Shalom to the wonderful Stephen Wise Temple community! My name is Joshua Less and I am so thrilled to be the Rabbinic intern this year at Wise. I was born and raised in Memphis, TN. After living in Israel for two years, I moved to Los Angeles for Rabbinical school. I am a proud husband to my wife Leah, and proud dog-dad to two awesome golden retrievers. I look forward to seeing you all around campus throughout the year and hope your High Holy Days season was meaningful!
Just a few days ago, our Jewish calendar quietly entered a new month. Known as Cheshvan, the eighth month of the calendar is the only one that does not contain either a holiday or a fast. For this reason, it is sometimes known as Mar Cheshvan, or “bitter Cheshvan.” But after what feels like a never-ending stretch of holidays, some of us perhaps are happy to welcome a month without a major festival!
I recently heard a reflection about time that I can’t stop thinking about: “The days are long but the years are short.” Indeed, it can often feel like our weeks and months fly by and due to this rapidity, like our time is not our own. Our fast-paced lifestyles tend to accelerate the sense of time and its passing. Luckily, our tradition offers us various methods of slowing down the passage of time, being mindful of it, and sanctifying it. The most well-known of these practices is Shabbat. But a more obscure way of marking sacred time in Jewish tradition is through celebrating Rosh Chodesh, the new month.
For those of you who enjoy trivia, (I love it by the way), note that the marking of Rosh Chodesh was the first mitzvah given to Bnei Yisrael as a people. In Exodus 12, just before Pharaoh finally relents and lets the people depart from Egypt, God instructs them to begin keeping their own calendar. Hitherto, Bnei Yisrael had never been in charge of their own time. Slaves to Pharoah’s empire, they had no control of their schedule or their free time. They had no control over their destiny. But now as the Israelites are set to embark on the road towards freedom, God commands them to do something all free peoples have the ability to do: mark time and maintain a calendar. It is nothing short of a revolutionary moment.
In our day, we have seen this phenomenon up close and personal. Tal Shoham, who survived 505 days in Hamas captivity, remarked in an interview that his captors “were obsessed with the prisoners not knowing the date or the time.” Despite this obsession, Tal, Evyatar David, and Guy Gilboa Dalal miraculously found ways to keep track of the date and time during their captivity. Thank God, all of the remaining living hostages have been released and are beginning their long journey to freedom and rehabilitation.
As we enter the month of Cheshvan, although we have no major holidays, we no doubt will be bombarded with business. There will surely be days when we feel that our schedule is hectic and unforgiving; when we would laugh at the prospect of free time. Yet, as we learn in Exodus 12 and from the harrowing stories of former Israeli hostages, to even have control of our own calendar is itself a magnificent gift. And although we may wish that our calendar contained less things to do, perhaps this month we can relish in the freedom that having our own calendar represents. Perhaps during this month of Cheshvan, we can be more mindful, more intentional of how we choose to spend our free time. We might intentionally set aside time for the things that truly matter most in life: family, community, God. By doing so, we resist the label of Mar Cheshvan (Bitter Cheshvan) as we seek to fill our time with things that sweeten our souls.
Chodesh tov!
Joshua Less