Giving Ourselves the gift of Time

Bereshit

Genesis 1:1 - 6:8
Précis: The first Book of the Torah, Bereshit (Genesis, literally “in the beginning” or “When God began to create”) begins with the familiar story of creation: the world is created in six days, with God resting on the Seventh. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are included in this weekly reading, as is the story of Cain and Abel. We begin again the annual reading of the Five Books of Moses immediately upon its conclusion. Why? With each passing year, our understanding changes as we experience more of what life has to offer. Yochanan Ben Bag Bag said, "Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don't turn from it, for you have no better standard of conduct." (Avot 5:25).

Genesis 2:3 - “And God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.”

The centrality of Shabbat is underscored by the fact that it is the culmination of Creation. While many of us assume that the creation of human beings is the high point of God’s creative processes, the text tells us that the Shabbat and its rest created on that day was an essential part of the entirety. In other words, existence of everything we see and feel was incomplete until Shabbat was created.

As Thomas Cahill suggests in his book The Gift of the Jews, among the great contributions made by the Jewish People to the world was the ability to see time as linear, with beginnings and endings and stops along the way. The concept of a rest day every seven days was revolutionary and pointed out the potential of breaks in an endless cycle of work. Time has a beginning, carefully described in this parasha. It is a process with an arrow pointing ahead, from Adam and Eve to Abraham and Sarah, from Joseph and Moses to Joshua and the Judges, from the Kings of Israel to the Prime Minister of Israel.

Despite this continuity, the creation of Shabbat provides us with islands out of time, when we separate ourselves from the on-going efforts of life and, like God, rest from our creative endeavors. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes in The Sabbath that the word “kadosh” (holy) is used for the first time in the verse quoted above. He notes that there is nothing in the text which associates the characteristic of holiness to anything else found in the story of creation. As Jews, our religion and our ritual life is one in which the holiness of time is a keystone. We observe the holiness of each life cycle event, from birth to death. Our holidays throughout the year are another set of time markers. Most importantly, we have the opportunity each Shabbat to reconnect with what is holy, and thereby appreciate the rest of God’s blessings.

Joy and Thanks for Sukkot

Lev. 23:39 “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land, you shall observe the festival of God to last seven days.”



Sukkot is a holiday which can almost slip our minds, given its close timing to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. And yet, we begin the building a sukkah immediately following the conclusion of Yom Kippur, moving from one mitzvah to the next. Sukkot, of course, is a significant milestone in the Jewish calendar, marking one of three times yearly (along with Pesach and Shavuot) when the Jewish People made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for festival sacrifices.

The holiday is more than merely “dwelling” in a sukkah, or waiving the 4 species, although there is certainly delight in each of these rituals. The Torah portion we read on the holiday includes the verse cited above to remind us of the connection between the harvest and God’s blessings through nature’s bounty. Few of us (other than the hobby gardeners) have a connection to food production, so Sukkot is a reminder that we need to be mindful of where (and how) our food is produced. And because this holiday takes place during the time of the fall harvest in Israel, there is another connection to the land.

The second major theme of Sukkot is one of happiness, a reminder of the Torah command for us to rejoice before God for seven days (Lev. 23:30). It is for this reason that Sukkot is referred to as z’man simchatenu, the time of rejoicing (or happiness). In these difficult economic times, we may not feel in a particularly joyous mood. Perhaps those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to “keep on keeping on” can think of this command to be joyous as a spur to helping those who are not faring so well, with a kind word or deed.