 | As spiritual beings, we can understand life as a constant choice between inertia and change, letting things ride or deliberately altering them. We don't pay attention, or we do. We accept what is, or we try to act. So it is with most things Jewish, especially Jewish time – a series of holy gear shifts throughout life. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
P. Emor (2025)
Confession: I never learned to drive stick shift.
Like most modern drivers, I trust my car's automatic transmission. If I pay careful attention, I can hear and feel the gears shift at certain speeds, sensing how the car handles at different gears. When the gears don't shift as they should, the car doesn't drive correctly – or at all.
Life is a constant choice between inertia and change, letting things ride or deliberately altering them. We coast, or we shift gears. We don't pay attention, or we do. We mindlessly accept what is, or we engage. The quality of our lives shifts with those choices.
The essence of spiritual life, I've come to understand, is becoming more attentive to life's gear shifts – the exquisite choices and pace of time, each season, each day – rather than coasting through life on autopilot. Spiritual life attunes us to the subtle shifts within us and around us, then impels us to act in alignment with them.
In ways too numerous to count, our world is out of balance because worldly life warped human attention away from what's ultimately important. We slipped the gears. Now the planet is overheating. Civic life is overheating. Hot conflicts are breaking out worldwide.
Our ancient ancestors didn't know about gear shifts, but they knew about time shifts. Their lives flowed utterly with the daily cycle of light, the agricultural seasons, the cycle of years. By necessity and by choice, life was meaningful because they gear shifted between routine and heightened awareness. Time was their guide, they paid attention, and they lived accordingly.
This week's Torah portion lays out the major gear shifts of Jewish time – the days, the weeks, the inflection points of the seasons, the festival year. The major times of the holiday cycle are here: Passover, the Omer count, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot (Lev. 23).
Torah calls each one a "fixed time" of God (Lev. 23:2, Lev. 23:4, Lev. 23:44). They're times that, Jewishly speaking, we must observe – gear shifts that compel us. Of course, many moderns don't jive on being commanded: as the half-joke goes, nowadays we choose to be chosen.
But "fixed times" mean something more. In Hebrew, they are moadim (מועדים), from the Hebrew eid (עד) – literally, witness. Our spiritual "fixed times" are really "witness times."
What do we "witness"? Well, that depends. If we don't pay attention, if we're on autopilot, if we ignore the gear shifts, then we witness nothing. But if we do pay attention, if we lean into the cycle of time, then there's much to witness and experience – community, nature's ebb and flow, heightened times of joy and meaning, ethics and values, learning and inspiration, needful behaviors, collective urgencies, things we must do.
Training our awareness to the gear shifts of time also trains our awareness to what's vital in life – not just the fixed times but the values that animate a healthy, whole and holy world. All that we do in Jewish spiritual life, and especially our holidays – our "fixed times," our "witness times" – are for this purpose. We are to be active witnesses to the holy in the world.
And maybe, just maybe, learn to drive stick.
P. Emor (2025)
Confession: I never learned to drive stick shift.
Like most modern drivers, I trust my car's automatic transmission. If I pay careful attention, I can hear and feel the gears shift at certain speeds, sensing how the car handles at different gears. When the gears don't shift as they should, the car doesn't drive correctly – or at all.
Life is a constant choice between inertia and change, letting things ride or deliberately altering them. We coast, or we shift gears. We don't pay attention, or we do. We mindlessly accept what is, or we engage. The quality of our lives shifts with those choices.
The essence of spiritual life, I've come to understand, is becoming more attentive to life's gear shifts – the exquisite choices and pace of time, each season, each day – rather than coasting through life on autopilot. Spiritual life attunes us to the subtle shifts within us and around us, then impels us to act in alignment with them.
In ways too numerous to count, our world is out of balance because worldly life warped human attention away from what's ultimately important. We slipped the gears. Now the planet is overheating. Civic life is overheating. Hot conflicts are breaking out worldwide.
Our ancient ancestors didn't know about gear shifts, but they knew about time shifts. Their lives flowed utterly with the daily cycle of light, the agricultural seasons, the cycle of years. By necessity and by choice, life was meaningful because they gear shifted between routine and heightened awareness. Time was their guide, they paid attention, and they lived accordingly.
This week's Torah portion lays out the major gear shifts of Jewish time – the days, the weeks, the inflection points of the seasons, the festival year. The major times of the holiday cycle are here: Passover, the Omer count, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot (Lev. 23).
Torah calls each one a "fixed time" of God (Lev. 23:2, Lev. 23:4, Lev. 23:44). They're times that, Jewishly speaking, we must observe – gear shifts that compel us. Of course, many moderns don't jive on being commanded: as the half-joke goes, nowadays we choose to be chosen.
But "fixed times" mean something more. In Hebrew, they are moadim (מועדים), from the Hebrew eid (עד) – literally, witness. Our spiritual "fixed times" are really "witness times."
What do we "witness"? Well, that depends. If we don't pay attention, if we're on autopilot, if we ignore the gear shifts, then we witness nothing. But if we do pay attention, if we lean into the cycle of time, then there's much to witness and experience – community, nature's ebb and flow, heightened times of joy and meaning, ethics and values, learning and inspiration, needful behaviors, collective urgencies, things we must do.
Training our awareness to the gear shifts of time also trains our awareness to what's vital in life – not just the fixed times but the values that animate a healthy, whole and holy world. All that we do in Jewish spiritual life, and especially our holidays – our "fixed times," our "witness times" – are for this purpose. We are to be active witnesses to the holy in the world.
And maybe, just maybe, learn to drive stick.
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