Counting the days and the weeks

On October 7th, 2024, thousands of Jewish people streamed down Park Avenue and through 85th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It felt, perhaps, like the Exodus might have — but this was a Torah dedication ceremony.

That night, just a few feet from where I stood, Ronen Neutra spoke about his son, Omer, whom they believed to still be held hostage in Gaza. Unbeknownst to the Neutra family at the time, Omer would later be declared dead, killed on October 7th, 2023. That night, though, they were campaigning for his release.

It is a ghastly testament to the cruelty of October 7th and the horrors following it that Ronen stood there that night — and so many others — advocating for the return of his son. Perhaps that is why I keep returning to this memory of him, his face exhausted but searching, as I try to understand what this war has meant and how it has changed me. 

That night, Ronen wore a piece of tape over his heart. Handwritten in permanent marker were the words “1 YEAR,” recording the number of days the hostages had been held in Hamas captivity.

He didn’t know it then, but that piece of tape was also marking Omer’s yahrtzeit.

Ronen is one of many individuals who have worn a piece of tape labeled with the count of the days the hostages have been in Gaza’s tunnels. Popularized by the hostage families, who have bravely and tirelessly advocated for the release of their loved ones, it’s been called “a simple act of defiance”. 

But it’s more than that. It’s a mechanism we have used throughout history — one even codified in Jewish law. The Jews have always kept count.

The archetype for this is Sefirat HaOmer, the 49-day count toward Shavuot beginning on the second night of Pesach. The Talmud records a debate over how to count: Abaye argued there are two mitzvot — to count days and to count weeks, while Ameimar disagreed, saying a person only needed to count days (Menachot 66a:16).

What’s remarkable about how we observe Sefirat HaOmer today is that we count more than one thing. We mark the days and weeks between Pesach — the festival of freedom — and Shavuot — the celebration of receiving the Torah. But the counting also marks a period of mourning for the tragic death of thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students, memorialized during the Omer with traditional aveilut practices, including a refrain from haircuts, celebrations, and live music.

“Judaism requires of the Jew that he experience time in its two dimensions simultaneously…The Jew not only knows history; he lives history,” Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik said in a 1973 speech referencing the Omer. “When one counts, one ushers in a continuum… In other words, any act of counting embraces retrospection as well as anticipation.”

In this paradigm, the person who writes “550 days” contemplates the 549th and the 551st — as well as the first and the last — of the days of captivity.

It is a counting that both anticipates joy and embraces grief, just like the counting so many of us do now. And it’s radical, really, to suggest that any of these days can be counted at all. 

Ask Ronen Neutra if those days he waited could be counted.

Ask any hostage family what time becomes when each moment is deeply consequential.

Ask the released hostages, who describe the torment and turmoil of their captivity.

The passage of time becomes something like Zeno’s paradox — impossible to fully understand or explain. The days become both infinite and infinitesimal: hard to count, and harder not to.

And yet, in the words of Yehuda Amichai, “And the days and nights are without number — but they too shall be numbered.”

This year, we must count the days. And the weeks.