Rabbi's Message

Moadim L’Simha!  Happy Passover! The other night, my daughter looked at my watch and said: “the time is moving.”  How right she is; time always keeps moving.  There is a past, a present, and a future.  Time is linear; moving from the present moment to the next. 

However, many ancient cultures did not understand time as moving in a single direction. Instead, time was cyclical to them; that is to say, it moved in a circle, through one cycle after another. The year, for example, is a series of seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, and that cycle repeats over and over again. The day works the same; there is dawn, midday, dusk, and night, and it never changes. 

Judaism was certainly familiar with this notion of cyclical time. Our holidays are based on the cycle of the seasons. Think of these words from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes - “the generations come and go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and then goes on to rise again… What has been will be again, there is nothing new under the sun.” (1:4-9) This is a classic statement of cyclical time. 

But at a certain point, early on in its history, Judaism also became invested in another kind of time, linear time, the sense of time moving in a single direction that we are familiar with today. The Hebrew Bible may be the first document in recorded human history to describe time in this kind of way. There is a journey in the Bible, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is the slavery in Egypt, the middle is the wandering in the wilderness, and the end is entry into the Promised Land. 

The three pilgrimage holidays actually reflect both senses of time, the cyclical and the linear. They mark and celebrate the seasons of the year. Pesah is about Spring, the rebirth of the world. Shavuot is the bringing of the first fruits, and Sukkot is a Fall festival marking the harvest. This natural cycle recurs again and again, year in and year out, and the festivals are markers, acknowledging the power of the unending cycle. But, at the same time, the festivals mark historical memories, and together they move through time in a linear way. Pesah is the Exodus, Shavuot the giving of the Torah, and Sukkot the desert wandering. This is linear time, moving from one point to the next. Even the Haggadah itself is based on a sense of linear time. We start in the past; we WERE slaves in Egypt. But by the end of the evening, we are looking towards the future, Next Year in Jerusalem! 

The truth is, we need a sense of both kinds of time in our lives. We need to know that we are moving forward; that important destinations are within our grasp, and that we can reach our goals and make progress in our lives. At the same time, knowing that some things are eternal and unchanging is comforting. To know that the sun will come up each morning, or that Passover will come around each year, connects us to something greater than we are. Too often in our busy lives, we take time for granted.  As we continue to make our way through Passover this year, may we be reminded to appreciate the gift of time, both the time that is linear and propels us forward, and the time that is cyclical, providing us with stability and dependability in our lives.

Happy Passover and Shabbat Shalom.