RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:SEPTADIC CYCLIC TIME IN HEBRAISM:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
Shalom:
For some fun reading read, try Rachel Elior's The Three Temples. It's about mysticism , Dead Sea Scrolls and numerology. And her fellow rabbis in Israel gave her grief on its publication.
It is odd, but while we Jews seem very concerned about time, with our first Mishna in the first Tractate of Talmud called Beracoth, Blessings, being concerned with the times one can say the evening Shema, and the second Mishna being concerned with the times one can say the morning Shema, that to the Hebrews, the word for time, z'man, never appears in the Chumash. In Hebraism time is in God's realm. It is ethereal, it is not tangible to humans. When Hebrews are redeemed to freedom from Egypt their first commandment is to set up a calendar , as free people control their own time, but time is still not mentioned.
The Hebrews use a concept for time called mo'ed, and indeed we have a tractate in Judaism's Talmud called by this name. It means a ''set time,' or perhaps an appointed season, and we see the root 'ed' used to mean a witness. We see m'eidah used for a people who obeys a command having to do with a set time, and edah as the Divine command to this people regarding a mo'ed.
The Hebrew people are first called a people, a nation, an ''am'', when they are freed and have a calendar, making Nissan, the spring month, the first month of the year, as the Talmud teaches, the true Jewish New year. (Tishrei's Rosh Ha Shana is the Talmudic New Year for the World). The Talmud, if you read closely, even considers this month of Nissan as the time when God started to create the world, when thinking about it. Hence Jewish time, begins in negative time. This is how the calculation for the Birkat Ha Chama, Blessing God for the Sun, every 28 years, when the sun is aligned as it was when the earth was created, falls in Nissan (once in a while in Adar II), which is actually a half year before time began.
Hence while negative numbers is a concept taught to students later in their education, and the concept of pre-time is one that physicists ponder, in Judaism, the concept is reminded to us every 28 years, and the most recent time was in April 2009, the morning of the first night of Passover.
So Hebraism demands an oath from God's Am (nation) for its liberty. Oath is shevuah. The Hebrews promise to maintain a seven (sheva) day Sabbath. The words are all connected. And Sabbath is a root for rest, work stoppage. There is a cyclic manner to this and its septadic, all connected with sevens, and the Hebrews promise to follow: "set times of YHWH's holy convocations" , mo'adei hashem mikraei kodesh.
So post- Egypt, Hebrew time is septadic time. Not only is there a Sabbath every 7 days, but the first 7 months of the year, there are 7 mo'edim from Nissan the first month to Tishrei the 7th Month (Lev. 23: 1-44) (Pesach, Matzoth (Two separate holy days), Omer, Shavuot, Rosh Ha Shana,Yom Kippur, Sukkoth).
Then every seven years we have a Shabbat for the land, and every 49 years, which moves into the 50th, we have a Yovel, a Jubilee. These are mega Shabbats in the name of liberty and rest.
We also need to remember that our holidays are Shabbats as well. Passover on the 14th of Nissan and the Feast of Matzoth on the 15th, which goes for 7 more days, the day of waving of the Omer which occurred after the feast of matzah on the first Sunday on the 26th of Nissan, the feast of weeks (Shavuot) aka the Feast of First Fruits, seven Shabbats later on the 15th of Sivan. Then in the seventh month of Tishrei, on the first day is the holiday of the Shofar blast, on the tenth day is the day of Atonement, and then starting on the 15th for seven days is the festival of Booths, Sukkoth. Not including the Shabbats that fell during these times, 18 of the above days were Sabbath-ruled. The other days were kol ha mo'ed, part of the holidays, but where regular work and normal life could be continued.
The Hebrew Calendar had 364 days with 52 Sabbaths. (364 / 7 = 52) on set dates. When we add the above 18 Sabbath like Holidays to 52, we arrive at 70 Sabbaths a year that the Hebrews had. It is no wonder that the Hebrew menorah has 7 oil wicks to remind us of seven.
The Hebrews were the only people of their time that had 70 days off per year. The concept of labor was important, but the concept of rest and spirituality, for all, not just rulers, was important as well. Certainly a slave has no day off, and yet, how many of us consider ourselves free, but are slaves to z'man, time, and cannot take a time-out for Shabbat? One of my talmidim was considering a move to Florida. She found a community, 70,000 people, 7 temples. Only one had one Saturday morning Shabbat service. The rest had anywhere from every Friday night erev Shabbat service to one, or two a month. All however, had bingo weekly, and some kind of outing at some chain restaurant each Saturday night. Judaism without Shabbat is like a restaurant with a menu and no food. Obviously, she told me she could not even consider moving there.
Passover is also called the Holiday of Liberty, and as Hebrews we certainly walked across ''the sea on dry land.'' ma'avar (Exodus 14.22). The word Hebrews, ivrim, means literally, those on the other side of the river. And when Abraham became an ethical monotheist, he actually was the only human in the world on one side of the river, and every other human was on the other side of that river. He moved, we move, from the known to the unknown, and what we have been given as a gift, is an oasis in time, Shabbat, for wherever we are, in B'Midmar, the wilderness, in Galut, in trouble, we are given by God an extra soul and a taste of Olam ha Ba each seven days, and even more so 70 days of the year, every 7 years, and every 49 (50) years.
Kedushah, holiness, set-asideness, and the kodesh , the holy, the set-aside, refer to set time, mo'ed and not to place , eretz. God makes holy, mekadesh, our liberty and freedom, but doesn't make holy a place. We Jews make holy a place, but more importantly a set time, by ''Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it," along with our other set times, some from the Chumash, others Rabbinically Talmudic.
The septadic cycle which we first saw in the creation story and which we saw in how letters of Leviticus line up with 7 apart to spell YHVH Rabbi Arthur Segal: RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:LEVITICUS' EVERY FIRST 7TH LETTERS SPELL YHVH:JEWISH RENEWAL and how the letter in both Genesis and Exodus line up every 49th to spell Torah, and in Number and Deuteronomy to spell Torah backwards, are all little rings around our fingers to have us remember and not to forget that Judaism is not place bound, but we are set-time bound.
Shalom, Shavuah Tov,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
JEWISH RENEWAL
JEWISH SPIRITUALITY
ECO JUDIASM
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC, BLUFFTON, SC, SAVANNAH, GA
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In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.
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