Time to Create Time.....or not
The following is not a commentary on the Torah or other Biblical text. Rather, it consists of my musings about the nature of time and its role in our lives.
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This past weekend we celebrated the festival of Purim. Purim celebrates the victory of the Jews over their Persian enemy Haman, viceroy to King Achashverosh. The story is told in the biblical Book of Esther, because the Jewish Queen Esther is the heroine of the story.
Purim usually occurs in March. But these year, for the first time I can remember (though my memory is not what it once was) it fell on the evening of the 23rd of February. This is indeed quite early! As a
matter of fact, all of the holidays for the remainder of 5773 on the Jewish calendar (the end of August) through Hanukkah of 5774 will be “very early” this year. As a matter of fact, for the
first time in history (and the last time until about 400 years from now)
the first day of Hanukkah will actually fall on Thanksgiving Day!!!! (this fact actually deserves the hyperbole of multiple exclamation points!!!)
The
calculations of the lunar/solar Jewish calendar are complicated. But
the reason the dates of the holidays on the Gregorian (English) calendar change each year is actually simple to explain. The Jewish months are based on the lunar cycle, each month
beginning with the new moon and lasting 28 or 29 days. However, lunar
months are shorter than solar months of the Gregorian (secular) calendar, and
so one lunar year is approximately 11 days shorter than one solar
year. Therefore, without adjustment the holidays would continue to fall
earlier and earlier each year. Eventually, Passover/Pesakh would migrate to the fall, Rosh Hashanah to the spring, and Hanukkah
to the summer. This is similar to what happens to Ramadan in the Muslim
calendar, which is strictly lunar. However, since the three
Pilgrimage festivals (shalosh
regalim) of
Passover/Pesakh,
Sukkot and Shavuot are directly tied to specific seasons and their
harvests, this cannot happen.
This is why the
ancient rabbis, in their infinite wisdom, created a leap year in
which we add an extra month to the calendar. In a leap year you will find two
months of Adar, Adar Aleph (1) and Adar Bet (2). As Purim falls in
Adar, next year it will be celebrated in Adar Bet, as it is in every leap year. That mean,
yes...you guessed it....next year Purim will fall about as late as it can! So too with the remainder of the holidays for the coming year.
Then the holidays will once again fall earlier and earlier each year
until another leap year occurs and they get pushed back again. The
calculations for when a leap year falls are complicated, but within a
19 year cycle there will always be 7 leap years.
However,
though it may seem to us that the holidays are falling early or late,
they always fall exactly when they are meant to. Purim is on the
14th
of Adar, Rosh Hashanah is the first of Tishri and Hanukkah begins on
the 25th
of Kislev. However, because we follow two calendars there is the
illusion that they are falling early or late.
More than 80 years
ago Mordechai Kaplan, z”l (may the memory of the righteous be a
blessing), the founder of Reconstructionism, wrote that we live in
two civilizations; our task is to somehow firmly plant our feet and
find balance in both. But today we live in more than two
civilizations. It seems that we are always trying to balance our
relationships to the different worlds in which we orbit. We do this,
in part, by trying to manage time with our calendars, smart phones
and daily planners. And yet, no matter what we do or how much we
try, time goes on as it was meant to. Well, just as we humans
designed it to.
For the concept of
time is a construct created by the human mind. The earth was
spinning on its axis, the earth was orbiting the sun and the moon was
orbiting the earth, just as it is today, long before the first clock
or calendar was created. But we humans have long felt a need to
understand and control our world. And the creation of time is part
of this. The ancients felt the need to divide the days and years
into neatly organized equal units. And so they created the 60 second
minute, 60 minute hour, 24 hour day and 365 day year. And yet, we
know things are not quite that neatly divided. It takes 365.26 days
for the earth to orbit the sun. Therefore, we add a day to the
calendar every four years to make up the difference. But even then
we are behind .01 days! And a day is not really neatly divided into
24 equal parts. And so, in a way, we are perpetually “running
behind.” Even though these may seem like minutia, these facts
remind us that no matter how much we try to control or manage time we
simply can't. It resists our efforts and thwarts us at every turn,
even though we believe we can control it because we created it.
The
attempt to control time is the cause of so much suffering in our
lives. For we can never win. The days pass by, lives begin and end,
and we can't do a thing about it. Millenia ago, the author of the biblical book of
Kohelet/Ecclesiastes
wrote “there is a a time for every purpose under heaven....a time
to be born, a time to die...a time to mourn and a time to dance...”
But we cannot determine the time for each purpose ahead of time. We
don't know if the next moment will be a time to rejoice or a time to
mourn, a time to live or a time to die. Perhaps that is why Kohelet
also believe that all was
vanity or futility. Yet I see this in a more positive light as a
call to us to be fully present and rejoice in each moment. Perhaps
this is the lesson we can learn from the confusing intricacies of the
Jewish calendar. That nothing comes early or late. Everything
happens in its time. And that is as it should be.
William Shakespeare
knew this when he wrote Macbeth's words (uttered following the death of Lady Macbeth) “tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day today....and all our
yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” He realized
that the attempt to control life and time was a foolish endeavor.
However, the ending of his soliloquy “it (life) is a told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” is what we must try to
avoid. Even when we face death, pain or tragedy we must try our best to create meaning in our lives. The best
way to do this is by living in the present, allowing each moment to
unfold, taking it as it comes, and trying our best to rejoice when we
can, and mourn when we must, and then move on to the next moment.
Doing this, we can create a life, moment by moment, that is still
will have its ups and downs, but which ultimately will be the
opposite of the pessimistic views of Macbeth and Kohelet. For we can
create a life, full of joy and meaning. We can live a life which reminds us that we are
created in God's image, and that we can can make a difference and bring
healing to the world, even though ultimately we cannot control the world or
control time.
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