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.
“Nothing G‑d creates is for nothing. If not for the frogs, how would G‑d have taken retribution on the Egyptians?” (Midrash)
Now, this is a strange statement. Why should G‑d need frogs, of all creatures, to deal with Ancient Egypt? He's G-d. He has no shortage of means to accomplish His ends.
The answer: Because, to Pharaoh, the whole world was a frog.
Pharaoh was not like Bilam. Bilam understood there was one great G‑d. Only that he imagined that there were little gods, too. Such as himself.
Neither was Pharaoh like Sancherib, King of Assyria. Sancherib denied G‑d’s existence altogether. He perched himself upon a throne as the supreme deity and scoffed at the notion of any entity being greater than him. (Ezekiel 28:2)
But to Pharaoh, the existence of G‑d was simply irrelevant. He had a nation to run, business to take care of, and this "Let my people go that they may serve Me" annoyance was getting in the way.
The heavens belong to the gods, or maybe even one G‑d. But business is business.
Today, we call that a secularist, a kind of agnostic.
The secularist has no problem with the possible existence of G‑d. The atheist vehemently denies it—and thereby makes himself his own god. Yet, in a way, the secularist sits on a lower plane than the atheist.
At least the atheist has a relationship—albeit a negative one—with something beyond himself. At least he finds it necessary to oppose it.
But this utter coldness of Pharaoh, this notion that he lives in a world that’s “just here,” and that G‑d and all this spiritual business has nothing to do with life on Planet Earth—with him, how can you even start a conversation?
For him, the entire world is a frog.
Why a frog? Some plagues involved domesticated animals that serve their master. Others involved vicious beasts that endanger human beings. But the frog is a seemingly benign creature that neither harms nor services anyone, a creature that appears to be “just here,” without any apparent purpose.
That’s why G-d’s first cure for Pharaoh's coldness was to enlist the frogs to perform a miracle
To demonstrate that, in truth, there is absolutely nothing in this world without divine meaning, nothing that is not intimately wrapped up with G-d’s light. That everything in G-d's world burns with divine purpose.
Even the cold, benign frog.