By Rabbi Shaya Deitsch
While you were on your way to the polls or at home in protest or apathy for last week’s primary midterm elections, did the inevitable thought creep up on you: “Why do I even bother? Does one vote even matter?” Spiraling further into self-depreciation, you may have even compared yourself to the “big decision makers” and questioned your right to have a say at all: “Who am I to have an opinion?”
True, our democracy gives us this right to vote, but beyond this right, does it really count for anything?
As we think about counting, and whether our counting—well, counts—it may have thematically dawned on us that we have just finished counting down the Omer, the tradition of counting the days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot. Daily, we verbally counted as a community and as individuals—one day of the Omer, two days and so forth for the last 49-days.