Today I attended the first of 8 weekly study sessions on The Kabalah of Time given by the Jewish Learning Institute, an affiliate of Chabad.

As I haven't actually taken any classes in a formal setting in so long I can't remember, I forgot to bring a pen, which I'm really sorry about now.  There were a lot of fascinating insights into Jewish beliefs about time that I would have liked to have written down - I'll need to see if I can get a tape of the class from the Rabbi. (I can't post anything too detailed here because it is a paid class and I wouldn't feel right about giving stuff away).

That being said, here are some interesting points mentioned in the class.

We all think of light and darkness as being defined by the sun and the moon.  Not accoridng to the first lines of Genesis!



1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

That's very interesting considering that it wasn't until the FOURTH day (and line 14) that the sun, moon and stars were created.

How could that be?  In fact, the order in which the purposes of these objects is also interesting...

14 And God said, "Let
there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens, to separate between
the day and between the night, and they shall be for signs and for
appointed seasons and for days and years.

15 And they shall be for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to shed light upon the earth." And it was so.

So the primary purpose of the sun, moon and stars is to mark time, not to provide light. After all, light (spiritual light) was created on the first day.  And why do we need to mark time?  Is it to make sure we get to our business meetings on time? Nooooo, it's to make sure we have at our disposal a constant reminder of the natural ebb and flow and rythyms of the natural world which G-d created.

There was an awful lot more than this in the class - the belief that time is a creation of G-d in the same manner that he created our concept of space - the belief that time is not just a gift from G-d, it is G-d - the belief that the way we in our finite bodies can affect things beyond the time we are here on this Earth by doing mitzvahs (good deeds) as outlined in the Torah.  Think of the nearest MLK Jr. Blvd in your city and you'll get the idea.

Here is some of the really mystical stuff - the name of G-d is written out by using four Hebrew letters represented in English by Y-H-V-H.  There are 24 permutations of this four letter name, each representing an hour of the day.  Just as we breathe in and out, flowers open and close, etc. G-d's energy comes to us in ebbs and flows that differ slightly over the course of those 24 hours.

As a side note, I know that some of 's readers have asked why we often times don't write out the full name of G-d.  The answer is basically out of respect for The Name, don't take it in vain, etc.  I just noticed in the recently issued Torah now used by much of the Conservative Jewish movement that there is a note that the movement no longer believes it necesssary to omit of the "o" anymore due to the generally academic nature of the word's use in english.  I'm going with tradition on this one. Can't hurt.