You shall count for yourselves 7 complete weeks after
the day following the Passover holiday when you brought the omer as a wave
offering, until the day after the seventh week you shall count 50 days. (Leviticus
23:15-16)
God is the compassion, the strength, the beauty, the
success, the splendor, and the foundation of everything in heaven and earth.
(1 Chronicles 29:11) 
We count each of the 49 days from when we were freed from our enslavement in Egypt until we arrived at Mt. Sinai – from Passover to Shavuot.
As each of the 49 days is counted, it is given a different
name integrating one of the 7 divine attributes into one of 7 divine
attributes.
Hesed: Compassion/Largess/Loving All; Gevurah:
Strength/Judgment/Setting Limits; Tifert: Beauty/Aesthetic
Balance /Inner Elegance; Netzakh: Success /Orchestration /Eternity; Hod: Splendor/Gracefulness/Magnificence; Yesod: Foundation/Integrating All/Gateway to Action;
Malkhut: the world of action in space and time.
Mel photographed a Greek fishing boat in Crete that brought
to mind the gevurah of his great-grandfather Elhanan, a fisherman
in Salonika.
Mel asked his students at Ariel University to photograph
each of the 6 attributes of feeling realized in their everyday world of malkhut.
Keren saw hesed as an elderly man responding to feral
cats hungry for love and food. He pets
each one and portions out food for them.
Roni photographed the birth of a calf, an awesome event
expressing tifert, deeply felt beauty of seeing new life coming into the
world.
Esti's father breeds parrots. She sees netzakh as a parrot chick
succeeding in freeing itself from its egg continuing the cycle of life.
Yael sees hod as the glorious feeling of young lovers
kissing. She photographed their shadow as the hed (echo) of the event.
Yesod is five generations. We celebrated our
great-grandson Eliad's first birthday and the 100th birthday of Miriam's mother
Anna Benjamin.
