Parashat Behar – Why Do We Count So Much?

By Rabbi Alex Freedman.

This week’s Torah reading begins with lots of counting. Every week we count 6 days of work and then rest on the 7th, Shabbat. Parashat Behar goes further to say that in the land of Israel, we are to count 6 years of working the land and selling its crops. But the seventh year shall be one of rest for the land – a Shabbat, as it were – in which everyone may eat whatever the land produces. 

The Torah goes further when it says we must count 7 weeks of years – 49 years – and the next one, 50, is a special Jubilee Year. It is a year of freedom throughout Israel, when slaves go free and property is returned to its original owner. In other words, it’s a giant reset.

I noticed this year that we read these verses during the Omer, the 7-week period when we count the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the beginning of Shavuot. Put these together, and we need several clocks to keep all of these concentric circles going. Why is the Torah so concerned with counting days, weeks, years, and groups of years? 

Judaism seeks to maximize each day. It is fully aware that every day is a gift, every day precious. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was on to this when he opened his classic book “The Sabbath”: 

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, quality-less, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

It’s human nature to sometimes go through a pattern where the days run together and are hard to discern. Challenging though it may be, we must do our best to find differences between the days, both in what happens to us and how we respond. Judaism emphasizes personal growth, and growth means being at different places at different times, not being static or “same old, same old.” As Rabbi Marc Angel wrote: “We count our days to make our days count.”