Rosh Chodesh Sivan Torah Essay: Truth and Time
Rosh Chodesh Sivan Torah Essay: Truth and Time

There’s a fabulous Winnie the Pooh book I was reading to my daughter the other day, that tells how Pooh and all his friends decide to plant seeds. They wait and wait but nothing happens.  Roo asks ‘What if the seeds don’t sprout and we run out of patience?” Rabbit responds ‘now now, you’ve got to give the seeds a chance. Everything grows in its own time’. 

Each of the friends uses a different method to try and get them to grow, eventually they all start growing except Pooh’s.  He is sad, he says he has been so patient and still nothing happens. He realizes that the ground where his seeds are planted was not getting any sunlight because Tigger’s flowers were covering them. Once he moves the flowers his seeds start to grow. 

The story is so simple but immensely insightful, especially to the children in this generation.  It is a lesson in patience and the importance of time and process.  It teaches the value of light in any process of growth. Though only four, my daughter already knows that most things she will encounter in this world are instantaneous.  What she needs to learn is that the important things, the things that we attach the most value to are not.  They require time, patience and process.

Shavuot is the only holiday, Chag, in the Torah that we are commanded to keep, but are not told the exact date of its falling. We are only told to count seven weeks or fifty days from the festival of Pesach when the barley harvest occurs.  Its date is based on our counting the seven weeks, fifty days.  The very act of our counting ensures the festival will be kept. The goal/date is less important than the process we must undertake to get there.

And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall you number fifty days; and you shall present a new meal-offering unto the Lord. (Vayikra 23:9)

Seven weeks you shall number unto you; from the time the sickle is first put to the standing corn you should begin to number seven weeks.  And you shall keep the Feast of Weeks unto the Lord your God after the measure of the freewill-offering of your hand, which you shall give, according as the Lord your God blessed you. (Devarim 16:9-10)

By bringing the omer (a specific amount,ed.) of barley at the start of the count and two loaves of bread at the end we note the flow of process. Whilst God provided us with the raw materials – the wheat and barley, man must create the food to be eaten.  A lesson in partnership whose requisite is patience. 

A true covenantal relationship between man and God requires that both parties be involved, that man recognises the worth of his freedom and time and uses it for creativity and goodness.  It is no surprise that though biblically there is no recollection of Matan Torah taking place at the time of Shavuot, our sages, Chazal, link the two.  Matan Torah was the time our freedom was imbued with meaning.  It is not enough to simply be given liberty to do as we wish, being free means being responsible and being responsible means finding purpose in time.  

Counting days should lead to a personal introspection into what time means to me. Is time just a continuum into which random events occur or is each moment significant, a chance to change, redeem, move forward?  When we count we attest to the interrelation of events, two cannot come without one, three without two.  The future is a constituent of the past. To progress and reach the end I have to first go through the process of counting towards it.  I have to live through each day, recognize the value of the present moment, whilst keeping my eye on the end goal.

Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim also sees the counting as an expression of a process between Pesach and Shavuot – negative and positive Liberty:

The days are counted from the first of the festivals, up to it, as is done by one who waits for the coming of the human being he loves the best and counts the days and hours. This is the reason for the counting of the omer from the day when they left Egypt till the day of the giving of the Torah, which was the purpose and the end of their leaving. (Maimonides: Guide to the Perplexed 3:43)

The Jewish view has always stressed the importance of time as process.  The word zeman that features in the Bible is used in relation to points in time or finite periods of time rather than  as a continuum.  The fact that the first command given to the people was that of Rosh Chodesh shows that time represents process a central element in human freedom and experience.  It is not time or the counting that is significant, but what we choose to do with time that confers on it sacredness. 

When we sanctify time in whichever way we do, we are taking a moment and imbuing it with transcendence.  When we learn Torah and bring about a new explanation, a chiddush, when we impart wisdom to our children, when we do acts of kindness, chesed, these are things that live on past our time, they move us towards a redemption of man and the world.  They create an eternity from time.

In the words of A.J.Heschel: 

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time.  Unlike the space minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogenous, to whom all hours are alike, qualityless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time.  There are no two hours alike.  Every hour is unique and the only one given at that moment, exclusively and endlessly precious.

The Omer count attunes us to this fact. The period between being free from slavery (Exodus/Pesach) to becoming free to serve God (Har Sinai/Shavuot) is one in which we must recall the value of time and process, become accustomed to the music of freedom and rejection of fatalism.

Tanya White is a doctoral student at Bar Ilan University in Jewish Philosophy. She holds a BA in International Relations from London School of Economics and a MA in Jewish Studies and Philosophy from The University of London.  She  teaches Jewish Philosophy and learning skills at Matan HaSharon, and at various Matan branches. This article is part of a longer analysis found on Tanya's site: Contemplating Torah - for the full version.