Long before there were clocks, the Psalmist wrote: “The days of our years are three score years and ten, or even, by reason of strength, four score years…. They pass by speedily, and soon we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10) Time has a way of...
slipping by us, unnoticed. An hour at the computer, sitting behind the wheel, raking the leaves – these all steal precious minutes from our day. Keeping track of where the time goes is not just a matter of paying attention to what we do with our days, but having a clock to help us remain aware of the unyielding passage of time is today equally important to that task.
The creation of clocks, the invention of the minute hand and devising a reliable methods for calculating time at sea have filled the hours and days and even years of many men and women over the centuries. Understanding the motion of the stars, the sun and the moon paved the way for our modern instruments to tell the precise time down to mere fractions of a second. And our desire to control time has led us in this century to imagine that we can actually give (and take) hours from the day.
This weekend, as Daylight Savings Time ends, we are granted an extra hour in our day. True, it arrives when most of us are sleeping, and we will likely use it for an additional sixty minutes of rest. While seventy or even eighty years is a lengthy time to achieve tremendous goals, and a mere hour is hardly noticed on such a grand scale, still, a full hour will be loaned to us.
This Shabbat, as you hopefully take some time to relax and refresh yourself for the coming week which is a bit longer than usual, I encourage you to consider what you might do with your hour. It will pass by speedily, and soon we will all fly away.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
Shabbat Message from Rabbi Forman - 10/20/06
Beginnings are laden with the excitement of the new and the uncertainty of the unfamiliar. This week's Torah portion, Bereshit, is the very first one in the book of Genesis. It opens with words "In the beginning…." This brief phrase has, for millennia...
been the paradigmatic expression linked with any new endeavor. Not surprisingly, both of the words “Genesis” and “Bereshit” suggest what the book or portion contains: stories of beginnings. Not only is the myth of six-day creationism presented, but so, too, does Genesis contain stories describing the source of rainbows, the origin of language, the birth of the quest to understand God, and the foundation of the Jewish people.
Some beginnings, though, don’t turn out as planned. How true this was for Primo Levi, an Italian Jew born in 1919 who shortly after training to be a chemist was interred in Auschwitz by the Nazis. After his liberation, he became one of the most widely read authors on the Holocaust. Before he chose to end his own life in 1987 he wrote the following poem.
“In the Beginning”
Fellow humans, to whom a year is a long time,
A century a venerable goal,
Struggling for your bread,
Tired, fretful, tricked, sick, lost:
Listen, and may it be a mockery and consolation.
Twenty billion years before now,
Brilliant, soaring in space and time,
There was a ball of flame, solitary, eternal,
Our common father and our executioner.
It exploded, and every change began.
Even now the thin echo of this one reverse catastrophe
Resounds from the farthest reaches.
From that one spasm everything was born:
The same abyss that enfolds and challenges us,
The same time that spawns and defeats us,
Everything anyone ahs ever thought,
The eyes of every woman we have loved,
Suns by the thousands,
And this hand that writes.
[13 August 1970 - Translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann]
These searing words endure as reminders to us that in the briefest moment of beginnings everything that now is was created at that same first moment. So much is contained in a beginning!
been the paradigmatic expression linked with any new endeavor. Not surprisingly, both of the words “Genesis” and “Bereshit” suggest what the book or portion contains: stories of beginnings. Not only is the myth of six-day creationism presented, but so, too, does Genesis contain stories describing the source of rainbows, the origin of language, the birth of the quest to understand God, and the foundation of the Jewish people.
Some beginnings, though, don’t turn out as planned. How true this was for Primo Levi, an Italian Jew born in 1919 who shortly after training to be a chemist was interred in Auschwitz by the Nazis. After his liberation, he became one of the most widely read authors on the Holocaust. Before he chose to end his own life in 1987 he wrote the following poem.
“In the Beginning”
Fellow humans, to whom a year is a long time,
A century a venerable goal,
Struggling for your bread,
Tired, fretful, tricked, sick, lost:
Listen, and may it be a mockery and consolation.
Twenty billion years before now,
Brilliant, soaring in space and time,
There was a ball of flame, solitary, eternal,
Our common father and our executioner.
It exploded, and every change began.
Even now the thin echo of this one reverse catastrophe
Resounds from the farthest reaches.
From that one spasm everything was born:
The same abyss that enfolds and challenges us,
The same time that spawns and defeats us,
Everything anyone ahs ever thought,
The eyes of every woman we have loved,
Suns by the thousands,
And this hand that writes.
[13 August 1970 - Translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann]
These searing words endure as reminders to us that in the briefest moment of beginnings everything that now is was created at that same first moment. So much is contained in a beginning!
Friday, October 13, 2006
Shabbat Message from Rabbi Forman 10/13/06
"Turn it and turn it again for everything is contained within." (Pirke Avot 5:25)
As the festival of Sukkot draws to a close , we turn our attention to Torah and the celebration of Simchat Torah. Sukkot reminds us of the frailty of life, the seasons' never-ending rotation, that all that lives must some day die....
On Sukkot we read the words of Ecclesiastes who painfully reminds us that "the eye is never filled with seeing nor the ear with hearing. What has been is that which will be. What has been done is that which will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun." (Eccl. 1:8-9) With its emphasis on the fall harvest, Sukkot is a time for us to reflect on how we fill our days -- knowing that we, too, are part of the unending cycle of life.
Simchat Torah echoes the idea that the rotation of the seasons of the year is ongoing. Summer turns to fall and then to winter and spring and back again to summer. So, too, do we turn the Torah again and again. As a scroll made of many pieces of parchment sewn together, the Torah is literally turned each week to a new section. This Friday night is both Shabbat and Simchat Torah. At our Family Service we will read from the last bit of parchment, the last column, and the last words. Seemingly, the Torah is at its end. But the Torah does not end there. It continues. How? Where?
No sooner do we conclude reading from the book of Deuteronomy than we turn the scroll back to its beginning. We read from the opening passages of Genesis and the story of creation, as we ourselves enact the very process of creating a new beginning for our cycle of Torah reading. Have we been here before, done this before, read this before? Yes. And the words are the same every year. But as we turn it, again and again, we discover new insights into our traditions and new meanings for ourselves. Everything IS contained within.
As the festival of Sukkot draws to a close , we turn our attention to Torah and the celebration of Simchat Torah. Sukkot reminds us of the frailty of life, the seasons' never-ending rotation, that all that lives must some day die....
On Sukkot we read the words of Ecclesiastes who painfully reminds us that "the eye is never filled with seeing nor the ear with hearing. What has been is that which will be. What has been done is that which will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun." (Eccl. 1:8-9) With its emphasis on the fall harvest, Sukkot is a time for us to reflect on how we fill our days -- knowing that we, too, are part of the unending cycle of life.
Simchat Torah echoes the idea that the rotation of the seasons of the year is ongoing. Summer turns to fall and then to winter and spring and back again to summer. So, too, do we turn the Torah again and again. As a scroll made of many pieces of parchment sewn together, the Torah is literally turned each week to a new section. This Friday night is both Shabbat and Simchat Torah. At our Family Service we will read from the last bit of parchment, the last column, and the last words. Seemingly, the Torah is at its end. But the Torah does not end there. It continues. How? Where?
No sooner do we conclude reading from the book of Deuteronomy than we turn the scroll back to its beginning. We read from the opening passages of Genesis and the story of creation, as we ourselves enact the very process of creating a new beginning for our cycle of Torah reading. Have we been here before, done this before, read this before? Yes. And the words are the same every year. But as we turn it, again and again, we discover new insights into our traditions and new meanings for ourselves. Everything IS contained within.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Shabbat Message from Rabbi Forman - 10/5/06
As John Wayne might have said it: "Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom, Pilgrim." This Friday night we celebrate not only Shabbat, but also the beginning of the first of our three...
festivals: Sukkot - the week- long celebration of the fall harvest. The other Chaggim (festivals) are Shavuot and passover. Chaggim are not like the other holidays on the Jewish calendar. So what makes one Jewish holiday a Yom Tov/holy day (like Rosh HaShana) and another a Chag/festival (like Sukkot) and another just a holiday (like Chanukka or Purim)? Glad you asked....
One important idea embedded in a Chag/Festival is the real meaning of Chag: Pilgrimage. In Biblical times, the ancient Israelites would literally pack themselves for a long journey to Jerusalem where they would remain for the entire week of the Sukkot festival. You may be familiar with the annual rite in the Moslem tradition of going to Mecca. Making that trip is called Haj. Haj and Chag both have the same meaning: to make a pilgrimage.
Perhaps you are thinking that for the past few weeks you have been making several pilgrimages to Or Chadash for the High Holydays. Those were merely journeys. Now, during this fall festival of Sukkot, you, too, have an opportunity to be a real pilgrim. See you in the Sukkah!
Rabbi Joseph M. Forman
festivals: Sukkot - the week- long celebration of the fall harvest. The other Chaggim (festivals) are Shavuot and passover. Chaggim are not like the other holidays on the Jewish calendar. So what makes one Jewish holiday a Yom Tov/holy day (like Rosh HaShana) and another a Chag/festival (like Sukkot) and another just a holiday (like Chanukka or Purim)? Glad you asked....
One important idea embedded in a Chag/Festival is the real meaning of Chag: Pilgrimage. In Biblical times, the ancient Israelites would literally pack themselves for a long journey to Jerusalem where they would remain for the entire week of the Sukkot festival. You may be familiar with the annual rite in the Moslem tradition of going to Mecca. Making that trip is called Haj. Haj and Chag both have the same meaning: to make a pilgrimage.
Perhaps you are thinking that for the past few weeks you have been making several pilgrimages to Or Chadash for the High Holydays. Those were merely journeys. Now, during this fall festival of Sukkot, you, too, have an opportunity to be a real pilgrim. See you in the Sukkah!
Rabbi Joseph M. Forman
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
OR CHADASH 
