Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Schiller B’nai Mitzvah
April 27, 2002
To Live As a Jew Requires a Calendar
Some scholarly opinion holds it that the Book of Leviticus is primarily the work of the priestly school of Biblical writing. We know that the priests were the protectors and promoters of sacred space, particularly the Temple in Jerusalem. When the Temple was destroyed for the first time by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., many of the priests were sent into captivity. They may have decided to preserve their rules and traditions by writing them down, and a version of the Book of Leviticus may well have been the result.
What is fascinating is that even then, 2500 years ago, these protectors of sacred space knew that the only way in which their traditions would survive would be through the sanctification of time. Therefore in the midst of all the rules about Temple procedures, sacrifices, ritual purification, even what the priests would wear, comes Leviticus 23. This chapter, from which the Schiller boys chanted today, is the Torah’s most comprehensive account of the Jewish calendar. It is a tract about time in which space is barely mentioned.
Our text stresses that the observance of these sacred times is applicable b’chol moshvotaychen, "throughout your settlements." Since those days, the celebration of Jewish sacred occasions has been totally independent of where Jews happen to be located in space. We carried our sacred moments with us once the Temple wasn’t there anymore. This phenomenon prompted Abraham Joshua Heschel to stress that Judaism is a religion of time, not of space. He wrote: "Judaism teaches us to be attached to the holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year."
Even before Heschel, a rabbi of 19th century Germany said that the catechism of the Jew is the Jewish calendar. I believe he was absolutely correct. Without a Jewish calendar, it is impossible to practice Judaism. One of the first things that Russian Jews asked for from visitors at the beginning of the Refusenik Movement was a calendar. This morning I’d like to share with you four lessons which I believe Leviticus 23 and the Jewish calendar teach us.
Lesson one. We Jews are willing to be different. One way to demonstrate being different is to mark days to be dedicated to God on which others work. By celebrating times which are sacred to Jews and profane to others, we demonstrate that we march to the beat of a different drum than the rest of the world.
But our being different is not simple stubbornness, contrariness; we observe our festivals in order to serve God. Four times in this one chapter, we are told these are "the set times of God," the sacred occasions which you shall celebrate, each at its appointed time. Verses 2, 4, 37 and the concluding verse of chapter 23 state: "so Moses declared to the Israelites the set times of God." These festivals and holidays are not of our making. The Sabbath and festivals are fundamentally different from leisure time which we usually reserve for recreation. Leisure time is my time; recreation means I can do whatever pleases me. It’s the time I use for release from the challenges of the world. Sacred time, on the other hand, is dedicated to doing things that please God by confronting the burdens of the world. It is time put into service for a higher purpose than my needs and my whims.
Those who come to a synagogue in order to forget the world or to escape this world are bound to be disappointed. The aim of the synagogue is to help people remember their duties to God and the world and, in carrying out these duties, find joy and happiness, even if it is not a laugh a minute.
I suggest that this puts the synagogue in conflict with the surrounding culture, which today celebrates leisure, recreation and entertainment and would like worship to be of the same ilk. Marking sacred days of the Jewish calendar through the service of God is different than having free time.
Therefore, within each holiday is imbedded teachings, values, ideals which need to be applied to our time and place. We are not talking simply of ritual observance. Passover proclaims the message of freedom; Shavuot the message of responsibility; Rosh Hashanah the message of accountability; Yom Kippur the message that we all have the ability to change, improve and grow; Sukkot the message of gratitude. These are Jewish values and, when we celebrate these holidays, we affirm our uniqueness in commitment to serving God by bringing the world closer to God’s model.
Secondly, we Jews strengthen our ties with Israel as we observe the festival calendar. The Jewish calendar follows the seasons in the land of Israel, not the rhythm of nature in Tulsa, or anywhere else in the world. So while Heschel is right that we have holy events not holy places, we retain our link with the Jewish birthplace by following its way of marking time.
Passover originally was the spring harvest festival. We don’t harvest too much in late March or early April in Oklahoma, but we Jews in Oklahoma observed Passover, the spring harvest festival, earlier this month because in ancient Israel that is exactly what was happening at this time of the year. So the Jewish festivals act as a bridge between Israel and wherever Jews now reside.
Lesson three is that the celebration of Sabbaths and festivals promotes Jewish identity because it sets us apart and unites us at the same time. We assimilate when we cease to live in Jewish time. We are on the way to assimilation when we only make occasional, rather than regular, excursions into Jewish time. To be a Jew I must live in Jewish time — b’chol moshvotaychem, "throughout your settlements," i.e., wherever we live.
There have been times when being together with other Jews was sufficient for identity and commitment. The ghetto was so homogenous and so intense that simply by being there one was a practicing Jew, for there were no alternatives and no escape. But that is no longer the case. We Jews today live amidst countless alternatives. To be a Jew requires effort and conscious choice.
The framework for being a Jew is that which our Torah reading for today is all about — living in Jewish time. Sabbaths and festivals provide us with opportunities to express our Judaism at its best and to train our children in it. Formal educational institutions — Jewish day schools, religious schools, Jewish camps — can only teach the skills required to navigate the Jewish calendar. The feelings and values which go with it, the sense of history and the Divine hand that guides it, can only be provided through consistent practice where home and synagogue support and reinforce each other.
None of us lives or works in a homogenous Jewish environment today, not even rabbis. It is not geography that binds us as Jews, but history. We are part of the same perception of time; that is our bond. What brings us together today is Shabbat, the "palace in time" as Heschel called it. Reliving our past and living in Jewish time is what practicing Judaism is all about. We build communities not to ghettoize ourselves, but to help Jews to realize that living in Jewish time is not just a matter of living in my time — my wedding, my bar mitzvah, but in our time — our Sabbaths, our festivals. Leviticus 23 tells us absolutely nothing about sanctifying personal time; it is about the collective effort. It is all in the plural, directed to the whole people. Living in Jewish time requires coming together with other Jews in any place, but never in isolation and never merely according to personal idiosyncracies.
Lesson four is that Judaism is ever-evolving, and I’d like to demonstrate this morning that Judaism is alive and well. When we look at Leviticus 23, it begins with the Sabbath, the weekly reminder of God and God’s creation, and of our responsibility as God’s partners, to take care of ourselves so that we can help God repair the world. Shabbat is the weekly reminder that we human beings are not to be slaves to our work or anything else.
In our congregation, our Ark curtain is a visual reminder of the high points of our calendar cycle. And so I suggest that it is valuable to compare Leviticus 23 with our Ark curtain. The central "shrine in time" which Leviticus begins with and which our Ark cover protects is the Torah scrolls which we read on Shabbat. The Sabbath is one of the Jewish People’s major contributions to world civilization. We Jews invented the weekend. Time is not to control us. Choosing to measure time in seven day segments is one of the ways we demonstrate that. Slaves have to work all the time. In Egypt I imagine every day was like every other; there were no special days marking the calendar, no holidays for our ancestors under Pharaoh’s yoke. Free men and women can take a day off for their own pursuits. Part of the joy of freedom — and let’s remember this, friends — is the opportunity to stop and celebrate.
For the annual holidays, we had room for eight squares which would be large enough that people even in the rear of our sanctuary could see what was represented. Leviticus 23 begins with Passover because Passover comes in the first month of the original agricultural calendar of our People. The second holiday is dependent upon Passover. We count a week of weeks, Shavuot means "weeks", from Passover to Shavuot. Then Leviticus 23 goes to Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot — and that is it. Leviticus 23 covers only these five annual holidays — Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot . Well, what about our other three squares?
At the end of Sukkot, we celebrate Simchat Torah, the joy of the Torah, the day when we complete our annual cycle of Torah reading and begin again. It is a non-biblical holiday, a post-biblical holiday; as is Chanukah. Some non-Jews think Chanukah is a Jewish high holyday. It doesn’t even appear in our Bible. For the first half of the Jewish experience, there was no Chanukah or Simchat Torah, and Purim is only mentioned in the Book of Esther. Obviously, the authors of Leviticus were unfamiliar with Purim.
My friends, the lesson is that you cannot understand contemporary Judaism by just reading the Jewish Bible — what Christians often call the Old Testament. Judaism has continued to grow, evolve, develop, mature for 2,000 years since the Bible.
And these are not our only holidays, what I call "shrines in time." Each year in our congregation we conduct a Tu Bishvat Seder. Last night was our celebration of Lag B’omer. In the summer months, traditional Jews observe Tisha B’av, a mourning day for the destruction of the First and Second Temples. In our generation, we have added two new days of observance to our calendar — Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Commemoration Day, and Yom Ha-Atsmaut, Israel Independence Day. And there are those who would like us to add Yom Hazikairon, the day when we remember those who have fallen in the defense of Israel over the past 54 years, and Yom Y’rushalayim, the anniversary of the 1967 reunification of the holy city of Jerusalem. Only time will tell if either or both of these days will become standards on the ever-evolving Jewish calendar.
The calendar is indeed the catechism of the Jew. It reminds us that we are different because we have unique values to share with the world. For example, on all major holidays we are told not to work. We must be willing to sacrifice money in order to celebrate our holidays. Spiritual values are more important than material values.
Our calendar links us to Israel, our birthplace and the Jewish homeland. Our calendar unites us as Jews wherever we are and reminds us that no one can be a Jew in isolation; we depend upon each other. And, finally, our ever-growing calendar reminds us that Judaism is indeed alive and well. Dear friends, I pray that we may all make and enshrine time for ourselves to be Jewish, and may others learn from our example. Amen.
This message is based in part on the writings of Rabbi Dow Marmur, and I am grateful for his insights.
