Judaism Takes Time

Rosh Hashana Morning Sermon , 5768

by Rabbi Neil Janes

How many times have you stood outside a lift pressing the button for it to come?  And when it comes it’s obviously going in the wrong direction so you impatiently wait for the doors to close so that you can press the ‘call’ button again.  Then you start pushing the button over and over again ‘click, click, click’ – somehow you imagine that the lift will come more quickly if you press the button more rapidly and harder until the doors finally open and you step inside.  The same goes for the traffic lights at a pedestrian crossing by the way.  Neither rapid button depressing works.

Or how about this scenario: your rabbi has recommended a website for you to visit because it covers an important aspect of his sermon.  So, being the good and attentive congregant you duly visit the website.  You, of course, have the most powerful broadband connection known to humankind – able to download trilabytes in seconds, capable of sending and receiving millions of emails in the blink of an eye.  But, unfortunately, this website seems to be taking for ever to load.  You find yourself shouting at the computer, “Come on, why are you taking so long.”  Eventually you call your son or daughter and tell them something is wrong with the computer.

“It won’t load this site and I must look at it, it contains the meaning of life – our Rabbi said so.”

Your child looks at you and says, “Stop pressing the reload button, it’s just taking a bit of time.  And why do you always believe what the Rabbi tells you, can’t you have a more sophisticated insight into the existential predicament of humankind” (See, the web can have its value).

Your impatience has got the better of you and all you actually had to do was wait a few more seconds.  You never would have believed it would be possible to download television programmes when you were your child’s age.  But now, not only do you believe it, but the technology is just not fast enough.  It’s supposed to be high speed, where’s the high speed?

Finally, in frustration at waiting you switch off your pc and think to yourself – if it’s that bloody important can’t the rabbi just send it to me by post.

It’s amazing really, when you think about it.  Everything can happen so much more quickly than ever before.  Except getting from Borehamwood to Finchley during the school run.  Talking of which, I read a report a few months back which said that with all the developments in air travel the average journey now takes longer than before, because of the congestion in the air and in the airports.  But, putting the odd anomalies aside, we live lives which are rapid, almost instantaneous.

There was a time when I used to be a last minute merchant.  Now that title is only preserved for when I write my sermons.  Otherwise I try to make plans in advance.  But there are some things that sort of slip by.  Car tax or paying the gas bill.  I’m sure we all do it occasionally.  The post arrives just as you’re going out (if you’re lucky) and you pick it up, open it and put it down on the table for when you come home.  But by the time you get home you’re tired and irritable.  The last thing you want to do is sort out the bills.  So they get neglected.  Until it’s the day of payment.  Unless you sort out the tax/insurance/bill the result will be disastrous.  But you’ve remembered too late.  What do you do?  Get on the internet – everything is there.  You can pay for things, buy stuff, sort out pretty much everything without the queuing and search for the meaning of life.  Marvellous.  I can now happily leave everything to the last minute and it doesn’t matter.  In fact, I can just download my sermon off the web the night before – no-one will know, “Rabbisermons.com”!

Of course, the same is true for other aspects of life.  In careers, Michelle tells me over and over again about how students have said to her, when asked what they want to be, “I want to be famous.”

“And how are you going to manage that?”

“I don’t know I just want to be famous.”

Instant fame, for not doing very much (except perhaps for being mildly or even grossly offensive) seems to have become a must have.  The ambition of some misguided young people.  But the young are not alone.  Most of us have watched ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ or ‘Deal or no Deal’ – the latter giving the false idea that some kind of skill or science is involved in the picking of boxes with cash amounts inside.  We get instant wealth – no work, no toil and trouble.  Just pure simple guesswork.

I have just recently got cable television and one of my favourite programmes is shown on UKTV Style.  It’s called Extreme Makeover – Home Edition.  In it a team of designers, carpenters and builders pick a needy American family, usher them off to some holiday resort or hotel and rebuild their house, often from scratch, in 7 days.  When the family return they shout at the bus which conceals their new house, “Bus Driver, Move that Bus”.  The bus drives off and the near instant satisfaction of a new home overwhelms the family and they all live happily ever after.  I do actually enjoy watching the programme, we all need some generally cheesy television in our lives.  But it does concern me that the premise is that a rapid, immediate, change to life can happen – in 7 days your life will be turned around.

In one month you will lose a whole belt hole in weight or a dress size.  The instant promise again.  Everything has to be faster, everything must give instant satisfaction and anything which requires a slow, long term outlook, is not worth the paper it’s printed on.  Imagine if I tried to sell you a diet programme that took one year just to reach the end of the introduction.  It would be laughed out of town.

We want everything here, now and immediately.  Even a trip to the shops seems like too long to be satisfying.

Yom Kippur, in this mindset, is a counter cultural experience.  It runs against the world we experience outside the walls of this synagogue – minutes and seconds are nothing today.  The true meaning of time today is in the taste of the eternal.

Judaism, as religion, cannot be rushed.  Spirituality matures in each of us like a relationship.  Many theologians have likened a spiritual life to a friendship – the more one invests in the relationship the more committed one becomes to it.

That is to say, if I’m walking down the street and someone comes and asks me for money, I am much less likely to lend it to them than I am a good friend.  A friend who I have learnt to trust.  In lending the money to my friend I further invest our relationship with a stronger link.  It takes great courage to begin a relationship, whether as friends or more intimately. And true relationships take time.  So too, a spiritual life – a life in which we invest our world with holiness, where we strive for a connection to a power bigger than ourselves – which we might call God – it all takes time.  It can take months, years, a whole lifetime.

The same is true for the tangible world and I’m talking about our religious world.  The Jewish community.  Finchley Progressive Synagouge.  It is a well worn cliché, most famously found in the Talmud, but true nevertheless.  We sow the seeds for the next generation and we reap the fruits of the one that went before us:

“A Rabbi was once passing through a field where he saw a very old man planting an oak-tree.  ‘Why are you planting that tree?’ said he. ‘Surely you do not expect to live long enough to see the acorn growing up into an oak-tree?’

‘Ah,’ replied the old man, ‘my ancestors planted trees not for themselves, but for us, in order that we might enjoy their shade and fruit. I am doing likewise for those who will come after me.’

(B. Taanit)

Faith and community are not instantaneous like the fame of X-Factor or Big Brother.  It may take a life time and at the end we still have not reached clarity, purpose and trust.  We grow what we can and pass on to our children what we have achieved – even though that may seem like a handful of sand slipping through our palms.

This is something that I have come to understand more and more as I work in a community as a Rabbi.

When a prospective proselyte (convert) walks through my door I am absolutely delighted to welcome them.  When we sit down they know and I know that it might only be a year or two before they reach the final point of their conversion.  The time it takes serves not only to go through a course of instruction, but a means of acculturation, of growth, if you like a gestation period.  Instantaneous entry into the community make no more sense than a Bar or Bat Mitzvah student getting up on the bimah the day after deciding they want the ceremony, with no preparation, no experience of the services, of a learning community.  No understanding that Judaism must be allowed to mature and evolve in our hearts and minds.  Only then does it make sense to lead a community in prayer, or become a member of one of the most ancient religious communities in the world.

Judaism has been around, growing and evolving for thousands of years.  In spite of the doom and gloom about numbers, it was here before us and it will be here after us.  Our role is to swim in the river of time and give to it what we can.  In our giving we will be rewarded.

When I conduct a baby thanksgiving service, or welcome a young person on to the bimah for the bar/bat mitzvah or Kabbalat Torah service, I am not only thinking of the immediate, the gratification the community derives from seeing these marvellous young people on the bimah.  I am also thinking of the future.  I give permission to myself to imagine a future in which these young people will be the next generation of lay leaders, representatives of the Jewish community.  But that will only happen if we take the long view.  If we sow the seeds, if we see religion, Judaism, as something that demands time.  Not another instant off the shelf commodity or game show prize.  Judaism commands us to look through the reaches of eternity and savour the taste.

This lesson applies as much to our lives as to the life of our community.  It takes time to sow seeds which grow into trees.  Then the trees themselves must be allowed to mature.  Until they are big and strong.  Even then, they grow, they adapt, they change to their environment. They continue to give fruit – and all from that one seed.

It was around November time that I first asked if anyone was interested in a Friday Night resouled experience.  A few people told me there were interested.  We got together and began planning, sowing seeds.  In April we had our first Shabbat Resouled service.  Since then, on the third Friday of the month, we have had a Shabbat Resouled service, a musical uplifting community experience.  The only Friday we missed was last night.  We consistently have a community of pray-ers with smiles and enjoyment.  The highlight of my week is Monday night when I get to rehearse with the musicians.  The other Monday we had such a good rehearsal one of the musicians, to whom we all owe an enormous debt of thanks, was heard to say, “I just want to pray now.”  The Shabbat Resouled was a long time coming, it had a six month gestation and continues to grow and develop.  In October we are having our first Oneg, a post service meal with stories and more singing.  Shabbat Resouled is proof to me that sowing seeds can result in great things. But only if we are willing to commit to the relationship and allow time to nurture our souls.

The power of religion, of faith, of community, is that they evolve and grow – they enhance our lives over time.  We should relish the moments together.  Appreciating the time we spend together.  Allowing the Presence of something that cannot be possessed to fill our spirit.  What we achieve here is but a blink of the eye – in the eyes of God, as the Chasidic meditation reminds us:

In a dream we live seventy years and discover, on awakening, that it was a quarter of an hour.  In our life which passes as a dream, we live seventy years, and then we waken to a greater understanding which shows us that it was a quarter of an hour.  Perfect understanding is beyond time.

Rabbi Neil Janes

Finchley Progressive Synagogue