Class: Exploring ideas of time

For baby boomers time is becoming more present in our lives. Is it an enemy or the constant reminder that we need to make “every day count”.

So here is a brief idea for a small class that could explore ideas of time. This is inspired by Simchat Torah and our annual re-cycle of Torah reading.

1. Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 3. The idea that we are part of something beyond our own self and the famous chapter 3 and seasons of time.

2. Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers (Random House, 1983). He writes in the first part of the book of the invention of time, how humans created it to break free of being imprisoned by nature ( a short digression into how the calendar evolved)

3. Mitch Albom’s wonderful recent allegory The Time Keeper (2012) in which he writes about the fact that we are the only creatures that “mark” time and our greatest fear is that we will run out of time. He ends the book with a wonderful piece in why our time is finite, so as to insure that each person is precious.

4. Heschel’s essay on “The Sabbath: Holiness in Time” (in Between God and Man: Free Press. 1959) in which we can bring the Jewish approach to time into focus.

Rabbi Richard Address

Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.