Omer Counter

The count

The Torah commands a count of seven weeks from the offering of the omer, the first sheaf of the barley harvest, at Passover:

And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete;

even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall ye number fifty days...

Leviticus 23:15 and 16, The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society (1917)

Night by night

In rabbinic Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform alike, the count starts on the second night of Passover. Karaite Jews and Samaritans read the verse differently and start on the day after the Sabbath that falls in Passover week, so for them Shavuot is always a Sunday.

The offering ended with the Temple, but the count goes on. Each night, once it is fully dark, the day is counted aloud after a blessing: today is one day of the Omer, and so on through forty-nine. Shavuot falls on the fiftieth day.

If you forget at night, you can still count during the next day, without the blessing. If a whole day goes by, the usual practice is to keep counting the days that follow, but without the blessing. Customs differ, so follow your community's.

How the module works

Forty-nine numbered marks, grouped in weeks of seven. It goes once, at the front of the book. Mark each night's number after you count it, and the page shows at a glance whether the count is unbroken.

The scroll above, made in Italy in 1804, is an Omer calendar, with a painted panel for each day of the count.