Finders keepers …
How a Kabbalistic reading of a talmudic law teaches us to reclaim ownership of our lives …
There are times in our lives when we need to pause, take a step back from the dizzying pace of our lives, and check in with our higher spiritual side, and see how it matches up with our human behavioural side. Obviously it doesnt need to align perfectly, just close enough to avoid living with serious cognitive dissonance.
The time period between Passover and Shavuot has become a designated time period for this sort of reflection, using the forty nine days of the Omer as a roadmap, facilitating a thorough combing through of our interior spiritual state.
This week that process coincides with the begining of the reading of the book of Bamidbar, Numbers — the Biblical narrative describing the different experiences of the Jews in the desert.
Many of the ideas and themes in the book of Numbers resonate well with the omer counting process.
Here is one neat exmple.
According to Talmudic law — if one finds lost property in the desert, its considered hefker, ownerless — based on the assumption that the owner doesnt truly expect to ever find it; leaving the lucky finder with a halachickly sanctioned “finders keepers losers weepers!”
There is a Kabbalah dimension to this, that folds neatly right into the practice of Sefirat Ha-omer counting .
Ideally, the moments of reflection that we have designated for our sefirat ha omer meditational, avoda, work , become the desert wilderness moments of solitude that we carve out for ourselves, enabling a drifting inward, towards the place of our souls.
In order to optimize those moments however, we must ask ourselves the following questions.
“What or who owns me?” — setting off a painful, but critical process of distinguishing between the healthy and holy commitments in our lives, and the unhealthy ways that we are owned, usually easily recognizable in the way that certain people, or things, suffocate and stifle our soulfulness, and curtail our emotional freedom in the process; it could even be the way we feel owned and bound addictively to some of our own unhealthy emotions.
Only after we are armed with this important data, can we begin the process of losing ourselves in the wilderness, by beginning to let go of all these toxic attachements.
In the desert we can become Hefker, ownerless and free from the emotional tyrrany and opression that prevents us from being all that G-d intended, and needs us to be!
May this Shabbat, when we read about G-d counting the Jewish people in the desert, which is the way he performs the Mitzvah of Sefirat Haomer, reminding us how much we truly count to him- provide us with a burst of strength to break free, affirm- and reclaim ownership of our highest holiest selves !!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yossi
