 | The first four weeks of our Omer journey from Passover (liberation) to Shavuot (revelation) were themed to calibrating love (hesed), strength (gevurah), balance (tiferet) and resilience (netzah). From our to love and be loved, we evoked soft-hearted courage to face the future, boundaries flexible enough to avoid excess rigidity but strong enough to protect us from abuse, balanced beauty and spirituality that lift us without fetishizing, and our ability to rebound from disappointment with confidence. This fifth Omer week focuses on splendor (hod), which spiritually means so much more than brightness. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
This seven-week series of posts about the Omer journey maps to our "Soul Stretch" mini-series on Tuesdays 8:00pm - 8:30pm through Shavuot. Each week's post summaries themes covered in the prior Tuesday's session.
The first four weeks of Omer focused on love (hesed), strength (gevurah) and balance (tiferet) and resilience (netzah) as character traits and spiritual goals. This fourth week of counting Omer (May 21 - May 28, 2024), we emphasize splendor (hod).
Splendor (hod) shines. It's our capacity to shine. It's grandeur, brightness and brilliance. As strength qualities of courage and boundaries determine the amount of space we take up, splendor fills that space. Splendor projects spiritual energy into the world.
The Hebrew word for splendor (hod) suggests its other Hebrew-language relatives. One is gratitude (hoda'ah), our capacity to be expressively mindful of our blessings and offer heartfelt appreciation. In this sense, splendor (hod) is an attitude of gratitude that we project beyond ourselves, translating it from mere intention to actualization.
A related Hebrew-language quality of splendor (hod) is our collective identity as Jews, literally Yehudim. The word "Jews" hails from Judah, the youngest son of matriarch Leah who named him for her gratitude to God (Gen. 29:35). As Jews, we carry the name of gratitude: it's the core of our calling and identity.
This season is about balancing and calibrating qualities – but what could be imbalanced about gratitude? How could identity possibly leave us astray?
Too little gratitude is easier to see as problematic. Too little gratitude can evince conceit or ego: we might imagine that we deserve all we have, unaware that nothing we have is truly the result of only our own effort and merit. Many work hard and deserve yet do not have, and some things cannot be had whatever our effort but only by grace. We must learn to credit another's care, talent and effort – and, spiritually speaking, God. Sounds like love to me.
But too much gratitude? Too much gratitude can suggest that we lack a sense of merit at all, that we are meek and so self-critical that we don't feel we deserve goodness. One who has experienced abuse or another persisting degradation can fit that bill, and fall over themselves for the slightest kindness. Such a person might have lacked love and balance.
We can say much the same about identity. With too little sense of self, one can become a non-entity, a nebbish. Such a person cannot easily manifest strength or resilience. And there can be too much identity, or at least too much fixity to our identity – who we imagine ourselves to be. If we clutch ourselves too tightly, we can't change – and we might act wrongly from our sense of who we are rather than who we really are, or whom we're becoming, or what a circumstance requires.
So shine in the splendor of gratitude for blessings, and in the truth of your most authentic self, your personal identity and our shared collective identity of community and peoplehood.
Next week we'll turn to foundation (yesod).
This seven-week series of posts about the Omer journey maps to our "Soul Stretch" mini-series on Tuesdays 8:00pm - 8:30pm through Shavuot. Each week's post summaries themes covered in the prior Tuesday's session.
The first four weeks of Omer focused on love (hesed), strength (gevurah) and balance (tiferet) and resilience (netzah) as character traits and spiritual goals. This fourth week of counting Omer (May 21 - May 28, 2024), we emphasize splendor (hod).
Splendor (hod) shines. It's our capacity to shine. It's grandeur, brightness and brilliance. As strength qualities of courage and boundaries determine the amount of space we take up, splendor fills that space. Splendor projects spiritual energy into the world.
The Hebrew word for splendor (hod) suggests its other Hebrew-language relatives. One is gratitude (hoda'ah), our capacity to be expressively mindful of our blessings and offer heartfelt appreciation. In this sense, splendor (hod) is an attitude of gratitude that we project beyond ourselves, translating it from mere intention to actualization.
A related Hebrew-language quality of splendor (hod) is our collective identity as Jews, literally Yehudim. The word "Jews" hails from Judah, the youngest son of matriarch Leah who named him for her gratitude to God (Gen. 29:35). As Jews, we carry the name of gratitude: it's the core of our calling and identity.
This season is about balancing and calibrating qualities – but what could be imbalanced about gratitude? How could identity possibly leave us astray?
Too little gratitude is easier to see as problematic. Too little gratitude can evince conceit or ego: we might imagine that we deserve all we have, unaware that nothing we have is truly the result of only our own effort and merit. Many work hard and deserve yet do not have, and some things cannot be had whatever our effort but only by grace. We must learn to credit another's care, talent and effort – and, spiritually speaking, God. Sounds like love to me.
But too much gratitude? Too much gratitude can suggest that we lack a sense of merit at all, that we are meek and so self-critical that we don't feel we deserve goodness. One who has experienced abuse or another persisting degradation can fit that bill, and fall over themselves for the slightest kindness. Such a person might have lacked love and balance.
We can say much the same about identity. With too little sense of self, one can become a non-entity, a nebbish. Such a person cannot easily manifest strength or resilience. And there can be too much identity, or at least too much fixity to our identity – who we imagine ourselves to be. If we clutch ourselves too tightly, we can't change – and we might act wrongly from our sense of who we are rather than who we really are, or whom we're becoming, or what a circumstance requires.
So shine in the splendor of gratitude for blessings, and in the truth of your most authentic self, your personal identity and our shared collective identity of community and peoplehood.
Next week we'll turn to foundation (yesod).
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