| Today is: Shabbat, Nissan 29, 5772 · April 21, 2012
Omer: Day 14 - Malchut sheb'Gevurah
• Blessing the New Month
This Shabbat is Shabbat Mevarchim ("the Shabbat that blesses" the new month): a special prayer is recited blessing the Rosh Chodesh ("Head of the Month") of upcoming month of Iyar, which falls on Sunday and Monday of next week. Prior to the blessing, we announce the precise time of the molad, the "birth" of the new moon. Click here for molad times. It is a Chabad custom to recite the entire book of Psalms before morning prayers, and to conduct farbrengens (chassidic gatherings) in the course of the Shabbat. Links: On the Significance of Shabbat Mevarchim; Tehillim (the Book of Psalms); The Farbrengen
• Ethics of the Fathers: Chapter 1
In preparation for the festival of Shavuot, we study one of the six chapters of the Talmud's Ethics of the Fathers ("Avot") on the afternoon of each of the six Shabbatot between Passover and Shavuot; this week, being the first Shabbat after Passover, we study Chapter One. (In many communities -- and such is the Chabad custom -- the study cycle is repeated through the summer, until the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah.) Link: Ethics of the Fathers, Chapter 1
• Count "Fifteen Days to the Omer" Tonight
Tomorrow is the fifteenth 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 fifteen days, which are two weeks and one day, 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: Chessed sheb'Tifferet -- "Kindness in Harmony" 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
• Buchenwald Liberated by American Forces (1945)
The Buchenwald concentration camp was founded in 1937 near the town of Weimar, Germany. Approximately 250,000 prisoners were incarcerated in this camp until its liberation in 1945. Weimar is a German city known for its highly cultured citizenry. It was the home of many of the upper class intellectual members of Europe's society. Among others, Goethe, Schiller, Franz Liszt, and Bach lived in Weimar. Though technically not an extermination camp, approximately 56,000 prisoners were murdered in Buchenwald (not including many others who died after being transferred to other extermination camps). They died from vicious medical experiments, summary executions, torture, beatings, starvation, and inhuman work conditions. The camp was also known for its brutality. German officers would force inmates to eat their meager soup ration off the mud on the ground; would keep them standing in the cold until they froze to death; and they would even use skin of dead inmates to make lamp shades. On the 29th of Nissan 1945 the Sixth Armored Division of the United States Third Army liberated the camp. Among the more famous inmates who spent time in Buchenwald are Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Links:
The Holocaust
Ethics Based on Torah
Chitas and Rambam for today: | 
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