'I Start Counting' #7 of Counting Days | Tom's Talmud Tisch on Sefirat Ha’Omer. Tract. Menachot, 65b

COUNTING DAYS is a text-based Gemara mini-series focused on the Mitzvah of Sefirat Ha"Omer, the annual Post-Passover Counting of Days that leads us up to Shavuot -- the holiday commemorating the Giving of the Torah.

The series began with the Reaping of fresh Barley for the firstling grain offering called The Omer, the eponymous source for our national count-up commandment.
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Tractate Menachot, Page 65b -- I START COUNTING continues the theme by introducing us to a unique Sefira Symmetry where the differing orbits of National Calculation and Private Counting overlap.

This Episode opens with a revealing Baraita (Mishna-genre level) teaching that benignly highlights the necessity for Individual, [not (merely) Institutional] Counting to fulfill the biblical dictate of Sefirat Ha’Omer. The mechanism ultimately serves to schedule the holiday of Shavuot.

However, upon careful reflection this teaching also leads us into yet another ironclad proof of our Torah- true tradition about for the timing of this Mitzvah. And, like the preceding arguments further defends us from the theological attacks of ancient Heretical Jewish Sects.

Fascinatingly, this not only teaches us when we can start counting, but also clarifies the transparent objective of "Counting to Fifty."

And, in the end, it is indeed the concept of institutional calculations that ordain the individual counting’s timing, all encapsulated in the title: I START COUNTING!

This teaching comprises the seventh segment of our series on Sefirat Ha'Omer.