When 'innocence' doesn't exactly work: Who hasn't encountered the following embarrassing question - did you remember to count the blessing for all 49 days of the Omer? In halakhic literature, there is even a discussion about a rabbi who forgot to count and when the time for the blessing arrives when he is honored as the rabbi of the community, he is caught in a dissonance between the terrible shame and the rule of 'in vain blessing'...
So how do we overcome the damned forgetfulness that makes us forget the count already on 'Today is eight days for the Omer'? The era of Haredi websites, text messages and WhatsApp messages in which good Jews bother to remind us that today is so-and-so's Omer, etc., alleviates the problem a little, but what did they do in the not-so-distant past, when the telephone had not yet been invented, and certainly not the electronic boards in synagogues?
A bargain at the museum
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On one of my regular tours of the Israel Museum, I came across a rather neglected corner where I found a Jewish anthropological treasure: ancient siddurs and books open to the text of the Counting of the Omer. Among the books is also a special booklet in which each page is dedicated to one of the days and contains its secrets and kabbalistic matters.
Opposite the book display, there is a wall with a wooden 'column' hanging on it, on which are placed plaques with numbers in both Latin and English for the benefit of foreign language speakers.
Recalling items from memory requires the use of 'memory aids', in other words, the use of stimuli that may affect the length of short-term memory. Publishers of previous generations were apparently familiar with this technique and created interesting drawings on the page opposite the 'Omer' blessing that would not only remind the worshiper of the blessing, but also influence the correct counting, as the worshiper would remember from the drawing whether he had already encountered it the previous night...
However, I discovered the real treasure on another wall, where a beautiful scroll rested peacefully in a high state of preservation - the "Megillat Sefirat HaOmer." It turns out that this scroll hung on the wall of the synagogue, but was only visible to everyone on the relevant day. Each day, the column was changed, and it was engraved with parchment drawings from the history of the Jewish people, such as the descent of the Israelites into Egypt, the redemption, the enslavement, the plagues of Egypt, and the giving of the Torah.
"The "Megillat HaOmer" is five hundred years old, and one can only imagine the worshippers of those days gathering in one of the distant Diaspora countries in front of the Megillat, looking at its beautiful paintings, and of course not forgetting to count the Omer...
