I dedicate these words of Torah to the memory of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were killed for being Jews here in our own city of Washington.  We mourn for them and pray for their families and all our people.  -Rabbi Shafner

We are in the midst of counting the Omer, a 49-day count from the holiday of Passover to the holiday of Shavuot. There are many reasons for this count, but the overarching purpose is to mark the movement from becoming a nation on Passover to receiving the Torah on Shavuot.    

Most religions act as a guide for the relationship between the individual and God. They are generally about spirituality, law, worship and values. In Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and most other religions, an individual leader or prophet had a revelation and engaged others in their faith. These religions, then, are primarily a way for individuals to connect with the Divine. But for the Jewish people, religion does not just govern the individual’s relationship with God: the Torah was not given to Abraham the individual; it was given to the Jewish people as a nation.    

Passover is the birth of our nation, the transition from being a religious family of individuals to being the corporate entity of the Jewish people. We count from Passover to Shavuot because becoming the Jewish people first was essential for receiving the Torah.   

In this sense, Judaism is not really a religion. In fact, many Jews are not religious at all, and some do not believe in God. Few other religions (perhaps SoulCycle among them!) can claim this. The Jewish people receive the Torah on Shavuot only after becoming a nation on Passover because Judaism must be the national experience of a people, the Jewish nation.    

This message of the counting from Passover to Shavuot, that nationhood is a prerequisite for receiving the Torah and being the Jewish people, is a vital one today. Many wish to claim that Judaism is solely a religion, a faith to which individuals are committed. That our identity is that of whatever country in which we live and that our religion happens to be Jewish. Yes, we will still be persecuted for it, and indeed so many times in history we were not seen as regular members of the nations we lived under; but nevertheless, they say, the Jewish people are not a unique people. This of course is meant to serve the antisemitic trope of our moment, that the Children of Israel have no relationship to the land of Israel and are just a religious group, long-time citizens of Baghdad, Shiraz, Berlin and New York.

This year, as we come to the end of the Omer count which links our peoplehood to the receiving of the Torah, let us hope that the message it bears reaches the ears and consciences of those who would divide us, persecute us and take away our peoplehood.