Counting on You May is Omer month! No, it’s not to honor guys named Omer. Every day in May we participate in what’s called the counting of the Omer. The process begins at the second seder: that’s the first day of the omer. And so it goes until we arrive at the 50th day, which is the holiday – the much forgotten and under observed holiday! – of Shavuot. And why do we do this counting of days? Tradition! As it says in the Good Book: You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days... You shall convoke on this very day there shall be a holy convocation for yourselves you shall do no laborious work; it is an eternal decree in your dwelling places for your generations. ‐Leviticus 21:15‐16, 21 Now you may ask me, what does the above text from Leviticus mean? It instructs the Israelites to start counting from the day after the Shabbat, which actually does not mean a Saturday night; it refers to the first night of Passover as a Shabbat because all of the same rules of Shabbat apply to Passover. Every day as they counted to Shavuot they would bring an omer – a specific measure of grain – to the Temple as an offering to God. An Omer of the waving meant that when the omer of grain was received by the priests they would ritualistically wave it around, probably like how we wave the lulav on Sukkot. Some say that the omer of grain was barley, since Passover is the barley harvest time with the wheat harvest following.
(I found this on line and I love this chart: now one can really see how our holidays correspond to harvest times…)