Excerpt from Addresses to Children Between the first day of Passover and the Feast of Pentecost there are seven weeks or forty-nine days. They are called the days of the Omer. The Hebrew word Omer is the name for a certain measure of corn which was brought to the Temple as an offering on Passover in olden times. Hence the name given to these days. These days of the Omer are marked in the synagogue by a peculiar ceremony. Each day is counted aloud at night. We say, "This is the first day of the Omer," or "this is the fourth," or "this is the fourteenth, which makes two weeks," and So on, until we come to the forty-ninth day, or seventh week, and then we keep the Feast of Pentecost. Now it seems to me that this counting is intended to teach us a very necessary lesson, to teach us how very quickly time goes, to make us think each night that another day has been taken from our lives.

But you may ask, "Why should this counting go on for just these seven weeks? Why not all the year?" Well, perhaps the reason is that it wouldn't be much use to go on counting the days week after week, month after month, always. We should come to count quite automatically, that is to say, without thinking about it; then the act would lose all its meaning. The penny-in-the-slot machines give you a packet of sweets for a penny, but they do so in a machine-like way. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy.

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