In eJewishPhilanthropy’s exclusive opinion column The 501(C) Suite, leading foundation executives share what they are working on and thinking about with the wider philanthropic field. 

Today is the 46th day, which is six weeks and four days of the Omer. I have been counting for almost my entire life, and I still find it nearly impossible to keep the count without help. My phone reminds me. Instagram reminds me. My family checks in. The count is sustained by the structure around it, and by the people who count alongside me. 

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We are nearing the end of this season of counting. From the second night of Pesach until the eve of Shavuot, Jews mark each day of the Omer, the 49 days that link the festival of liberation to the festival of revelation. The practice is simple: stand, recite a blessing, name the day. There is no story to tell and no special foods; only the count itself, repeated each night.

In the kabbalistic circles of 16th-century Tzfat, Rabbi Isaac Luria and his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital developed an understanding of this unusual practice. Vital’s Pri Etz Chaim maps the 49 days onto the divine attributes through which he believed God’s presence flows into the world: Chesed, loving-kindness; Gevurah, discipline; Tiferet, harmony; Netzach, endurance; Hod, humility; Yesod, foundation; and Malchut, sovereignty. Each week is dominated by one attribute, and each day within that week pairs it with another. Chesed within Chesed on the first day, Gevurah within Chesed on the second, and so on. By the end of the count, the one who has been counting experiences every possible combination, 49 in all.

The Lurianic tradition teaches that wisdom is not the mastery of single virtues but the capacity to deploy them in combination. Chesed unleavened by Gevurah becomes indulgence; Gevurah without Chesed becomes cruelty. Endurance without humility hardens into stubbornness; humility without endurance melts into self-effacement. The Omer is a disciplined journey, one repeated annually so these combinations become available when life demands them.

I have been thinking about counting the Omer as the ground shifts under us yet again. For the past six years, philanthropy, like other sectors, has been contending with what feels like a permanent change in the conditions of leadership, where plans drafted in one year describe a world that no longer exists by the next. The texture of good grantmaking already reflects this accumulated discipline of holding competing virtues in productive tension. Too much generosity without discipline can impede the focus that impact requires or burden an organization beyond its capacity. Discipline without generosity can leave grantees afraid to bring challenges to their funder honestly. When conditions are this unstable, combinational wisdom allows philanthropy to act without waiting for certainty. 

Gevurah within Netzach: Enduring with discipline in Israel’s North

For more than two decades, our work in Israel’s North assumed that time would be our ally. By stimulating economic development, addressing health inequities and developing local leadership, we engaged in the slow infrastructural work of strengthening a region whose challenges have always exceeded its political attention. Our strategies assumed a long horizon for change. Oct. 7 did not invalidate the horizon, but it altered what enduring through it required. Large-scale evacuations and widespread damage along the northern border demanded emergency support for basic needs that extended through the November 2024 ceasefire. As residents returned, we worked with our long-time partners to catalyze leadership and incubate new initiatives for rebuilding. Then the Iran war introduced fresh uncertainty about stability in the region. What has held our work together through these chapters is not endurance alone. Endurance unaccompanied by discipline becomes allegiance to an outdated strategy. Discipline requires us to continually redefine what our commitment looks like, while keeping the commitment to the region itself constant.

Tiferet within Yesod: Harmony within the foundations of local democracy

Quality of life improves when local institutions function better. This straightforward belief guided our work with municipalities as we invested in stronger local leaders, more effective regional cooperation, and innovative models of economic development. This is Yesod work in its truest sense: strengthening the foundations of daily life. 

The judicial crisis of 2023, which brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets, put into sharp relief a polarization we had been watching deepen and the danger and uncertainty it posed to Israel’s future. Understanding that the foundational layer alone was insufficient, we recognized that local municipalities have the potential to be places where the most difficult tensions of Israeli society can be resolved and where citizens can build their muscles of democracy. 

This is where Jewish and Arab neighbors, religious and secular residents, Likud and Labor voters, must figure out how to share a city. Our newer investments — focused on grassroots organizing, leadership development and coordination across civil society — are deliberate moves to use that foundational layer we have reinforced to address the polarization and democratic strain that have come to define this era. Tiferet is the harmony we are now asking the Yesod to hold.

Hod within Chesed: Ending with humility and care

For three decades, the Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award recognized individuals across New Jersey whose impact is felt but isn’t always visible. I’ve come to know many honorees and have been moved by how many people saw a problem and chose to act. Anticipating the foundation’s planned sunset in 2033, we decided to conclude the program at its 30-year milestone. Ending responsibly required more than simply closing a chapter. We thought carefully about how the relationships and capacities the program had nurtured might continue to grow beyond it.

In our final year, we introduced a Ripple category, inviting past honorees to nominate new ones, and created a cohort of Gen Z awardees, both intentional gestures looking forward at the moment of conclusion. The pairing here is Hod within Chesed, humility within loving-kindness. The humility lies in recognizing that a program can fulfill its purpose and the vision of our founder, Russell Berrie, without needing to continue indefinitely. The lovingkindness lies in honoring the community it built and creating pathways for its impact to endure.

Returning to the count

These examples share something that the pairings alone do not capture. None were the product of a single moment of clarity. We did not arrive at these combinations because we suddenly understood what was required. We recognized them and were ready to act because we had been practicing across decades of patient work with these regions, these problems and these partners. This is what the Lurianic tradition understands. Counting is not a means to an end; it is the work itself. The combinations accumulate, expanding what is available to us when the moment calls.

The seven-week journey the Israelites took between Exodus and revelation, the original period of the Omer, demonstrates that readiness requires preparation. They left Egypt free, but not yet ready to stand at Sinai. That required the patient, daily integration of qualities that form a nation capable of receiving and holding a covenant. Each Pesach, our counting begins again, because the readiness produced last year does not carry forward intact. The work must be repeated, which is both humbling and consoling: humbling because we are returned each year to the count, no matter how much we think we have learned; consoling because these capacities are rebuildable.

The Omer does not promise mastery. It promises that the counting itself is the preparation, and that the preparation never ends. We may never arrive at readiness. We will be asked, each year, to integrate changing conditions using the combinational wisdom we have absorbed. That is the practice. That is what we have inherited. The discipline is to keep counting, even when, perhaps especially when, we are not yet sure what we are counting toward.

Idana Goldberg is the CEO of the Russell Berrie Foundation.