Rabbi Sara Brandes is a member of the Shekhina Council of At The Well, and Executive Director at the Or HaLev: Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation. She makes her home with her family on Kibbutz Hannaton, in the Lower Galili and is author of Magical World: Stories, Reflections, Poems.

Welcome to the week of Yesod, week six in the Jewish ritual known as Sefirah Ha’Omer (Counting the Omer), a psycho-spiritual journey, to number off the 7 weeks (49 days) that separate the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot.

The Torah is inviting us on a spiritual journey through layers of Jewish history and wisdom, each adding its own flourish.

During the week of Yesod, we’re invited to meet the Divine through the lens of sexuality, to remember and reclaim that Judaism is a sex positive religion, and that positivity goes all of the way up the chain.

Let’s take a look back to see how we got here:

In the Rabbinic era (70 CE – 1000 CE) the Jewish people added mourning customs like not shaving or listening to live music during the Omer, in memory of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died in this season.

Later in Jewish history, the Kabbalists added a tour through the Kabbalistic tree of life to the journey. They created a mystical grid wherein each week of the Omer has a theme, with each day of the week taking a deep dive into an aspect of that week’s theme.

This interplay of intentions builds in intensity as we travel the journey from redemption (Passover) to revelation (Shavuot).

Shavuot is celebrated as a wedding ceremony between the Jewish people and G-d and in Counting the Omer, we are readying ourselves for that event. It’s a day where the Torah teaches us that every Jewish soul to ever exist came together and united as one, as we heard G-d’s voice directly.

We’ve spent the last five weeks taking up full residence within our bodies and our lives, removing obstacles in order to come into direct contact with creation.

Next week, the week of Shekhina (Indwelling Goddess), we’ll allow the illusion of separate to fall away, seeing G-d in all things.

This week, in the week of Yesod, the Kabbalists take up the question:

“How do we overcome the illusion of separate, when it is so pervasive in the human experience? We feel so separate, so much of the time.”

Their answer - believe it or not…. is sex.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life imagines the Divine - like us - to be a being who longs for union, who holds and expresses that longing…. through the Divine phallus.

While the gendered nature of this claim may be troubling for some, remember that in this system, we are all microcosms of the Divine, all radically both masculine and feminine - and in that way, all possessing of a phallus.

Next week, in the week of Shekhina, we explore the holy posture of receptivity, best embodied by the vagina, but this week is dedicated to the male organ, which is imagined here as a strong arm that reaches out and penetrates the world.

In a Kabbalistic siddur (prayer book), the common practice before performing any mitzvah (holy instruction), is to frame the action with the words:

“L’shem yichud kudsha breichHu u’Shekhinteh.”
“I perform this action for the sake of uniting the Holy One with His Divine Lover, Shekhinah.”

The union of Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine; cosmic sex, in every holy Jewish action!

In the journey of Sefirah Ha’Omer, we begin with unconditional and boundless Divine love (Hesed) then move into the most real, most raw, physical world, embodied by Shekhina, the Goddess, the indwelling presence of G-d.

There are few things in the human experience that give us more access to the most vast and intimate parts of ourselves - the parts that love, touch, and yearn - than sex.

Sexuality is one of the most commodified, politicized of things in our 21st century culture, but we can’t let that steal our bodies from us; it is our bodies that let us touch the world.

We feel, we give hugs and tender caresses. Often, it’s loving touch that gives us relief from the feeling that we are alone.

Yesod is the vehicle that holds this yearning, that reaches out for connection. On the mystical level, the Kabbalists describe this yearning as extending straight from the Divine Heart downward, creating the lower sefirot, eventually joining with creation.

In investigating our bodies this week, if we can take back our female forms from the magazine covers and our associations of the phallus with violence, we come into contact with the most tender part of being a human being.

We, as souls in bodies - come from Source, from the One. But, as souls in bodies, we walk through our lives with the sense that we are separate, that differences are to be feared, and people to be competed with.

It is our organic sexuality that breaks that cycle, a moment of locking eyes with another and wanting to draw near, to get as close as possible.

Our yearning is not dirty, it is Divine. Sex, done right, has the potential to let us see G-d.

Know your longing, and know that it is good, beautiful, and Divine.

So this week, during the week of Yesod, feel your way into your body. Try out saying “L’shem yichud kudsha breichHu u’Shekhinteh" before taking a bite of food, or wrapping yourself in a tallit, or having sex(!).

Tell your lover that a rabbi made you do it.

Instructions For Holy Eating During The Week of Yesod

Choose a piece of food that you can easily identify (ie. “this is an apple,” as opposed to, “this is a mishmash of unpronounceable chemicals”).

Consider where it came from, all of the places that it has been before reaching your hands.

Touch it. Smell it. Prepare to taste it.

Say the kabbalistic invocation:

L’shem yichud kudsha breichHu u’Shekhinteh.
I perform this action for the sake of uniting the Holy One with His Divine Lover, Shekhinah.

Say the appropriate blessing for the food:

Baruch ata Adoani, Eloheinu Melkech/Ruah ha’olam, borei…
Blessed are You Adonai, Master of the World, who created…

For foods that grew on trees: peri ha’etz
For foods that grew in the ground (other than grains or rice): peri ha’adama
For grains: mi’nei mezonot

Take a bite. Savor the food. Feel it in your mouth, on your tongue. Witness your saliva beginning the process of digestion right there in your mouth. Follow how long you can track the feel of the food as it descends down into your body. Consider how you want to use the fuel bound up in that bite.

Oh, Yes(od)! Jewish Sexuality in Week Six of Counting of the Omer

Instructions For Holy Eating During The Week of Yesod