On Simchat Torah, the Hebrew anniversary of the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas, we dedicated two new Torah covers (meilim). If you haven’t seen them yet, they are beautifully embroidered in blue on white, with a Jewish star in an abstract Israeli flag. Thank you to Hanna Wechsler for helping to underwrite the cost of these holy meilim for our congregation.
On the back of each Torah cover is a dedication to a fallen Israeli hero who died in the war. Hundreds of synagogues around the world have a version of these meilim, each with a unique name. On the front of all the Torah covers is the phrase from Ecclesiastes 3:4: , meaning “a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
Simchat Torah is famously a time of dancing, and we did dance this year — with extra fun and guidance from our guest Israeli dancing teacher, Reut Segall. But this joyful holiday has also become a time of mourning – the yahrzeit of approximately 1,200 Israelis and the anniversary of the kidnapping of hundreds. Young children may be protected from some of life’s extremes (we hope!), but anyone who has come of age can attest, with Ecclesiastes:
“To everything, a time; a season for every experience under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose,
a time to keep and a time to cast away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”
Different seasons of life have their own distinct missions and moods. What is right — or possible — in one season does not necessarily obtain in another. Sometimes, times and purposes seem to collide — crashing upon us, like waves. We laugh and weep; we mourn and dance; we simultaneously yearn to embrace and wish to refrain; we realize in the midst of war that the time for peace must be now.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously wrote, “Judaism is a religion of time, aiming at the sanctification of time.” The foundational importance of time was established as part of Creation itself, when God set the rhythm that so many Jews and others around the world still observe: six days of work, one day of rest.
Days, months, and years are all dictated by natural phenomena in God’s creation. The weekly division of time has nothing to do with how celestial bodies move in space — and everything to do with God’s choice for how we should spend our time on earth. 6/7 of the time, we are commanded to engage in work that tends to this planet, to ourselves, and to each other. 1/7 of the time, we punctuate life’s work with deep refreshment of soul, body, relationships, and priorities.
I will not be the first person (or even the first person today) to observe that we are living in a season of high existential risk. The Jewish people, humanity, and the planet continue to endure many crises at once. Just consider Covid, political divides in the US and in Israel, the rise of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and threats to democracies, to climate, and to youth. It’s tempting to throw up our hands and say, “Nothing can help! What could I – or even we – possibly do in this season of colliding impulses, crushing needs, and counter purposes?”
There is a time to grieve. There is a time to rail against the times. There is a time, Ecclesiastes also says, to find goodness in simple pleasures: “eat, drink, and be merry” (8:15). There is even a time to hide under the covers – for a day or two. In every season, I recommend leaning into the formula God gave us at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 20:9-10): “six days you shall labor and do your work, and on the seventh day, it is a Shabbat unto Adonai.”
The earliest and most lasting teaching on time suggests: take after your Creator and create! Do holy work in the world, 6/7ths of the time. And on that special 7th day of rest, make sure to guard the Sabbath and make it holy. This can look many different ways in practice. (These days, a weekly Shabbat digital detox is especially popular.) Regardless of how you have observed Shabbat until now or how your practice may evolve, this designated day of pause - the literal meaning of Shabbat - invites us to reflect on time itself. What season am I in? How am I using my only irreplaceable resource: time? Does the way I spend my time reflect my highest values and best self?
Shabbat is an island in time – different from all our usual material doing in the world. Heschel called it a “realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.”
In December, the Cantor is taking a month-long portion of his sabbatical, and from January to June, I will take my allotted pause all at once. The practice of Sabbatical, of course, is as biblical as the Sabbath on which it is based. Farmers in Israel still let the land lie fallow every 7th year, and many forms of work in Israel are paused in other fields as well - to allow for more reflection, learning, time with family and community, and simple being. The land, individuals, and communities all benefit. Unexpected wisdom and goodness emerge from the pause.
I am actually taking my sabbatical in the 8th year. I was late to the pause, as many of us are these days. I pray that you will – even and especially in the midst of chaos – find ways to pause and rest in every season and time of life.
I am grateful that our community supports the important Jewish practices of Sabbath and sabbatical. I look forward to sharing my discoveries and growth when I return, and to hearing about the Cantor’s and yours, as well.
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