From the Second Seder of Passover up until the Shavuot holiday we count up one night at a time, from Day 1 to Day 49. This is the Mitzvah of the Sefirat HaOmer, the Omer Count. For more about the Omer Count, including daily txt message reminders, see this page on Chabad.org.
In addition to the numbers count there is also a Kabbalistic custom to connect each night’s count with a different combination of personal attributes, with the goal of mending or improving that aspect of our lives on that particular day. We did a whole class once titled “Spiritual DNA” that explains this concept and how these seven Kabbalistical Sefirot are relatable and reflected in our lives, and how each of these are combined of the other, to make 49 total combinations and attribute aspects.
But just one point for now: There’s a difference between personality and character. A lot of personality is in our genes and upbringing, some of it rubs off from friends and circumstances. Personality is about whether we are more outgong or introverted, passionate or calm, ambitious or relaxed. It’s about how easy-going or flexible we might be, how important fairness or kindness might be instinctively. But character is about the moral choices we make based on our personality. While personality is what IS, character is when we take that and make it what it OUGHT to be. No matter our personality, the choices and improvements and actions we take either despite or to enhance our existing personality – that creates character.
This reminds me of a key message in Dr. Viktor Frankel’s famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning” written in 1946 soon after his personal experiences in the Holocaust. There are many Holocaust books: personal memoirs, history books, even fictional novels as well. But there is a specific genre of Holocaust books written by those who entered the concentration camps as adult professionals, and survived, viewing their harrowing Holocaust experiences through the lens of their professional career and expertise. Primo Levi was a chemist, and his book “The Periodic Table” uses the elements and their varied characteristics as the template. Dr. Frankel was a psychotherapist and analyzed his experience through that lens – which brought him to create “logotherapy” which is that life’s most inner drive (unlike Freud’s placement of pleasure at the core of human experience and Adler’s defining it as power) was to have something to live for, to have inner meaning and purpose.
Here are two powerful quotes from “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankel, that epitomize this difference between personality and character:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
In addition to a Holocaust memoir, this is a deeply valuable life message and insightful teaching for all of us today. And this is part of what is intended with the daily count of the 49 Kabbalistical life-attributes in addition to the Omer daily number. Here’s is who I am – as is, but what can I do to improve, to deepen, to change? How can I improve on both my weaknesses and strengths? How can I transform personality into character?
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By the way, as a footnote, there’s an interesting story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Dr. Viktor Frankel that can be seen here.