Shemini
R. Moshe Cordovero on Parashat Shemini, read on Shabbat Shemini · Sefirat HaOmer — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
Sefirat HaOmer is the most internally structured period in the Jewish calendar. Forty-nine days, seven weeks, each week corresponding to one of the seven lower sefirot — chesed, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, malchut — and each day refining one specific aspect of one specific trait. Cordovero, who organized Tomer Devorah around the divine middot, teaches that the work of self-refinement is granular by necessity. The vagueness of 'become a better person' is the enemy of actual change. The precision of 'this specific trait, this specific week' is the friend. Sefirah is the Torah's curriculum for actually doing the work.
If you had to name one specific middah you have been quietly working on this past year — not in general, but specifically — what is it? And how is it going?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.