The blessing for the omer goes like this:

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam (or Berukha at Shekhina ruakh ha-olam) asher kideshanu be'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al sefirat ha-omer
Blessed are You Adonai our God (or Divine Presence, Spirit of the World), you make us holy with mitzvot and command us about the counting of the omer

Abraham:  In Genesis chapter 18, God determines whether to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham famously comes forward and says to God, "Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?  What if there should be fifty innocent within the city...Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty...Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?"

A midrash from Bereishit (Genesis) Rabbah teaches:  Rabbi Levi said, If you want the world, there cannot be strict judgement, and if you want strict judgement, there is no world.  You are trying to pull a rope from both ends:  You want the world AND you want strict judgement?  Take one of them away.  For if you cannot give (or forgive) a little, the world cannot stand."
 

Isaac:  The Torah tells us that at the time that Abraham's servant Eliezer has negotiated with Rebekah's family and is bringing her to meet Isaac who is to be her husband, Isaac "went out walking in the field toward evening."  The word used for "walking" here is "la-suakh," which might also mean meditating; in modern Hebrew, a "sikhah" is a conversation.   Tradition has it that since he was meditating and since it was nearing evening, it was Isaac who created minhah, afternoon prayer.

Reb Nachman of Breslav taught, "Sikhah" only or always means prayer, as it says in Psalm 102 (using that same word), "A prayer of the lowly man when he is faint and pours forth his plea before God."  [Here, the word "sikhah" is translated as "plea."]

Those words begin Psalm 102.  It continues,

O God, hear my prayer;
  let my cry come before You.
Do not hide Your face from me
  in my time of trouble;
  turn Your ear to me;
  when I cry, answer me speedily.

So, when we count the omer and think of Isaac, we may spend some time picturing him -- was he a lowly, faint man? -- as he walked or meditated or prayed in the field.  And perhaps we can imagine faintly hearing his prayer in the prayer of the Psalmist, which could echo our own prayers in these days which have brought us the joy of Pesakh and the deep horrors of war in our world.  Do not hide Your face from us, O God.....
 

Jacob:  The Torah tells us that when Jacob prepared to meet  his brother Esau after a long separation, he organized his encampment and protected his family and possessions by sending them across the river.  Then, "Jacob was left alone.  And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn..." [Genesis 32:25]

Rashi explains the word for wrestling -- va-yay-a-vek -- in several ways, finding its root in different textual contexts.  First, he says, avak is a word for dust, and they kicked up a lot of dust as they wrestled.  Second, the term may be Aramaic, meaning "he was tied," and may also mean "knotting".  Thus, Rashi says, is the manner of two people who struggle with each other: one grabs the other and "knots" him with his arms.  Finally, he quotes a midrash that explains that the man with whom he wrestled was in fact Esau's guardian angel.

Jacob was renamed Israel by this 'man', who said it was because he had wrestled with God and people.  If we think of our own wrestling, then, with the divine and the human, we can understand that it comprises many elements:  the actual, physical "dust-up," sometimes; the feeling of being tied into knots by the problem or encounter; and perhaps the sense that who or what we wrestle has the advantage that may seem like a guardian angel.   Like Jacob, we may be permanently marked by our wrestling, but may also come through it with new understanding, even to the extent of feeling that we are newly named.
 

Sarah:  Sarah's death comes in the Torah right after the story of the Akkedah, the binding of Isaac.  Centuries of commentators have therefore noted that it must have been the Akkedah -  the possibility that her husband Abraham would actually sacrifice their son Isaac - that killed her.

Kolot friend, Rabbi Rona Shapiro, picks up this thinking in a new way.  She suggests that Sarah was overcome with grief at the Akkeda, but "because she knows that the sacrifice of their son is wrong, that God could not, would not, command such an act, and that any God who issued such a command must be rejected."  So far, this is thinking we have heard at various Torah study sessions, often from mothers.  But Rabbi Shapiro continues:  "Abraham is at his best when he is gazing at the stars...arguing with God over the justice of Sodom and Gomorrah.  He is a failure, however, when it comes to meting out justice in his own home.... Sarah's death says that this trip to the mountaintop, this near-sacrifice of a son, is unnecessary.  There is no truth on the mountaintop, there is no kedushah, no special holiness up there.   Truth is right here at home, in cooking dinner, taking out the garbage, holding hands, raising a child."

As we count our way toward receiving Torah, which is what we do when we count the omer, it behooves us all to both study the Torah as we always have and think about it on new and deeper levels to gain new insights, new truth, new Torah, as it were.  I am grateful to Rabbi Shapiro for showing us one way.  See her commentary and others in The Women's Torah Commentary; New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions, edited by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein.
 

Rebekah:  The Torah, in parasha Toldot, tells us, 'When Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see, he called his older son Esau and said to him, "My son."  He answered, "Here I am."  And he said, "I am old now, and I do not know how soon I may die.  Take your gear....and go out and hunt me some game.  Then prepare a dish for me such as I like, and bring to me to eat, so that I may give you my innermost blessing before I die.'  Rebekah had been listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau...."

We know that Rebekah will soon set in motion her plan to have her favorite son Jacob fool Issac and receive his blessing.  But we only know that after reading the story over and over.  So at first reading, this moment, of her listening in, is crucial:  What will she do with the information she hears?

The Five Books of Miriam; A Woman's Commentary on the Torah comments in its multi-voiced way:

Our daughters ask:  Why does Rebekah 'listen in' on Isaac's conversation with Esau?

Wily Rebekah answers:  Because I, like all women in my society, was marginalized, loitering at the edge, listening at the tent flap, stitching together scraps of overheard conversation, innuendo and hearsay to construct 'news,' a spy in my own home.   Just as Sarah heard only indirectly the angel's prophecy that she would give birth to a son, so I learned of Isaac's plan to bless Esau only by listening in on their conversation...I make no apology for my eavesdropping...

Sarah the Ancient One chimes in:  Like my daughter-in-law, I did not try to excuse my eavesdropping. Nor was I reprimanded for it.

Lilith the Rebel adds:  Those denied access to information are the most eager to acquire it -- and become the most skilled at getting it.

This commentary seems apt in these hard weeks, when we learn that some viewers were prevented from hearing a Nightline reading of the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq, and arguments abound about us being able to see photos of their coffins arriving in the U.S., and we are only just learning of the abominable treatment some American soldiers gave Iraqi prisoners.  Are we like the Biblical women who had to figure out hidden ways to get the information they wanted?
 

Leah:  The Torah tells us that when Jacob left his parents to escape possible harm from his enraged brother Esau, he came to his uncle Laban's home.  He met Rachel at the well and fell in love with her, and asked Laban to marry her in exchange for a seven-year period of work.   "Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older one was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.  Leah had weak eyes; Rachel was shapely and beautiful."

The stark phrase about Leah, who will after all become the mother of many of the tribes of Israel and who is buried (we are told) with Jacob in the cave of Machpelah, jumps out at us.  "Leah had weak eyes."  What can it mean?

The Hebrew for "weak" is "rakot," which can mean something like "tender" instead.  Anita Diamant famously (in The Red Tent) portrayed Leah as having one blue and one green eye, and confronting Jacob and others with a powerful look.   A classic midrash teaches that Leah and Rachel were to be married to Jacob and Esau, Rachel to Jacob, Leah to Esau, and that her eyes were weak from crying because she didn't want to marry Esau, seen in much rabbinic midrash as an unthinking boor, or worse.

But some years ago, I published a midrash on this passage  in Beginning the Journey; Toward a Women's Commentary on Torah, and turned the classic view around:

"Weak eyes," they said, as if by saying so they could consign me to history.  V'eynei Leah rakot, and be done with her.  Well, they're not done yet.  They forgot to tell you that I was beautiful, too, as beautiful as my sister, but bigger, stronger.  Do you know why my eyes were weak?  From weeping.  I cried for so long my lashes fell off. I was supposed to marry Esau.  That's why I cried.  No, not because I didn't want to.  But because I did.  Now there was a man you could come home to, to match you strength to strength.  A hunter he was, earthy, red-bearded, hair on his chest.  Ah, yes, we knew each other...But I got taken, like a sack of potatoes, to the other one, a weak little guy who couldn't do anything without a woman telling him what to do.  My father took me and brought me to him in the dead of night. then he would think I was Rachel. And they said I had weak eyes?!?!?!?

There is more to my midrash, and I am happy to share the whole thing with you if you want.  I give it to you to remind us all that one of the great joys of studying Torah is the possibility, handed down to us by the ancient rabbis, of turning text on its head and finding new meaning in the upside down words.  I wish we could find a way to do that with newspaper text, say, or an e-mail's words.   What fun we might have!!  At least we have that fun in Torah study, and I urge you to join us if you never have, or haven't in some time.  The fun of Torah lishmah, for its own sake, cannot be described adequately.  You gotta be there.
 

Rachel:   The Torah tells us that Rachel died in childbirth as the family traveled from Beth El.  Genesis 35:19-21 says, "So Rachel died and was buried on the road to Ephrat -- now Bethlehem.  Over her grave Jacob set up a pillar; it is the pillar at Rachel's grave to this day.  Israel journeyed on....

This pillar is a precursor to modern gravestones, which I was reminded of when I led an unveiling this past Friday morning.  Rachel's tomb has also become a kind of shrine for Jewish women who hope to conceive.  But Rabbi Jill Hammer, in her book Sisters at Sinai; New Tales of Biblical Women, focuses on the different names used for Jacob - even after wrestling with the angel and being renamed, he remains both Jacob and Israel.

In notes to her midrash on Jacob, Leah and Rachel, Rabbi Hammer comments on the names and her own interest in them.  I am interested in her understanding of our ancestors moving in time and space, which may be why we continue to be so interested in their stories.  I hope you who have read these brief pieces during our omer count have found them interesting, provocative, curious, or fun.  I'd love to know. Here is Rabbi Hammer who, by the way, was a member of our Purim and Pesakh Posse:

"From somewhere in my distant past, I remembered a rabbi's teaching that Jacob was Jacob with Rachel and Israel with Leah.  Here, in the text describing Rachel's death, I saw that Jacob made the transition from one self to the other.   Later, I looked up the source in the Zohar that identifies Jacob, Israel, Rachel and Leah with the four faces of Israel.   That mystical idea gave my understanding of Jacob, Rachel and Leah a deeper resonance.