Rabbi Mari Chernow Yom Kippur 2013/5774 The book of Kohelet famously tells us For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time for being born, a time for dying, a time for planting, a time for uprooting and so on. In this passage there is acceptance and tranquility. The author would have us embrace rather than fight the natural rhythms of life. Kohelet honors each stage and insists that even the painful ones be given their due. But Yehuda Amichai takes a more sober view. An excerpt from one of his poems responds to that passage, saying: 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. Kohelet 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. 1 At this turning of the year we have to think about how we think about time. Can we adopt Kohelet s perspective, accepting constant change with peace and equanimity? Or, do we protest with Amichai, knowing that whoever we are, whatever we do, we end up short of time? Multitasking as he describes it, takes on a morbid urgency, but I share his desire to pack it all in while we can. We all want more time, right? More control over the allocation of time? 1 Yehuda Amichai, Poem #1398, A Man in His Life 1
I ll tell you what - if you really want to rethink time, try living for 40 years and then having a baby. And here I will ask for your indulgence as I share just a few reflections on being a new mother. Because it is Yom Kippur I won t show you the 1,634 pictures that I have on my phone, (that s a real number) but I d be happy to take you through them one by one after we break fast. When Melila was about six weeks old, she introduced me to the angels of time. They show up in the Talmud where we read, Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, Grow, grow. Of course, this line is not about our lawns. It s about our lives. Those angels are very important. Because, as parents, we have mixed feelings. Yes, of course, we want our little blades of grass, our children, to grow. And sometimes we can t wait to hear their first words and find out what is their favorite color and favorite book and walk them to kindergarten and help them snap into their first pair of little skis. But at least as often we want them to stay exactly as they are, to never change, to maintain (what I noticed at the time) that newborn tininess, the face she made when she would fall asleep in a split second, the drunkenness from a belly full of milk, the surprise of a finger making it to her mouth. We don t want to give any of it up. For me anyway, not even the screaming neediness, the exasperation when we can t figure out what she wants or the sometimes unbearable weight of responsibility to do right by her. That s why we need the angels to tip the balance. They know better. They force us into each next stage because it too will bring goodness even if it must be bittersweet. Melila is seven months old now and those early endearing traits have been replaced by flopping, flapping arms, a gummy-mouthed belly laugh when I sing and the first hints of a coy and flirtatious smile. I should learn from this that whatever comes next, Godwilling, it will 2
also bring blessing and delight but still, there is part of me that wants to freeze time so that I can hold onto right now. Amichai expresses this sentiment in another poem about his father teaching him Torah. He reflects on the kind and gentle way his father taught him the Ten Commandments. The poem concludes: Later on he turned his face to me one last time Like on the day when he died in my arms and said I want to add Two to the Ten Commandments: The eleventh commandment Thou shall not change. And the twelfth commandment - Thou must surely change. So said my father and then he turned from me and walked off Disappearing into his strange distances. 2 You can hear his father tiptoeing off as each generation pleads with the next Change but don t change. Grow but please don t hurry to grow. Because of our ambivalence, the angels push time forward, our children along with it. Which means they are pushing us as well. One of the reasons we have mixed feelings is that in the back of our minds we know that as the next generation grows, we move closer to those strange distances. As if offering us a gift of consolation, the angels of time occasionally peel back the curtain on some vast cosmic truth and let us catch a glimpse. That s when William Blake s words ring true and we do.. see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of [our] hand and eternity in an hour. In these moments of microcosmic delight, we tap into forces that are universal and timeless. I remember sitting on the couch holding Melila as she slept, feeling both her chest and mine rise and fall with each breath. It was a simple moment, repeated millions of times 2 Yehuda Amichai, From Open Closed Open 3
in millions of households. Perhaps because of its ubiquity, I had a strong sensation that we were bigger than ourselves, more than the two of us in our own lives. We were one parent and one child and we were every parent and every child. Coursing through us was an impulse to hold onto someone of another generation. It must have started back in the Garden of Eden and passed through every person who has ever said or ever will say to another, I need you. And I know better than to think she s the one who needs me. I don t know how all of human history is compressed into one embrace, but it is. As Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, In the realm of the spirit there is no difference between a second and a century, between an hour and an age. 3 When we are blessed with these startling moments in time, we know it s true - the world exists in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour. But the heavenly hosts are not always kind. The angels come around to give us gifts in time, but there are also demons whose distortions of the ticking clock can be cruel. And here I will depart from stories of sweet Melila and share a bit about a darker time in my life. First, I will note that in Judaism demons are not red devilish creatures that stand on one shoulder. They are not prevalent in mainstream Jewish thought, but they do show up in rabbinic literature, Kabbalah and folklore. There, they are either spiritual forces unleashed by God or harmful psychological processes which take place in the human mind. 4 And that is where I believe we meet and many years ago I met the demons of time in fear, doubt, instability. In anxiety and depression. Part of their ruthlessness is the way they warp our perception of time. Late lonely nights watching the clock last forever. The past is all regrets. The future is all worries. And, as a friend told 3 In The Sabbath. 4 Rabbi Louis Jacobs in The Jewish Religion, A Companion. 4
me, Depression robs you of the present. There is no creativity, no Torah, no drive, no joy, no motivation. There is no need to cultivate presence because what you want more than anything is relief from the experience of right now. In those difficult places, we are like Jonah in the belly of the whale swallowed up and confined to a limited perspective. The glorious open ocean should be within arm s reach but we are trapped inside darkness and fooled into thinking the entire world is made up of fish guts. There are many Jewish strategies to bring us back to where we know that there is abundant goodness in our lives, to help us fall back in love with time. That s one of the great Jewish projects by the way to get us to love and appreciate time. There are many Jewish strategies prayer, community, solace that is found in words of our texts that express exactly what we feel, the unyielding insistence on hope against all odds. But one part of any such healing process has to be holding on and giving ourselves time. There is a tiny little jewelry shop in the old city of Jerusalem where people come from all over the world to buy specialty rings. These rings are inscribed with the words gam zeh ya avor this too shall pass. People wear them so that they have a constant reminder that every emotion, every experience is temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow. I won t insult you with the platitude that time heals all wounds but I will say that sometimes in the darkest of all places, when we have run out of other options, all we can do is wait it out and trust that time could bring a welcome change. The most profound hope comes when we can t even see what the possibilities are. When all we can hope for is something to hope for. 5
What do you do for all that time inside the whale? How do you resist sinking into utter despair? We know the end of the story but Jonah must have thought that he was headed to certain and miserable death. And yet. The whale spits him out onto dry land and he resumes is life. Slowly. With challenge and imperfection. But he comes back. Time can bring an unpredictable shift that makes all the difference. We were reminded this week that in even the most parched dry desert, rain finally pours down, bringing relief and new life. And that s why we don t get to control time, why time must move forward. Because if we could freeze ourselves in one sweet moment with our newborn babies, then we could also get frozen for good in the belly of the fish. If we had the power to hold onto the momentary treasures, we would risk getting permanently stuck somewhere we really don t want to be. Gam zeh ya avor has to apply to everything or it means nothing. This too shall pass. Yehudah Amichai is right. We don t have enough time. We can embrace each season like Kohelet does or raise our voices in protest. Either way, time passes, we change, our children grow. So our only choice is to acknowledge the motion of time and use it for good. James Winchell paraphrases musical innovator Brian Eno saying everything is an experiment until one has a deadline; only then comes action, productivity and community. 5 Winchell continues, for all Jews, there is no better deadline than Yom Kippur. On this day of deadline, we pray that we have more days of being in love with life itself than stuck in the belly of the fish. May we feel eternity in an hour in the arms of 5 In Tablet Magazine. A Great Thinker Rediscovers His Judaism on the Day of Atonement. 6
those we love, those who light fires of life within us and bring us fullness and joy. Should we sink into darkness, may we find the courage to hang in there and allow unseen possibilities to unfold. And as life moves forward, sometimes without our consent, may we be accompanied and lifted by the sacred angels of time. 7