Bifocals, Not Binaries
As American Jews, we see time through bifocals. One lens, moving through the Jewish calendar, and another lens tracking the secular common calendar. It is obvious that holidays belong to their respective domain - Rosh Hashanah forever on the 1st of Tishrei, while Memorial Day is always the last Monday in May.
Personally significant days get more complex. For instance, my wife and son share a secular birthday, but not a Jewish birthday. I also have my grandmother’s yahrzeit in my calendar twice each year, once for each lens. Each of us balances our immersion in American time with our anchor in Jewish time.
Societally significant events also metabolize differently when we revisit them each year because of the tectonic shifts between calendars. Two years ago, Hamas massacred Israeli soldiers and civilians on October 7, which coincided with the holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah (a single day in Israel). As a celebration of the joy of Torah now marred by horrific violence, questions arose: Would we champion a Torah of peace? Apply the Torah’s wisdom on just and necessary war? Find the Torah mute and in mourning?
In 2026, October 7 will fall after the holidays finish, approaching the month of MarCheshvan (the “bitter” month where there are no holidays at all).
In 2027, October 7 will fall (as it did in 2024) between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during the Ten Days of Repentance. I wonder what teshuvah looked like last year, and how it might be different two years from now…
This year, however, October 7 fell on the holiday of Sukkot. Which raises another question: What do we see when we look at October 7 from the sukkah? Do we shiver in the cold wind of history, all too aware of how abundance may be harvested one year and wither away the next? Should we insist on zman simchateinu, on times of joy, as necessary nourishment so we can rise to the challenges that face us? Might we see the permeable walls and roofs of the sukkah, and the tradition of inviting in ushpizin, guests, as reminders of our obligations to others and the importance of connection beyond the hard boundaries we instinctively reinforce?
We also read Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) on Sukkot, and this year a few unusual lines drew my attention (7:16-17).
אַל־תְּהִ֤י צַדִּיק֙ הַרְבֵּ֔ה וְאַל־תִּתְחַכַּ֖ם יוֹתֵ֑ר לָ֖מָּה תִּשּׁוֹמֵֽם׃
Don’t be greatly righteous and don’t become too wise; why should you be desolate?
אַל־תִּרְשַׁ֥ע הַרְבֵּ֖ה וְאַל־תְּהִ֣י סָכָ֑ל לָ֥מָּה תָמ֖וּת בְּלֹ֥א עִתֶּֽךָ׃
Don’t be greatly wicked and don’t be a fool; why should you die before your time?
Let’s start with the second statement, which is slightly less controversial. It seems obvious you shouldn’t be wicked. For Kohelet, being wicked and foolish (distinct characteristics with significant overlap) leads to an early death. Or at least, overdoing it can be fatal. Being a little bit wicked is apparently totally fine.
However, an early midrash clarifies that this teaching reminds us not to slip into fatalism about our ability to change for the better. If we do something wrong, we can’t let ourselves off the hook by considering ourselves bad people now and continuing to do bad people things because that’s just who we are now and there’s no possibility anymore of being good. Being “greatly wicked” is a form of the cognitive distortion of all-or-nothing thinking. What “dies before its time” is the possibility of a new choice once the “all” no longer seems attainable. The riddle of not being too wicked resolves when we know that everyone lives in the gray areas and we are not as stuck in choices, patterns, and circumstances as we think we are.
Some take the teaching on not being too righteous in a similar vein - strive for balance and moderation in all things. The medieval scholar Abraham ibn Ezra commented: “If you pray from morning until evening and fast and do similar things, you will become desolate, meaning you will depart from the way of civilization/settlement, as do those who become hermits.”
There is a form of righteousness which leads you away from people. And while a retreat from the mess of being around actual people has its place, our purpose isn’t to be good and alone. The first human’s existence prompted God to say “It is not good for a person to be alone!” (Bereishit / Genesis 2:18). In a surprising way, God sometimes prefers politics (the art of figuring out how to live together without murdering each other) over pure righteousness.
Looking up from the pages of Kohelet to view October 7, the past two years of war and tragedy for Palestinians and Israelis, and this fragile moment where a cessation of violence and return of hostages seems possible, what do we see? (You may be reading this and seeing something new already that wasn’t there while I was writing. So many feelings are swirling right now around this new deal - a mixture of hope and anticipation, steeling against possible disappointment, a clear awareness that hostages returning home and fewer people dying is a good thing, and uncertainty about what will come of this moment in terms of justice and safety for all people in the region.)
Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T’ruah wrote in a recent letter:
In a world of hot takes and of insistence on ideological purity, it takes humility to say that we don’t know what is going to happen… It’s easy to despair, and to give up. The challenge is to believe that a different world is possible, to draw the blueprints, and to build it little by little.
To build a sukkah, to sit in its vulnerable shelter, and to gaze out at the same old world, is to be offered a new vision, another sort of bifocals that balance humility with chutzpah.
This year, let each day, Jewish and secular, become another anniversary of when we kept our hearts open and our hands busy building a better world together.
Chag sameach, and Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
