Only For Now

On a hot afternoon about 12 years ago, I was sitting on the red line heading from the north side of Chicago to downtown, a place Chicagoans refer to as the Loop. I was with WA, which are her initials, which was how we referred to our clients at the domestic violence agency I worked at in the Uptown neighborhood. I was working as a legal advocate, and I was accompanying WA to visit an immigration lawyer to give an affidavit to apply for a visa, on the basis that she was the victim of domestic violence. WA was my age with long dark hair and huge dark brown eyes, from Jordan. She hardly knew English when I met her and her newborn just six months prior, but in the time since, she had acquired enough of a command of the language to crack jokes and express her feelings and to speak about the depth of her experience, and on this train ride, she said something that I’ve never forgotten.

“I am only afraid of one thing.” She paused and pointed to the exit sign at the end of the train car and said, “the clock on the wall.” If anyone has ever spent time on the L in Chicago (and even if you haven’t), you probably know that there aren’t clocks hanging above the exit sign on each train car. But as she spoke, I was transported to a high-ceilinged, sunny, airy living room as we passed Wrigley Field  – “the one thing I am afraid of is it stopping.” It took me a second to get out of my literal understanding – clocks stop all the time! The battery dies, the hands give in. I realized she was saying something much deeper. As long as time keeps going, I will be okay.

My mind went to a line from Maariv, the daily evening prayer:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר בִּדְבָרוֹ מַעֲרִיב עֲרָבִים בְּחָכְמָה פּוֹתֵֽחַ שְׁעָרִים וּבִתְבוּנָה מְשַׁנֶּה עִתִּים וּמַחֲלִיף אֶת־הַזְּ֒מַנִּים

Blessed are you G-d who through Their word evenings the evening, who in Their wisdom opens gates, and in Their understanding changes the seasons and keeps time moving.

One of the mysteries of time is that it changes shape and texture and weight depending on our circumstances. Maybe you’ve experienced the heartache of time slipping through your fingers, or the angst of its excruciating slowness, or the joyful anticipation of time sending you towards something exciting, or the exquisite fleeting multi-dimensional encounter with the present moment. Maybe you’ve forgotten about the passing of time for large swaths of it. I know I’ve experienced all of those things.

And in that blend of chaos and order, our tradition comes in like a heartbeat as the sun sets every evening and encourages us to bless time’s slipperiness. 

These last few months, time has been almost all I can think about. As the daunting reality of culminating my time in rabbinical school and actually becoming a rabbi comes into sharper view, I have been feeling many stages of grief around the phenomenon of time and the impossibility of domesticating it. It has put into sharp relief the stretches of life when time feels soft, more malleable, or even unnoticeable. 

Our tradition excels at keeping track of time. One of its many modes of counting is the rhythm of the weekly parsha, which, last week, just before my ordination, was Naso. Here we discover that the אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵד֮, the Tent of Meeting, is mentioned 18 times. 18, the auspicious number that in Hebrew numerology means life: the ohel moed is a breathing center point of this parsha. 

The Tent of Meeting, one of the names for the moving sanctuary, is essentially where G-d dwells while the Israelites wander the desert for 40 years. 

Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber points out that when the Torah describes the moving sanctuary as the  אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵד֮ Tent of Meeting, specifically, it uses the language of, well, “meeting” to describe G-d’s presence there.

פֶּ֥תַח אֹֽהֶל־מוֹעֵ֖ד לִפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אִוָּעֵ֤ד לָכֶם֙ שָׁ֔מָּה לְדַבֵּ֥ר אֵלֶ֖יךָ שָֽׁם

G-d says to the Israelites I will meet you there, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 

Exodus 29:42-3

This makes sense as the root for Moed, yud or vav-ayin-daled, can mean a meeting place. 

There’s a specific flavor to the Ohel Moed and the Torah’s imagination of the people and G-d’s relationship there. They’re meeting. Meeting conveys two parties. And it makes me wonder: what was the nature of their meeting? Did it feel like they were coming from far away? Did it feel like they were tiptoeing backwards and bumped into each other? 

One of my favorite stories of meeting G-d in Torah is in Genesis, when Jacob runs away from home after stealing the birthright and his father’s blessing from his older brother. On the road he dreams of angels climbing up and down a ladder, and upon his waking, the story goes:

וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃

Yaakov awoke from his sleep
and said:
Why,
YHWH is in this place,
and I, I did not know it!

יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּ

I love this story because Jacob is scared and his future is uncertain and his conditions are not entirely hospitable and he is far from perfect, and that is where he meets G-d, totally unexpectedly. The setting isn’t necessarily intuitive for a meeting with the divine – he literally falls asleep using a rock as a pillow, he’s on the run, he’s far from home, he might be in danger. The timing also isn’t obvious for all the same reasons. And it is precisely in these rough, edgy, surprising conditions that Jacob meets G-d, which is to say that G-d can be found anywhere. In fact, the word Makom, place, becomes a rabbinic name for G-d, meaning omnipresent.

The rock where Jacob rests his head and dreams of the ladder becomes his little Ohel Moed, his own little Tent of Meeting. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that the other major way that the Torah uses the word Moed is not actually about place at all, but about time. 

Moadim l’simcha, we say to each other on the festivals. Moed turns into Moadim – special holidays, like Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot.

Moed: a meeting of G-d in time or space. 

Since realizing that Moed is a word for place that also means time, I have been imagining the word Makom in Jacob’s story as also containing both time and place and hearing Jacob’s words anew:

There is G-d in this place and I didn’t know it. There is G-d in this moment and I didn’t know it. There is G-d in the physical world and I didn’t know it. There is G-d in time and I didn’t know it.

On the first day of my first year of rabbinical school,
And on the last day of my first year of rabbinical school,
I said a little prayer to myself in my entering and exiting:
Thank G-d I have so much time left.
At the end of my second year I said:
Thank G-d I have 4 more years left.
At the end of my third year I said:
Thank G-d I have 3 more years left. But also –
Oh no, everything after this will tip me closer to the end than the beginning…

But as that line of Maariv, a line we chant together, and the wise words of the musical Avenue Q remind us:

except for death and paying taxes, everything in life is only for now. 

And I would like to suggest that the word Moed and the Ohel Moed invite us into the framework that the slipperiness of time is draped in holiness, and can be a way to meet G-d, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by surprise.

Whether you are in a moment of your life when time feels unruly and against you, or hardly noticeable, or on your side, or anywhere else, I hope our tradition can be a balm. I hope the words of Maariv can be a healing reassurance that, as painful and unfair as time can be, it was in wisdom and understanding that G-d knew the seasons had to change.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר בִּדְבָרוֹ מַעֲרִיב עֲרָבִים בְּחָכְמָה פּוֹתֵֽחַ שְׁעָרִים וּבִתְבוּנָה מְשַׁנֶּה עִתִּים וּמַחֲלִיף אֶת־הַזְּ֒מַנִּים

Blessed are You G-d for – as long as we’re alive – never stopping the clock.