“Time” is a human invention. I forget that truth periodically. I try to anchor my life to holidays and anniversaries, the start of spring training and of school, the arrival of graduation and summer vacation as though these occasions were immutable realities on which we can depend as we depend on the sunrise. But like the days of the week and the hours of the day, these times are human inventions. The cycles of nature may be unchanging (we’ll leave climate change for another column) but the meanings we attach to those natural cycles are a human creation. We give names to those cycles and try to attach the meaning of our lives to those rhythms. But ultimately, our holidays and occasions turn out to be frail, subjective things on which to depend for our sense of stability.
Children, sometimes, are forced to grow up too fast before either we or they are ready to let go of their childhood. People die before their time and we weep and rage at our sense of dislocation and frailty and injustice. Others linger in pain for far too long and we wonder at the purpose of all those days spent in suffering. We fall in love or out of love and our plans, the rhythm of our lives are disrupted. Wars, natural disasters, accidents, unforeseen opportunities—how often changing circumstances force us to learn a new measure of our lives’ time and meaning.
This year, even our own Jewish calendar reminds us of that fact. Passover begins in late March, Rosh Hashanah starts two days after Labor Day and the first night of Chanukah will be “Erev” Thanksgiving! It just doesn’t seem right. Everything is happening too early. We are dislocated in time.
But there is Torah to be learned even from the vagaries of the Hebrew calendar. We live our best, our truest and strongest lives when we anchor our lives to things that truly are immutable. Amidst the unpredictability and chaos of life in the world, our tradition teaches us to anchor ourselves to justice and compassion, to kindness and generosity, to wisdom and to love. The Truth of Pesach to which we anchor ourselves is not that it always falls sometime in April but that liberation is always a miraculous, surprising possibility and a sacred gift when achieved. The Truth of Rosh Hashanah is not that it always starts in mid-late September but that spiritual renewal is always possible if we are willing to do the work of teshuvah. And the Truth of Chanukah is not that it always falls near Christmas but that we have the capacity to rededicate ourselves and our world to what is sacred and in so doing to light up the deepest darkness.
Let “Pesach in March” be an opportunity for each of us to reexamine the truths to which we’ve anchored our sense of meaning and stability. Let it be an invitation to reconnect with what is truly Eternal in time, in the world and in our lives. Then these upcoming days of celebration and all the ones to follow may be truly holy days.
-Rabbi Jonathan Kraus
