Bamidbar: Temporal Independence

 To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.  — William Blake

As finite time-dependent beings, we find ourselves chained to the inexorable march of time. There is no moving ahead, backward, to the sides or even pausing. The seconds tick by whether we like it or not. The Torah on the other hand has a much more complex and sophisticated relationship to time. In many accounts it is purposely ambiguous, providing little or no information as to when events take place.

However, in many places, the Torah makes sure to mark the year, month, day and location of specific occurrences, as it does at the beginning of the Book of Numbers (Bamidbar).

The Sfat Emet in 5631 (1871) argues that the Torah itself is above time and nature. However, by signaling specific times, by in a sense lowering itself to the human preoccupation with time, it is providing us with a signpost of where our own time-dependent efforts should be involved.

Namely, our job is to bring the infinite, divine, non-temporal Torah into our finite, mundane, temporal time stream. Though not of our world, nor of our dimensional frames of reference, the Torah was designed for our very physical world. That is why it presumably goes out of its way to make reference to dimensions we are familiar with, time and space. It is inviting us, asking us, demanding of us, to bring it, the Torah, into our world, our domain and our lives.

May we make that connection between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal. It just takes time.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Shavuot Sameach,

Ben-Tzion

Dedication

To the Bat Mitzvah girls of the Integral School on their outstanding performance. Your time has come.