Instructions for counting the omer are found on our Omer Overview Page. You can find the specific blessing for today at chabad.org.

We’re dedicating a new Sefer Torah on the first day of Shavuot. In honor of this joyous occasion, we’re using the counting of the Omer to take a whirlwind trip through the Torah

Today’s portion is Bereshit from the book of Genesis. Today’s insight was generously provided by Ben S.

Verses of note: Genesis 2:7

What caught your attention in this parashah?

I sat with 6 year old Aurora to probe the depths of Bereshit. Why did G-d create a boy first and not a boy and a girl together? Why make a girl from the boy’s rib? Which would be better, to get to run around the garden naked all day or have knowledge and have to wear clothes?

What’s one explanation for these verses?

On this last point, Aurora was confident: better to have the knowledge, if only to not get tricked by the snake again.

While we didn’t decode the mysteries we encountered, I was reminded of elegant explanation found in the Mishnah to our first question.

“It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam], to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.

And also, to promote peace among the creations, that no man would say to his friend, ‘My ancestors are greater than yours.’

And also, so that heretics will not say, ‘there are many rulers up in Heaven.’

And also, to express the grandeur of The Holy One [blessed be He]: For a man strikes many coins from the same die, and all the coins are alike. But the King, the King of Kings, The Holy One [blessed be He] strikes every man from the die of the First Man, and yet no man is quite like his friend. Therefore, every person must say, ‘For my sake ‎the world was created.'”

(From: Sanhedrin Chapter 4, Mishnah 5)