Our Power to Create Holy Time
Lately, my answer to the stock question of "How are you?" has been something like "Personally, I'm doing well, despite it all." I've been thinking a lot about the discrepancy there... and how it is that we work to create of order and meaning in our personal lives, even (or especially) in light of the chaos the Trump administration is kicking up all around us.
One of the keys -- perhaps Judaism's single most powerful and potent tool -- for shaping our lives can be found in this week's Torah portion. A large chunk of Parashat Emor (all of Leviticus 23) is given over to the theme of holy time. That text opens with these words: "GOD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of GOD, that you shall proclaim as sacred occasions." The chapter then goes on to enumerate these "mikraei kodesh" ("sacred occasions") beginning with Shabbat each week, and continuing with the annual festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and the Omer, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.
Many classical commentaries note the interesting wording of the verses I've cited above (Lev. 23:1-2). To whom do these special days belong, they wonder? God refers to the Jewish holidays as "My fixed times," and yet, it is clear that the "you shall proclaim" means that it is we humans who have control over our calendar. In Akeidat Yitchak (67:2:4) -- a collection of philosophical sermons on the Torah -- the 15th century Spanish rabbi Isaac ben Moses Arama explains that the holidays are really a collaborative partnership between God and the Jewish people. He writes:
"God agrees with the decisions made by Israel, in contrast to earthly rulers. When an earthly ruler promulgates a law, his parliament cannot revoke it, but the king himself is at liberty to cancel his decree. Not so with God. God accommodates to the laws enacted by the Sanhedrin (the ancient Jewish judicial court). For instance, if the Sanhedrin decides to proclaim New Year's day on a certain day, God assembles the Divine Court to arrange to sit in judgment of mankind on that day, as it is written: "God arose when there is blowing of the teruah (shofar)" (Psalms 47:6). The Torah says "it will be a day of teruah for Me" (Numbers 29:1). It also says, "These are the appointed times for God, which you will proclaim" (Leviticus 23:2). This means that the Jewish people are the final arbiter concerning the dates of these holy-days."
Rabbi Arama's idea is a striking one. It's not that our holidays are days with intrinsic holiness, which we can then choose whether and how to observe, but rather that -- by virtue of declaring specific days holy and observing them ritually -- we human beings have the power to imbue time with sanctity.
This idea is also central to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's seminal book The Sabbath (1951), in which he famously describes Shabbat as a "palace in time." He writes:
"Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, quality-less, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.
Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is... the Day of Atonement" (p. 8).
In Heschel's conception, we are the architects who build and scaffold the palaces in time that make up our lives. And part of what makes those moments so special and precious is their uniqueness and their finitude (their limited quality).
Returning to where we began, part of the way that we can work to stay healthy and grounded and to feel okay, even during these distressing and turbulent times, is by understanding that all of us are inheritors of the great cathedrals in time that Parashat Emor enumerates.
As I write, it is currently day 29 of the counting of the Omer -- a practice instructed right here in this week's parasha (see Lev. 23:15-16). The act of counting up from Pesach to Shavuot is itself a spiritual exercise. As the Homer Calendar eloquently explains: "Counting each of the days of the omer reminds us that all of our days are numbered, and it is our responsibility to make each day count."
In addition, as the Omer reminds us -- with its mandate to count "seven complete weeks" of seven days each -- we always live inside the basic building block of Jewish time: the 7-day week. As Jews, we measure our lives in Shabbatot -- the distance from one Friday night and Saturday to the next. This increment of time has been on my mind a lot lately, as my oldest child prepares to graduate from high school and move away to continue her education. In my house, we are now counting down the weeks we have left together with her at home before that big transition... and I'm feeling very acutely what it means that we have only 6 more Shabbatot(!) before this chapter of our family's life comes to a close. The limited amount of time makes each Shabbat we have together feel all the more precious.
In the face of all the awful noise that exists in our world, this week, Parashat Emor comes to remind us that we have been bequeathed a beautiful gift and tool: the ability to create sacred time. Let us fill our palaces of holy time with all that is good -- with rest and well-being, with peace and community, with love and hope -- and from there, may we refill our own cups and radiate out the positive energy that has the capacity to heal our broken society.
Shabbat Shalom, and let's keep counting our days together and building beautiful cathedrals in time,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
