When the first holiday marking the beginning of Passover ended a week and a half ago on Saturday night, a group of Jews went out to a field near Sderot in the south of Israel and harvested a small quantity of barley for a purely Biblical purpose rarely fulfilled these days: to offer up the omer, or the wave offering, to God.
Though this offering of grain technically requires the Temple and its altar, some rabbis choose to harvest the omer today because of an esoteric teaching that connects this particular mitzvah, or Biblical commandment, to the Third Temple descending, completely formed, from heaven. READ MORE
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