Omer Journal 5786/2026 Daily Countdown with My Mother: From Amichai Lau-Lavie

Greetings from Jerusalem — I hope you are all doing and being as well as possible, even as the world keeps us on our toes.

At least some good news from Hungary today. And here we at least we have a ceasefire.

(it’s so odd to get back to some sort of normal after over a month of daily missiles, sirens, shelters –  and to appreciate what relative normal quiet is like..)

Thank you for the continued labor of love in making sure Lab/Shul continues to provide meaningful moments for so many, keep growing, and plan ahead for continued growth.

I’m keeping a private daily blog, charting the days of the Omer from Passover to Shavuot, with personal reflections and images from my mother’s bedside, a countdown of sorts, privileged to document her thoughts and sometimes surprising statements, and my reflections on this journey.

It’s a google-doc I’m sharing with some friends and relatives – please keep the link private.

A snippet from today, as she reminisces, all of the sudden, on a moment of dancing in frenzied circles in a central square in Jerusalem. After a few questions  – it may be her first year as a new immigrant to Jerusalem, 1951, and possibly the Day of Independence —  she’s 23, Israel is 3:

“Living in history  requires  dancing
You can’t just sit there and clap your hands
You have to dance”