SACRED TIME
by Jan Carlsson-Bull
Rosh Hashanah
September 6, 2002
We stand on the eve of the Days of Awe, Yamim Noraim, ten days, which illumine the Jewish calendar as a sacred time for reflection, prayer, and repentance. Tonight we observe Erev Rosh Hashanah, the eve of the beginning of the year 5763. Ten days hence we will observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. These Days of Awe commence with feasting and conclude with fasting. Such is the progression of the spiritual journey at the heart of what is also known as the High Holy Days.
Rosh Hashanah is not just the beginning of a new year. It is a celebration of the beginning of the very Beginning of Creation itself. It is a time that matters profoundly to each of us whether we acknowledge it or not, just as God matters profoundly to each of us in whatever form we acknowledge, deny, or adapt the construct of God. We can all breathe more deeply when standing on a threshold of another chance afforded by a new year, by whatever markers that year is determined. And we can all sigh deeply when we consider that meditation, reflection, prayer, and repentance are needs that bind the human community.
We gather on the eve of this new beginning and trust that ten days hence we will see the dawn of the holiest of all days in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But tonight let’s imagine that we are in the moment before the dawn of Creation. We are daring to look on the other side and catch a glimpse of that sacred time. It is the eve of a beginning. It is the eve of the Beginning. It is Erev Rosh Hashanah.
Of course I can never consider this holiday without calling forth the bond with my firstborn, whose very name is Shana. ‘You know, Mom," she said to me just a few days ago, "I know my name means ‘year’ and I always used to think, How boring to have a name that just means plain old year. But as I grow older, I love my name, because it calls to mind the cycle of seasons and time itself as a cycle. And I’m a woman; my bodily rhythms are cyclical. I love my name, Shana!"
Time is of the essence. Shana reminded me of this so poignantly, and these Days of Awe bring time to the very altar of our living. "Judaism," proclaimed the great 20th century Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, "is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time." I can just hear his voice ring out with these words, joyous and strong, as he paced back and forth, his chalk-gray beard leading his maybe 5’ 2" frame at the head of that classroom in the seminar he led as a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. He was completely caught up in the awe of his faith and speaks to us now as we consider these Days of Awe on this distinctive Sabbath eve:
The Sabbaths [he writes] are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement, but the Day itself, the ‘essence of the Day,’ which, with man’s repentance, atones for the sins of man.
It is that journey toward atonement whose threshold we inhabit this evening. We are called to observe sacred time in a calendar that is strange for some of us. On this Rosh Hashanah of the Jewish year 5763, Jewish wisdom conveys that this world is 5,763 years old. I daresay Jewish paleontologists find no contradiction in what they report from their studies of earth’s origins and what they are called to consider in these sanctuaries of time. It was, after all, a Jewish physicist who determined just how relative time is. So in this time of relativity, we might consider how quickly our lives pass, how ultimately time matters to us, how essential it is for our living that we take time out in time. Because we never know, we simply never know, when the time out we take, when the time we acknowledge as sacred, will be just in time for us.
"Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy." (Exodus 20:8) It is a commandment of time. "Jewish ritual," writes Heschel in his discourse on the Sabbath, "may be characterized as the art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time."
What comes to mind during these Days of Awe? Most certainly altered architecture. We have much to learn from this time at this time.
We move from anticipation of a new year, Rosh Hashanah, to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. From cause for feasting to cause for fasting is our direction. How this resonates with our expectations for a new year, for a promise that was a blue sky on a bright morning, for a day that began as a quiet celebration of clear air and warm sunshine. And then it shattered. It imploded. Our world turned upside town. Our architecture crumbled violently. We remember, as we consider these Days of Awe as they embrace this time of remembrance. It is a sacred time.
At the heart of this sacred time is the notion of teshuvah. It means repentance, but the root of the word is shuv, to turn or return. It is a surprisingly spatial notion in a construct whose core is temporal. Bradley Shavit Artson recalls the Hasidic master Rebe Nachman of Breslov, who proclaimed, "Everywhere I go, I am going to Jerusalem." Artson calls our attention to the nuance of these words invoked by another Rabbi, a colleague of Rebe Nachman. It was Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdechev who observed, "Everywhere I go, I am going to myself." This kind of turning is about moving toward our center, our core. In Artson’s words, "…it is a turning to remain true."
What does it mean for us, during these Days of Awe, to find our center–midpoint between cause for anticipation and cause for atonement, midpoint between our recollection of that blue sky morning of seeming perfection and those successive hours and days when we were ready to cast our very souls into the ashes so deep was our grief? What does it mean for us to remain true to the sanctity of time, to the miracle that we are part of Creation, whose moment of birth we observe tonight? What does it mean for us to be true to what we profess in this very sanctuary–clear thinking, peace, nonviolence, mindful action in our larger world?
We are a city whose hearts are heavy with memories of devastation amid a country considering devastation. What does it mean to remain true? What does it mean to revere the life and lives that we consider miracles of creation, each having intrinsic worth? How does our Universalism inform us as we step forth across the threshold of Rosh Hashanah into days of reflection and prayer, moving toward atonement, toward reconciliation whose spiritual integrity is embodied in our decisions and our deeds?
As people of a liberal faith tradition, we draw from many sources as we learn from this time at this time. And ours is a living tradition, acknowledging that the voice of prophecy is not confined to the past. Prophecy is timeless. Prophecy is never easy to hear. Prophets are not always gracious. Consider Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Amos, maybe even a Jew by the name of Michael Lerner, who speaks through a movement known as tikkun, the Hebrew word meaning "to mend, repair, and transform the world."
At this time, this sacred time, his words may jolt us:
In every act we do, we either affirm and strengthen the sanctity of human beings and bring God’s presence in our lives more fully into focus, or we contribute to the desanctification of human life and the distancing of ourselves from God. America had a choice after September 11: to see the world through the lens of the firemen, policemen, and ordinary civilians who risked their lives to save others, or to see the world through the frame of Bin Laden and terror.
…. [This nation] will only achieve security when it is perceived by the world as a society using its vast resources to eliminate global poverty, hunger, homelessness, and all forms of economic inequalities in the world; as the major power using [our] resources to combat global warming and to make all global investments and finances in accord with the best interests of preserving the ecological sustainability of the planet; and as the society that in its actual practice embodies an ethos of mutual caring and open-hearted generosity to the peoples of the world.
As we move into the days ahead, what will our journey be? In what direction will we turn, for turn we will? What kind of architects will we be? Will we decide to sanctify time in time? In these Days of Awe, how will we embody the sacred, remembering what matters? How will we hold up our very souls to time’s unerring mirror as we proceed toward atonement and dare to hope for a world transformed?
I wish us all a Shanah Tova, a good year. I wish us a year in which we honor time as sacred and sow the seeds for a harvest of Shalom. Amen.
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Sources:
The Bible (Revised Standard Version)
Bradley Shavit Artson, "Turning," www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0209/article/020915b.html
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, its meaning for modern man, Meridian Books, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York, and The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1951, p. 8.
Michael Lerner, "The Great Denial In America and in Israel," (editorial),
www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0209/article/020903b.html
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