We are on the 10th day of the Omer out of the 49 days to Shavuot. Counting marks time and encourages us to pay attention. As a way to note where we’ve been and anticipate where we are going, we have chosen to walk 40,000 steps, which works out under 20 miles (or you can walk any part of it).
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, created Yom Hashoah v’l’Gevurah as a stop during the Omer counting. It remembers the suffering and bravery of the Shoah (Holocaust) as well as all the souls felled by it. Although the latter part of its name has fallen away, the title was chosen intentionally: the day of Holocaust and Heroism and Remembrance. It was a shocking act for the modern state to add to the festival calendar. Now it feels so right, so appropriate, to be recalling the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the millions murdered across Europe. Eighty years on, our president, Paul Silver-Myer, is walking this week for the March of the Living.
This Saturday evening, we’ll be doing our own march, walk even, counting ourselves as Jews, Jewish adjacent and supportive and connected members of FPS. It’s not too late to join us with your walking shoes or, on Wednesday evening, to attend our powerful marking of Yom ha-Shoah with Ella Garai-Ebner.
It feels to be an important week.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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