This weeks Shabbat message rabbiandrewrosenblatt.tumblr/ Time. It is our stressor. We wonder why we have so little of it. We can find ourselves cursing the clock for running rapidly before our deadlines, and for running so slowly while we wait to get out of a class or a never-ending graduation ceremony. Though our experience of time varies from one situation to the next, time itself seems to be one of the true constants of our lives. It feels as fixed as the length of a meter or the mass of a gram. However, it turns out that time is not as fixed as it seems. Even the objective unrelenting time is not as fixed a property as we once thought. It is actually several recent developments in accurate clocks that have forced scientists to rethink their understanding of time. Tom O’Brian, head of the Time and Frequency Division of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, has reported that the best he can say about time is that it is a human mental construct. O’Brian says this even as his institute records time on a clock that is accurate to 0.000000000000001 second. The clock is based on the vibrations of strontium atoms and is believed to be able to tick for hundreds of millions of years without losing a second. Scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder are now developing an even more accurate clock, dubbed a ‘perfect clock’, which will be able to measure time for billions of years without losing a second. However, their ‘perfect clock’ has revealed a wrinkle in time. When one moves the perfect clock from the first floor of the building to the second, or even from the desk to the wall, it begins to measure time at a different rate. Time begins to tick faster at the top of the mountain than it does in the valley. It is true that the differences are infinitesimal, even between the top of Mt. Everest (8,848m) and the Dead Sea (-423m) and that our Timex and Rolex watches will never display a difference on that basis. However, it reveals that time itself is more of a dynamic feature of our physical world than we gave it credit for. Time flows differently in different places, it is dynamic. The Torah’s conception of time has always been dynamic. Our calendar is based on phases of the moon. With 29.5-day months, a standard year has 354 days. This is 11 days shorter than the more consistent solar calendar. Fixing the dates on the Jewish calendar in any given month requires human involvement. In this week’s Parsha we have the mitvzah of establishing the new month. During the time of the Sanhedrin, or Jewish High Court, witnesses and the court itself fixed the calendar each month according to the reported sightings of the new moon. There is some debate among the commentaries about whether this was dependent entirely on the witnesses, or according to the witnesses in conjunction with the mathematical calculation and intercalation by the court. So began our relationship with Jewish Standard Time. As the joke goes, Rosh Hashanah is either early or late, but never on time. The Midrash, however, is quite emphatic that human involvement is essential to time. After the earthly court would make its decision, the heavenly court would rush into session and certify whatever had taken place down below. In other words, whatever objective conceptions of time might exist in Heaven, they were laid aside for the subjective declarations of the human court. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik articulated the idea of time as a dynamic force in his profound essay “Sacred and Profane.” The individual who measures time in purely quantitative terms is an essentially passive personality. He is a recipient and not a giver, a creature rather than a creator. His prototype is the slave… He does not understand the full impact of such dicta as, “if not now, then when?’ “if the hour beckons do not delay.” The slave has no time consciousness of his own, for he has no time of his own. The basic criterion which distinguishes freeman from slave is the kind of relationship each has with time and its experience. Bondage is identical with passive intuition and reception of an empty, formal time stream. A slave who is capable of appreciating each day, of grasping its meaning and worth, of weaving every thread of time into a glorious fabric, quantitatively forming the warp and woof of centuries of change, is eligible for Torah. He has achieved freedom. We may say then that qualitative-time consciousness is comprised of two elements: First, the appreciation of the enormous implications inherent in the fleeting moments of the present. …eternity may depend upon the brief moment. Secondly, the vicarious experience, while in the present, of the past and future. No distance, however removed, should separate one’s time consciousness from the dawn of one’s group or from the eschatological destiny and infinite realisation of one’s cherished ideals.” (Rav Joseph B Soloveitchik. Sacred and Profane. Published in Shiurei HaRav pgs 15-18.) Our calendar and our Jewish conception of time thus bring us to the realization that time is a dynamic force. Not only is it a human construct as Tom O’Brian would have it, but it beckons us as humans to construct it. In doing so, we give meaning to time. It is up to us to make sense of time, to organize it with punctuation, meaning, and memory. It is here that the Torah excels at time. It takes each day as a phrase, and turns each month into a story. It makes complete sentences out of the days of each week through the punctuation of Shabbat. It allows us to make whole stories out of the months of each year by integrating our own stories with those of our people as we tell of the exodus at the Passover Seder, and when we read the Megillah on Purim. Narratives of struggle and triumph, of giving and transmitting, have afforded the Jews the most profound culture of time that I have ever found. Tonight, as you make Kiddush - itself a sanctification of time - recognize how the Torah has given you the tools to stamp time with meaning and memory, to create special moments and imprint them in the consciousness of your family.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 23:21:51 +0000
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