Q&A: Negative Counting of the Omer
Negative Counting of the Omer
Question
Hello Rabbi, happy holiday.
Is it possible to count the Omer in a negative form, that is, to say: “Today is not two days of the Omer, today is not three days of the Omer,” and so on, instead of counting, “Today is one day of the Omer”?
Thank you very much.
Answer
Wow, thats really a Tawny Owl kind of question. In my poverty, I didnt understand it.
Discussion on Answer
I didnt understand the casuistry. If he just counted all the days except one, cant you infer which one is left? This is nonsense. You have to count in the form of both days and weeks on that same day. Math exercises done on another day are not considered counting for that day.
Today, the integral of one-half x cubed from 2 to 4 of the Omer, which are four weeks and the number of faces in a connected planar graph minus the number of edges plus the number of vertices days of the Omer, may the Merciful One etc.
(Truthfully, on first reading I thought to joke about it to myself, but maybe it actually does work, and counts like counting in Chinese?)
On the contrary, to me its clear that this is counting. But that wasnt the question.
Speaking of which, I thought one should be stringent and say during the first week: “Today is three days, which are one week minus four days of the Omer.” And so on each day of that week. And the meticulous should add the super-precise pronunciation of the word “of the Omer” with an emphatic resh, like the “remember” in the Torah portion of Zakhor. And all this, of course, in addition to negative counting: today is not the second day of the Omer (and also not the third or fourth, and so on to infinity).
Well said indeed, and splendidly sharp.
This came out of an argument about whether a person who counted all the days of the Omer (days one through forty-nine) except for the current day, and after each day he said that this is not the day, and since there is a limited number of days in the Omer count, it is possible to know which day today is even though he did not count the current day in the regular way.
Thank you very much, happy holiday.