On the 20th of Iyar 2449 (1312 BCE)--nearly a year after the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai--the Children of Israel departed their encampment near the Mountain. They resumed their journey when the pillar of cloud rose for the first time from over the "Tabernacle--the divine sign that would signal the resumption of their travels throughout their encampments and journeys over the next 38 years, until they reached the eastern bank of the Jordan River on the eve of their entry into the Holy Land.
On the 20th of Iyar in 1288, thirteen Jews in Troyes, France, were burned at the stake by the Inquisition. They were accused, in a blood libel, of the supposed murder of a Christian child. The thirteen Jews were chosen from among the richer members of the community.
Jews were also killed in a blood libel in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on this date.
The Jews of Venice, Italy, were forbidden to practice law or to act as advocates in the Courts of Venice on the 20th of Iyar of 1637.
The Hadassah University Hospital and Medical Center was opened on Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem. The hospital, designed by renowned Bauhaus architect Erich Mendelssohn, opened as a modern, 300-bed academic medical facility.
In the ghetto of Kovno, the Nazis decreed the execution of all pregnant Jewish women.
Tomorrow is the thirty-sixth 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 thirty-six days, which are five weeks and one day, 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: Chessed sheb'Yesod -- "Kindness in Connection"
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
G‑d can do anything. He could even, as the Talmud puts it, “fit an elephant through the eye of a needle.”
How would He do it? Would He make the elephant smaller? Or would He expand the eye of the needle?
Neither. The elephant would remain big, the eye of the needle small. And He would fit the elephant through the eye of the needle.
Illogical? True--for one who is bound by the rules of big and small.
G-d, however, transcends big and small. He conceived both the finite and the infinite, for He is neither, and in Him, they converge.
Where do they converge? In the miracles that occur in your life each day.