August 15, 2025
Somehow, I blinked and Debra and I have two daughters in High School; Zoe is entering her senior year and looking at colleges, and Shira began High School this week. It is hard to believe that when our family moved here 14 years ago, our girls were in the Rainbow Room (3 year olds) and the Cloud Room (infant room) at the JCC North. Time has certainly flown by. Our tradition has always been curious about time and how we mark it. In the opening verses of the Torah, we read about time and how God defines a day. The Talmud begins with the question, “From what time does one recite the evening Shema?” Our tradition is filled with timebound commandments, (e.g. lighting Shabbat candles, hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah) and we distinguish the difference between sacred time (Shabbat) and ordinary time (the rest of the week). In almost each of these instances, our tradition adds a blessing to mark the moment. Such blessings add a sense of holiness to our lives and encourage us to pause and behold numinous moments.
On most days, time passes all too fleetingly and many of us are focused on making the next meeting or finishing something before a deadline. Filling our time with sacred acts, such as time in community, learning, or reaching out and making someone’s life better, gives us a sense of purpose. I recall many years ago reading an important book by Ron Wolfson, entitled, The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven. Most of the questions stem from a text in the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 31a, “Rava said: When a person is brought to judgment for the life they lived, they will say to him: 1.) Were you honest in business? 2.) Did you designate time for Torah study? 3.) Did you procreate? (perhaps better said: did you leave a legacy?) 4.) Did you await salvation? (Did you have hope in your heart?) 5.) Did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom or discern one matter from the other?”
The questions themselves are not about what happens at the end of our lives, but rather, what happens during our lives. The second question is about learning; did we make time for learning? Our students in school learn because they have to. As adults, we learn because we get to. Learning enlightens our lives to new possibilities and avenues that can takes us to new places or enrich our lives with meaning.
How we spend our time is sacred. The poet Mary Oliver captures the essence of time in her poem “The Summer Day”.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
I love her words! They invite us to find a place of wonder and awe. Learning is awe inspiring. Paying attention to details is an act of learning too. She asks, how will we spend our lives? With a plethora of answers to a remarkable question, and knowing time is limited, we must think and reflect deeply. What will you learn? Will you do something that invites awe into your midst? Will you spend time with people you care about? Time is sacred, so let us fill it with something holy!
To the teachers and students who started school this week or will start next week, have a wonderful year. May this time be blessed with new insights. May you approach each day with patience. May we all learn from the struggle. And may the new things we learn give us inspiration each day and fill our lives with blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rick Kellner