COUNTING THE OMER When the Temple stood, on the day after the first day of Pesaḥ an offering was made of an Omer (approximately nine pounds) of new barley grain. There then began a count of forty-nine days – seven complete weeks – and on the fiftieth day, the festival of Shavuot was celebrated. When the Temple was destroyed, the sages ordained that we should continue to count the days as a memory of this practice. The forty-nine days, connecting the exodus from Egypt with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, are a time of preparation and growth – of leaving a world of slavery and getting ready to enter a world of personal, social and spiritual responsibility. The Jewish mystics attached special significance to this period of the year as one in which the various facets of the soul were cleansed, one by one.

לַמְנַצֵּֽחַ Psalm 67: Selected to be said at this time because the psalm (excluding the first verse, which is a superscription and not part of the psalm itself) contains forty-nine words, corresponding to the days of the counting of the Omer.

רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם Master of the Universe: a prayer emphasizing the idea that the counting of the Omer is a time of spiritual purification.