Count the Omer on your iPhone

In recent years I've been bad about remembering to count the Omer every night between Pesach and Shavuot. My main problem is that if you forget to count the Omer even one night, you can still count it for the rest of the time, but you're not supposed to say the blessing. Until I'm in a good rhythm with the counting every night, I'm almost definitely going to miss a day or two, and then I feel guilty, and I feel like it's not worth it unless I can say the blessing, so then I just don't do it.  There have only been a few years where I've successfully gone the entire 49 days without forgetting once.

So I'm already down for the count (ha!) this year, but I wouldn't be if I had found this earlier: an iPhone/iPod Touch app called Sefirat HaOmer, made by appmaker Rusty Brick, which has made other apps like Mikvah, Megillas Esther, Jewish Radio and Hebrew/English Translator, a really cool app I was already using that has its own Hebrew keyboard built in (the iPhone doesn't have a Hebrew option yet - in fact, if you just want to read Hebrew, you're out of luck, as the iPhone displays it from left to right).

Sefirat HaOmer uses images of the Hebrew text, so there's no backwards reading required. The interface is quite pretty, too, and it updates daily with the correct day, so you don't have to have an external Omer calendar (or, like me, try and keep track in your head - oy!). And did I mention that it's completely FREE?

This app isn't for the novice Omer-counter, though - there are no instructions on how or when to say the prayer (although it is explained on the app's page on the iTunes store), and there are a couple abbreviations in the text that I wasn't familiar with. The app also doesn't give you any kind of reminder to count the Omer (I think that's an iPhone limitation), but you could always set an alarm in iCal to remind you. Overall, Sefirat HaOmer is a great resource for being able to count the Omer anytime, anywhere.

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