“You can learn something from everything,” taught R Avraham Yaakov of Sadagora. “Everything can teach us something, and not only everything God has created. What people have made also has something to teach us.”
“What can we learn from a train?” asked one of his Hasidim.
“That because of one second one can miss everything.”
“And from the telegraph?”
“That every word is counted and charged.”
“And the telephone?”
“That what we say here is heard there.”
I wonder what the Rebbe of Sadagora would say about Zoom?!?
Here are some lyrics that may be familiar:
“Time, flowing like a river
Time, beckoning me
Who knows when
We shall meet again, if ever
But time keeps flowing
Like a river to the sea”
‘Time keeps flowing’ — over this year and a half of pandemic time, I’ve given a lot of thought to the nature and meaning of time itself. Perhaps you have as well.
Ten years ago I talked with you about time, sharing with you the experience of using my debit card for the first time at the teller station at my bank.
During one of those errand-filled days between the end of summer camp and the beginning of school, I stopped in at our local bank branch. In order to identify myself, I was instructed by the teller to swipe my ATM card through the device in front of her window. The screen, set up for a different transaction, asked me what I wanted to do next. The teller’s guidance was to do nothing, so I followed her direction. Then the screen flashed a notice that read, “you seem to need more time.” I’ve been thinking about that notice and that moment ever since.
You seem to need more time…By the way, I turned 50 ten years ago; feel free to do the math! I still need more time.
This summer I stopped in at the same bank to be greeted by the very same message – ‘You seem to need more time.’ Still!
“As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said
Does anybody really know what time it is (I don’t)
Does anybody really care (care about time)
If so I can’t imagine why (no, no)
We’ve all got time enough to cry”
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Overheard at Starbucks, a kindergarten teacher leading her class through a lesson about measuring time. It was a pandemic only kind of moment. The class was in Colorado, the teacher – who was terrific by the way – was sitting outside at a Starbucks in Bensalem, PA. She read them a kids’ science book called “How Do You Know What Time it Is?”
Time is a mystery. You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. You can’t catch it in a net and put it in a jar. But you know time is real because you can sense it passing by.
Time is more mysterious than the wind. It’s so mysterious that even the greatest thinkers and scientists can’t say exactly what it is!
A few weeks ago I woke to the following on the family WhatsApp group: ‘Happy Monday!’ > ‘Oops, Tuesday.’ > ‘One day on my own and I don’t know what day it is. 
’ > ‘Wait, it’s Wednesday!!! Yesterday was Tuesday!’ > ‘I’m so tired it could be 1972 for all I know.’ > ‘I just taught 2 classes and I still don’t know what day it is…‘
I don’t know about you, but I’m going on 18 months of not knowing what day it is. And it’s been profoundly unsettling.
I receive a New York Times newsletter written by Melissa Kirsch called ‘At Home & Away’. Last week’s edition, ‘Keeping Blursday at Bay’ led with this question posed to readers: ‘How are you keeping one day from blurring into the next?’
Keep the days from blurring? That’s a joke. But after a year and a half I’ve learned to look for the clues. If our street is lined with trash containers, it’s Monday. If all the lawn services are about, it’s Thursday or Friday. I can’t count the number of days I’ve ‘lost’ during this thing. — Andrea Miller, Michigan
Being at home most of the time, I have discovered that i can program tasks to the delightful sound of the church bells in my neighborhood. Five times a day the lovely ringing reminds me to carry out basic daily routines (such as meals, paperwork and passive entertainment) within a self-developed schedule that is amazingly reassuring. Who was to tell me that I had such a pleasant resource at hand! — Jacqueline Biscomb, San Juan, PR
That pleasant resource may have in fact given rise to the mechanical clock, a story told brilliantly and movingly by Professor David Landes in his masterwork ‘Revolution in Time.’
Landes’ ‘prooftext’ is the well known kids’ rhyme ‘Are you sleeping Brother John?’ Sleeping through morning prayers would not be a good thing for good Brother John.
There is, of course, another side to the story. Rachel Syme, writing this summer in the New Yorker (‘What Deadlines Do to Lifetimes’) quotes two noted management consultants. Cal Newport: “Leave time for exposing yourself to randomness.” And Jenny Odell: goal is to bring back patience, our most neglected and under appreciated virtue. “Breaking the cycle of reactions opens a gap through which you can see other perspectives, temporalities, and value systems.”
Symes’ own conclusion – “Life is one long soft opening.” I love that line; I love that idea.
Saint Augustine is the most oft quoted ancient thinker on the topic: “For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And sure we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to one who asks me, I do not know.”
“Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. These three do co-exist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them.”
For the Latin scholars among us, here are Augustine’s key terms: Memory – Direct experience – Expectation [memoria, contuitus, expectatio].
A century ago Albert Einstein delivered a series of public lectures at Princeton about relativity. Along the way, he had a lot to say about the nature of time. Some choice remarks follow:
“All our judgments in which time plays a role are judgments about simultaneous events. If I say, for example, ‘the train arrives here at 7,’ this means: the coincidence of the small hand of my watch with the number 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.”
“Upon giving up the hypothesis of the absolute character of time, particularly that of simultaneity, the four-dimensionality of the time-space concept was immediately recognized. It is neither the point in space, nor the instant in time, at which something happens that has physical reality, but only the event itself.”
“For us convinced physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”
Jewish thought too, sees little distinction between past, present, and future. Scholar Sacha Stern writes about ‘Time and Process in Ancient Judaism’ with an emphasis on process, and historian Elisheva Carlebach, in a beautiful book called ‘Palaces of Time’, describes and demonstrates the flexibility and adaptability of ‘Jewish time.’ Indeed, the Zohar – the central work of Kabbalah – teaches that the river that flows out from the Garden of Eden eternally is the World that is Coming – coming constantly and never ceasing. It is always ‘time present of things present’, forever and eternally now.
Modern Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai presents the same idea with great verve:
“A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.”
Whatever day it is, it’s always ‘today’. Whatever time it is, it’s always ‘now.’ The present is eternal – time keeps flowing like a river to the sea and there’s always time enough to cry.
Israel’s beloved singer/songwriter Ehud Banai, whose song ‘Hayom (Today)’ adds an element of romance and intimacy to the conversation, is in line with the mystics, poets, and calendar makers of our tradition.
“Today let’s do something unforgettable, that will leave behind a memory of blessed joy.
Today I’ll extend a hand to stroke your head.
Today I’ll finally make you smile.
Today I’ll chase the sadness from your eyes.
I’ll make today the happiest of your life.
Today you’ll hear what you haven’t heard before;
I’ll make it new and light a great light.
Today I’ll cook something delicious for you;
And I’ll do everything to make it pleasing for you.
True, I don’t always show my love,
But today I seek closeness and intimacy.
Today…Today…Today”
And then, there’s the Mahzor itself, my favorite piyyut which arrives at the end of this long morning of prayer.
Hayom t’amtzeinu…
Strengthen us — today. Amen.
Bless us — today. Amen.
Exalt us — today. Amen.
Seek our well being — today. Amen.
Inscribe us for a good life — today. Amen.
Lovingly accept our prayers — today. Amen.
Hear our plea — today. Amen.
Sustain us with the power of Your righteousness — today. Amen.
Bless us; Inscribe us; Hear us; Sustain us; Now; Today; Hayom!
L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’teihateimu!
May we each be inscribed and sealed for a good, sweet, and healthy year. Now. Today. Hayom!
