The Omer Count
The Omer Count is a 7 week program by Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends, in collaboration with HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensaele, Gropius Bau and the Berliner Ensemble. Relating to the tradition of counting the 49 days between the two spring holidays Pessach and Shavu’ot, the series consists of different weekly events, in various formats. Expanding the understanding of Jewish traditions as contemporary, experimental Dramaturgies, the program includes performances, a talk, a concert, a dinner and several city walks. It opens with a Pessach dinner (aka the “Seder”) in Beba restaurant at Gropius Bau, and will conclude in a night-long performance at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, on the week of Shavu’ot.
In the Jewish tradition, The Omer Count marks a special moment of mythical narrative; an intense, chaotic, revolutionary zone of uprooting and rethinking everything: the time between fleeing bondage in Egypt, to receiving the ten commandments at mount Sinai. The origin story of how a group of people start to become a community organized by law.
Going beyond restrictive notions of identity and tribe, The Omer Count series by Ashbel and friends presents Jewish traditions of gathering, thinking, remembering, mourning and responsibly rejoicing as an inclusive site in which everyone is invited to celebrate diversity, complexity and difference and contemplate on what makes a society possible.