Sivan 2 is marked on the Jewish calendar as Yom HaMeyuchas ("Day of Distinction"); it was on this day that G-d told Moses -- when Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the first time -- to tell the people of Israel: "You shall be My chosen treasure from among all the nations, for all the earth is Mine. You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:4-6).
Links:
Who Are the Jews?
On the Essence of Choice
More on the "choseness" of the Jewish people
Until the Six-Day War (see “Today in Jewish History” for Iyar 26), the Syrian army was deployed in strong fortifications on the Golan Heights, from which they repeatedly shelled the Israeli settlements below. On the fifth day of the war, the Israeli Army broke through the Syrian front. Facing very difficult topographical conditions, they scaled the steep and rugged heights. The Engineering Corps cleared the way of mines, followed by bulldozers which leveled a route for the tanks on the rocky face. After more than 24 hours of heavy fighting, the Syrian deployment collapsed and the Syrian forces fled in retreat.
Links: More on the Six-Day War
R. Chaim Elazar Spira was a chassidic Rebbe who lived in Munkatch (today known as Mukachevo, in western Ukraine). One of the prominent leaders of Orthodox Jewry in interwar Europe, R. Spira was known for his community activism and strong convictions. Among his many works are Minchat Elazar, Ot Chaim V’Sholom, and Divrei Torah. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, held R. Spira in high regard and quoted many of his sayings.
Link: The Minchas Elazar; Just One Blast
Tomorrow is the forty-seventh day of the Omer Count. Since, on the Jewish calendar, the day begins at nightfall of the previous evening, we count the omer for tomorrow's date tonight, after nightfall: "Today is forty-seven days, which are six weeks and five days, to the Omer." (If you miss the count tonight, you can count the omer all day tomorrow, but without the preceding blessing).
The 49-day "Counting of the Omer" retraces our ancestors' seven-week spiritual journey from the Exodus to Sinai. Each evening we recite a special blessing and count the days and weeks that have passed since the Omer; the 50th day is Shavuot, the festival celebrating the Giving of the Torah at Sinai.
Tonight's Sefirah: Hod sheb'Malchut -- "Humility in Receptiveness"
The teachings of Kabbalah explain that there are seven "Divine Attributes" -- Sefirot -- that G-d assumes through which to relate to our existence: Chessed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malchut ("Love", "Strength", "Beauty", "Victory", "Splendor", "Foundation" and "Sovereignty"). In the human being, created in the "image of G-d," the seven sefirot are mirrored in the seven "emotional attributes" of the human soul: Kindness, Restraint, Harmony, Ambition, Humility, Connection and Receptiveness. Each of the seven attributes contain elements of all seven--i.e., "Kindness in Kindness", "Restraint in Kindness", "Harmony in Kindness", etc.--making for a total of forty-nine traits. The 49-day Omer Count is thus a 49-step process of self-refinement, with each day devoted to the "rectification" and perfection of one the forty-nine "sefirot."
Links:
How to count the Omer
The deeper significance of the Omer Count
Tachnun (confession of sins) and similar prayers are omitted from the prayer service.
Look deeply within each person you encounter, no matter how brilliant or dull, refined or crude, righteous or wicked you judge this person to be.
Beyond their clothes, beyond their skin, beyond their behavior, beyond their words.
Beyond the emotions they show, the personality in which they dress, past whatever masks they don to conceal their inner woes.
Look deeply and see the vicious war each one fights inside, the battle to remain human in a maddening world—a world you will never know, for no two of us are placed in the same world and no two of us confront the same challenges—
—the angst of facing those failures and deficiencies you hope no one knows, but you know they do, the yearning to be more, the disappointment at not being that, the struggle to fight every sorrow, every pain, every plummeting, disastrous trauma of life…
True, perhaps not everyone fights every battle. Some have long surrendered.
But the very fact that this person was assigned this battle tells us more than can be spoken, for the One who created him knows he has the power to prevail and win.
That alone is enough to admire, and to be humbled, asking yourself, “Do I fight a battle nearly as fierce as the one I expect this person to win? In what way am I any better?”