What’s in a day?

Last weekend, I had a chance to watch our Cantors roll-back the Torah all the way to Genesis. It is admittedly fascinating to watch history rewind itself all the way back to the nothingness that was the universe at the very beginning. If only time worked that way.

Every year, without fail, as the second day of Rosh HaShanah approaches and again as I review the creation of the world with my students in preparation for Simchat Torah, there is at least one sixth or seventh grader who asks “but how did God get all of this done within 24 hours?”. When I do this with the younger ones, I particularly love when they ask “where was he able to find a watch?!”.

It’s funny how programmed we are to the meaning of what a day means. If we look all the way back to Bereishit and really look at each day separately, we realize that each day was broken down into meticulous detail and not finished until God deemed it satisfactory. In Genesis 1:4-5, it reads “And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated between the light and between the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, day one.”

There is no clear and exact mention of actual time during creation; the day was not over until the job was completed. As we continue to read through the Torah, we continue to see a lack of “time-keeping” other than the naming of the setting of the sun at the end of the day. And even then, without knowing what season it was, one cannot determine for sure whether the hourly breakdown we use today was remotely close to the beginning and end of a day as listed in the Torah.

As I go back to last year’s Simchat Torah on October 7th, I cannot help but focus on the connection between the beginning of that dreadful day and this sinking feeling that many of us still experience as that day is still going; that no matter what the calendar says, no matter where we are, it is still October 7th. For the families that have been displaced, whether it be from the Gaza envelope or the North of Israel, it is still October 7th. For the families of the hostages and the hostages themselves, it is still October 7th. For a nation and people around the world still in mourning, it is still, every minute of the day, October 7th.

The moment we are living in right now feels eerily similar to that of the first lines of the Torah, which were read the evening before: “Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water” (Genesis 1:2). Even as recently as yesterday, where millions of Israelis hid in shelters counting minutes without end and as the world witnessed the dark skies light up with fire and a feeling on impending doom, time stood still. We remain in that darkness that began a day that is yet to end; a day that will not end until the task at hand, the creation of a new future, the return of our people, is not complete. We will not be able to move forward from that day until we are able to separate the darkness from the light, and once we see that light, and feel the peace of completion settle in our heart, that is the moment when we will be able to move forward in building a brighter, stronger future.