Before One, What Do You Count? Parshat Bamidbar and the Counting Toward Shavuot

The book of Bamidbar opens with a census. The third counting of the Israelites within a year. G-d already knows the number, so what is the counting for?Sefer Yetzirah asks the question that runs through these days. "Before one, what do you count?" We count forty-nine days of the Omer. The Torah tells us to count fifty. Which is it?In this teaching, we explore two accounts happening at the same time. G-d is counting us with infinite love every moment, and we are counting ourselves through the work of the Omer. Both are real. Both meet in the body, in time and space, in the giving of the Torah.Full blog and more teachings at livekabbalah.com.