THE TWO CLOCKS A Ne’ila Reflection
This sermonette was delivered prior to Ne’ila on Yom Kippur this year at the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, South Australia, to which I have been travelling as fly-in-fly-out rabbi for the past seven and a half years. The AHC will shortly be moving from its present campus in the suburb of Glenside to a new, more compact venue in the centre of the city. The sentiments I express will hopefully be of general interest. Chag Sameakh to all.
There are many features of this beautiful shul that will be missed. (For me, the incomparable acoustic is number one!) If I went around the shul right now and asked everyone what they will miss the most we’d probably have as many opinions as people here! That’s because we’re Jewish!
However, of course there’s a lot of things you can take with you, both large and small. One of those, not the most important thing but certainly one of the most striking are the two Jewish clocks on either wall. Why do we need two clocks? Because we Jews always value a second opinion!
But the fact is that generally the two clocks are showing the same time. So the question stands. Why two identical clocks set to an identical time? And the answer is: that there’s a great lesson we can learn. Because yes, there’s a precedent.
R” Yaakov Dovid Kalisch of Amshinov, the first Amshinover Rebbe, mid-19th century, also had two clocks telling the same time. In case you’re wondering where Amshinov is, it’s a little shtot bordering Mszczonow (Meshenov) and in case you’re wondering where Meshenov is, it’s a slightly bigger shtot in Poland. Anyway, as I said, he always had two clocks on the table, both synchronised, to Amshinov local time. Each one, he used to say, represented a different message..
One clock cried out to him “Do you see how late it is! Look how much of your life you’ve wasted already! It’s time for you to get your act together! You’re not getting any younger you know!”
The other clock offered an immediate rebuttal. It proclaimed: “You are currently a recipient of the gift of life! There are so many good times ahead of you! You have a future! Today is the first day of the rest of your life! You can fix things and move on!”
Friends, that second clock is giving us a powerful message! We can’t change the past. But we can repudiate all the negatives of the past. That’s Teshuva – the three R’s as I like to call them. Regret, Review – that’s the Vidui when we confess our failings – and then resolve to do and view things differently in the future.
The first clock is the glass half empty. The first clock says “look how far I am from perfection, from where I should be. I’m too set in my ways, too old to change and as every minute ticks by it’ll get harder and harder.
But the second clock is the glass half full! It declares “time doesn’t move back it moves forward. It’s the future that counts And the future can be whatever you make of it. The challenge of the future is exciting. Rise to the challenge!”
For this community, the challenge of the future is exciting. You are moving into a new shul, in the centre of town close to where I’m told more people live than here in Glenside and please G-D the AHC community will grow!
For us as individuals I urge, as I do every year, to resolve to make a positive change in one area of our practical Jewish living, to take on one new mitsva; and if we do we are heeding the message of that second clock which looks to the future positively.
Meanwhile both clocks are telling me it’s time to storm the gates of Heaven for the last time this Yom Kippur. May we all be sealed in the book of good life, for blessing, for inner peace, peace for Israel and peace for the world!
© Rabbi Chaim Ingram OAM