a lot of people thinking about the ancient story of freedom - and for many of them, they might not have thought about that story at all, or they might not have related it to their own lives at all.
So join me andabunchofmyfriendsandcolleaguesandtweeps as we tell the story, live the story, build the story, feel the story....we ARE the Children of Israel, and we are going forth from Egypt...from darkness to light, from slavery to redemption, from the narrow place of Mitzrayim to the wide open spaces of our own potential and possibility.
The time is upon us
for freedom...
for freeing
ourselves
from the bondage
of slavery
of winter
spring comes
and we break free
Nisan comes and it's like the world opens up.
The waters part
the world renews.
The new moon of Nisan is only 15 days from the moment of the Exodus...it takes only a few moments for freedom to come, but a lifetime to truly believe in it.
Experience the Exodus as you've never experienced it before - in every generation, we should feel as though we personally went forth from Egypt. If I had been there, I'm sure I would have tweeted it - http://twitter.com/TweetTheExodus - it will be amazing.
That's all from here. I'm sure that next month will be full of Pesach posts and post-Pesach posts. Hard to imagine what "post-Pesach" will be like while we're in the throes of preparing! A zissen Pesach...may your Passover be joyous and sweet!
