Parshat Pinchas: It's about time...

I’d like to try an exercise for our imaginations, try to imagine a world without time, not a world without clocks or even sundials and calendars, just an eternal now, but a world without time as we know it altogether?  Past, present, and future are all equally present.

 

Can you imagine this world?  What would it look like?  Or feel like?

 

The world and us would, for sure, be entirely different than what’s familiar to us, a jumble of everything that ever was, is, or could be, no sequential thoughts, so no memories.

 

For everything and everyone to exist in the way the Torah, and science, describe them, time is necessary, and the first thing God creates is a difference between day and night, signifying the passage of time making one day.

 

Because time is fundamental to creation, time is the source of all our celebrations – we literally celebrate the fact God enables us to recognize and make chosen times holy.  

 

This week, we read from the end of Parshat Pinchas, all about the festivals – Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.

 

The Torah instructs us to celebrate nearly all festivals at the full moon, the middle of the Hebrew month.  

 

Clearly these festivals coincide with the climate and produce growing cycle of the year as well as our memories of significant events that occurred at these times of year.  

 

And so they follow both a linear progression of time, the progression of ancient events that happened in sequence, and they follow a circular progression of time, as we celebrate the same holidays at the same season with the turning of each year.

 

Time then opens up our hearts and souls to holiness, to community, to God’s hand in creating and renewing the world, but time also limits our physical existence.  We’re born, we grow older, we die.  

 

It’s a dilemma – without time, our existence would be so fundamentally different, little to nothing of what we know or love would exist in any familiar form.  But with time, we find the days may be long but the years are short, and time disappears faster than we can notice it.

 

Our tradition teaches us the response to this dilemma is to savor time, to mark significant moments with friends and family, with the smells of special foods, with prayers and reflections reminding us of our obligations, encouraging us to strive in every moment to dedicate ourselves to doing mitzvot, holy actions, that transform the ‘now’ into the a more holy and harmonious ‘now’ and set an example for others to do the same.

 

Maimonides teaches us about the days of the Messiah:

It should not occur to you that during the days of the Messiah a single thing from the “ways of the world”¹³⁵I.e. Nature.will be canceled nor will there be something novel in the Creation. Rather, the world will continue in its customary way.

 

The relationship between people will change, there will be new knowledge and insight, but the nature of the world will continue – there will still be time.  And so Maimonides teaches us an essential, compelling lesson about us, about our world, and about the world we hope to create.

 

If the time of the Messiah is a time the world functions as we’re used to it, then the Messianic world, the renewed and redeemed world, can exist in every next moment.  The next minute, the next day, can be the renewed and redeemed world, and we can shape what that world will look like – correction, we are, even right now, shaping what that world will look like.

 

Let’s get to work, there’s no time to waste!

 

Parshat Korach: July 4th, Aaron's staff and the Faith of Confronting Life's Unknowns

 

O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

Francis Scott Key wrote these words while being held by the British on a ship.  He had been held on the ship all night, and in the morning, he saw Fort McHenry raise its immense garrison flag, 30 ft by 42 ft, and he knew the Americans had won the battle for Baltimore.  That flag was known as the Star-Spangled Banner, a flag originally made in Baltimore a year earlier by Mary Pickersgill.

 

The flag was the symbol of victory, of freedom renewed after this second war with England, and the latter-day version of this flag became the official flag of the United States.

 

At the beginning of our Torah reading this morning, God instructs Moses to put Aaron’s staff in the Mishkan, the Holy Place, at night.  The next morning, the staff has sprouted blossoms and almonds.  

 

Francis Scott Key sees the flag of victory flying over the Fort in the morning.  It’s a sign of victory.

 

Moses brings out Aaron’s staff in the morning, a walking stick that’s full of bright flowers and fresh almonds growing – not a sign of victory, but a sign of faith in God’s choice of Aaron and his descendants to serve as the priests for the people.

 

In both events, the outcome is unknown in the evening.  There is a time of waiting, wondering, uncertainty, anxiety, even fear.

 

And in both events, the morning brings hope and reassurance.

The Star-Spangled Banner flew in September, 1814 and continues to fly across the country.

 

And according to the midrash, the flowers and almonds that grew on Aaron’s staff never dried up and never fell off.

 

We ourselves face similar unknowns every evening.  As the sun goes down, and the darkness covers everything, we can turn on lights inside and out, put the TV on, play music.  We can do any number of things to push back against the literal and figurative darkness, but ultimately we know the way things will turn out is at least in some small part beyond our control.

 

Our ancestors write in the Book of Psalms, ba’erev yalin bechi, ve’la boker, rinah, tears may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.  That is a hopeful vision.

 

Neither Moses nor Francis Scott Key were 100% certain of the outcome.  They both had to wait and wonder.

 

It goes without saying unknowns make us feel uneasy, unsettled.  It’s hard to sleep when our minds are churning, ruminating about what happened or what may, or may not, happen tomorrow.

 

But not knowing does not mean we are helpless or powerless.  Not knowing gives us the chance to free ourselves from what may be unrealistic expectations we make on ourselves or the way we internalize the expectations of others.  

 

To help us put our worries of the unknowns, or the future, aside so we can rest at night, it’s helpful to recite the Shema, a custom that’s been around for thousands of years.  Before going to bed we say “God is One”.  We may feel fractured and unsure, but God is One, unified, and the unifier of what often appears to be a chaotic world within a chaotic universe.  That God is One means there is a wholeness, a peace, that we can fall back into like we do in a trust fall, and we can breathe deeply, knowing at that moment there’s only one truth to hold on to.

 

And we might also think about Aaron’s staff, with the beautiful, delicate white flowers, blooming for eternity, and we might also think about Francis Scott Key, looking out at Ft. McHenry to see a huge symbol of freedom billowing in the morning light.