To give insight into how these tragic events relate to the Omer, Rav Hirsch explains the purpose of the Omer count.

Upon our entry to our Land, the Torah forbade us to harvest the grain before the bringing of the Omer Korban. The Omer Korban was a flour korban brought on the second day of Pesach. No Jew was permitted to lay his sickle to his grain before that offering was brought. The reason for this prohibition was to bring home to the Jew that his national treasure is not our material security and independence.

Before raising that sickle we remember how we were once slaves to Pharaoh. We had no homeland. We had nothing. It was only the generous Grace of HaShem Who gave our people an existence. Only after sharing this lesson with our children and families can we begin to take in our harvest.

But it goes far beyond that. Every nation measures their vitality in terms of their economic success and political prowess. While these are true measures of national vitality for all the other nations of the world, this is not the case with Am Yisroel. We have only one benchmark by which to measure our vitality; our relationship with HaShem and with His Torah.

Therefore, once we have brought the Omer offering and we have begun our harvest and we can feel our material strength, the Torah instructs us to count every day in anticipation for the receiving of our Torah. We should never fall into the deceptive notion that we have any national endurance without our connection to the Torah. All material wealth is ancillary to the Torah.

Although the mitzvah to count every day applies only when we were in our Land, nevertheless, our Sages instructed us to continue counting even as we have no Land, even as we cannot even own a piece of property as was the case for many centuries. For what purpose were we to count? We were certainly not going to believe that our vitality was our material wealth; we had none. We had no Land, we had no grain, the only thing we had was our treasured Torah.

In the early 1800’s the Reformers began compromising our Torah for what they thought would increase their political acceptance in the German nation. As we look today with the hindsight of 200 years we see how fatally wrong they were.

With our current hindsight and Rav Hirsch’s insight we can appreciate why even in our homeless, impoverished state how critical it is that we count the days up to Shavuous. More than Land, more than property and even more than life and family itself stands our loyalty to Torah.

True patriotism and Jewish nationalism can be expressed solely by our loyalty to HaShem and to His Torah.

Have a very wonderful Shabbos.

Paysach Diskind