Roses, Thorns, and Buds
One of the many glues that binds our family together is our love of storytelling. We rarely miss opportunities to replay our highlights (and lowlights), reveling in the snowball effect as the stories gain meaning, matter, and momentum with each retelling. And because of a reflection ritual that we’ve shared at our dining room table, dinner time has become a sort of writer’s room for new stories to enter the canon.
The Sages distinguish between two Passover celebrations — the first one, called Pesach Mitzrayim, the Passover of Egypt, and every other Passover celebration after that one, known as Pesach Dorot, the Passover of subsequent generations. While many distinctions can be made between the two, none strike me as more powerful or more needed — especially since October 7th, and even more especially since this past Saturday, when 300 missiles and killer drones were launched on Israel by Iran — than this one: Pesach Mitzrayim was celebrated while we were still enslaved!
While words and photos will never be able to capture the experience of totality, a few thoughts came to me after driving fourteen hours over two days with my family for this scientific and awe-inspiring pilgrimage.
Predictability and the Unforeseen
The solar eclipse itself was completely predictable from an astronomical perspective – there was even an article from an Ohio newspaper from 1970 letting people know that “the next showing [would be] in 2024.” And if airlines and hotels actually did book travel twenty years in advance, you could know right now that you should travel to Tulsa, Tampa, or Orlando on August 12, 2045 to be in the path of totality.
As the wine steward said to Pharaoh in Genesis 41:9, “I declare my sins now.” The sin I declare now is my tone-deafness to the significance of this week’s solar eclipse. I just didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to so many people, including to many of the Rabbinic Fellows in Clal’s LEAP program, run in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.
Rise. Take three steps backwards – one with each of the first three words in Hebrew. Take three steps forward with each of the next three words in Hebrew. Bend your knee with the word “Blessed,” bow with the word “You” and stand up straight with the word “God.” Continue singing words of prayer, bowing at the allotted times, rising at the allotted times, carefully pronouncing each word – all the while racing through prayers and melodies, like familiar paths through a corn maze, which never seems exactly the same twice. Affirm relationship with God. Choose your theologically preferred language about the messianic era. Call forth a blessing for rain or dew in the Holy Land, depending on the time of year. Make requests of God – if it’s not Shabbat, when God also needs rest. Pray silently, filling just the right amount of time with prayers of the heart. Return to communal prayer with melodious aspirations for peace. Oh yes – and do all this while wearing a prayer shawl and/or phylacteries, if it is the designated day and time of day, and is your custom. All of this in hopes of resembling the angels and mirroring an anthropomorphic human projection of a God who might also don these sacred objects.
Our family isn’t great about planning things in advance. There have been years when, say, Pesach would be coming in about a week, and we realized we hadn’t ordered all the food we’d need for the seders, leading to a few rather frantic trips to the kosher supermarket.
So while we had been hearing about the upcoming eclipse, we had sort of figured that a 90% partial eclipse (the path along which we live) would be a decent enough experience, and didn’t spend a whole lot of time mapping out a plan – we’d go outside, say, “Cool!” a few times like we did for the 2017 eclipse, and then go back inside.
Last Sunday, I was sitting in a multi-purpose room in a luxury hotel near Tel Aviv. Instead of business travelers and honeymooners, the hotel now houses families – grandparents, toddlers, and parents – evacuated in October from their homes at the border with Lebanon due to the danger from Hezbollah. The lobby featured a rack of donated Purim costumes and some haphazard decorations. As our group listened to evacuees speak, several toddlers explored the room in superhero capes and princess dresses. The group was religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, old and young.
The mother of the superhero toddler shared that she is a lawyer, and her husband is serving in Gaza right now. She’s been living in the hotel with her four young children since October. Walking with her children, her 6-year-old saw posters of the hostages and asked what they were. The mother felt she should not hide the truth and told her. Her daughter then took her 1-year-old brother’s hand and said, “Don’t worry, we won’t let anyone take you.”
Another woman walked into our gathering, and someone said, “We need to acknowledge her. She built a kindergarten here for all the children out of nothing. Now the parents can work or rest.” The kindergarten builder was embarrassed by the enthusiastic applause and waved it off.
Our host was a councilwoman for the area. She had returned to her home despite the danger because she wanted to live with her own things in her own house. She makes the trip regularly to the hotel to be with her constituents.
I was in Israel last week on a volunteer farming mission with Adamah. In the mornings, we farmed; in the evenings, we heard from speakers on environmentalism, shared society initiatives, and food security issues. This was the mission I wanted to be on: It embodied Clal’s values of pluralism and optimism, which we’ve been putting into practice for 50 years. I felt grateful to be a Clal faculty member and to be supported by Clal in this work.
We picked lettuce, pruned mango trees, weeded, and adjusted irrigation piping. For all the trouble and expense it took for us each to get there, though, it felt at times like we weren’t making much of a dent in anything. Compared to the size of what needed to be done, we wondered: had we really made any impact at all?
In this week’s parashah, Tzav, we hear the instructions for how the priests are to make the daily offerings on the altar. Before getting to the details, we start with this:
“The fire on the altar shall be kept burning, not to go out; every morning, the priest shall feed wood to it, lay out the burnt offering on it, and turn into smoke the fat parts of the offerings of well-being. A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out.” (Leviticus 6:5-6)
It is the daily work of keeping the fire burning that is most important. It’s not glamorous. It’s not the Yom Kippur ceremony of the high priest. It’s the day-in, day-out shifts of adding wood to the pile. Sometimes, that’s getting your kids dressed, even when their father is away fighting. Sometimes, it’s creating a kindergarten in a hotel. Sometimes, it’s simply saying, I have hope for peace and for the future, and inspiring someone else to have hope, too. And sometimes, it’s pruning a couple dozen rows of mango trees.
In this difficult time, every small branch we can add to keep that fire going has an impact. We just have to figure out what it is we will add today.
On the plane ride back, I was chatting with the woman sitting next to me. When I told her why I had been in Israel, she said what many Israelis said to our group while we were there: Thank you for coming. I began to wave it off but then simply said: I was happy to do it.
I recently rewatched Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglorious Basterds. It remains a powerful, entertaining cinematic experience. I forgot how delicious and even thrilling it was – as a seventh-generation rabbi whose father of blessed memory escaped the Nazis and immigrated to America from Poland in 1938 with his parents and brother, leaving most of his family behind, all of whom were murdered by the Nazis – to feel justice served in the painful, fiery death of all the Nazi leadership gathered in one theatre to watch a film glorifying their own psychopathic heroes. I grew up in a community that would append to any mention of Nazis the expression “y’mach shemam” – may their names be erased.” Mr. Tarantino gave explosive new meaning to this term!
Tomorrow night, Jews around the world will celebrate the festival of Purim and read the Megillah – the Scroll of Esther. The story of Achashverosh, a paranoid Machiavellian king, Haman, an evil and hateful advisor to the King, a Jewish courtier Mordechai, and his niece – the heroic, brilliant strategist, identity- hiding Queen Esther. Written in response to Jewish powerlessness and anxiety, the story has twists and turns, court intrigue and sexual innuendo, the near destruction of the Jews of Persia, and the redemptive climax. The evil Haman – whose name is drowned out with harsh noise-making groggers every time it is mentioned – is hung as are his ten sons, and to deepen the salvific gratification, the Jews of the empire, with the permission of the King, get extra days to fight, and they slaughter 75,000 Persians – without incurring even one Jewish casualty. “For the Jews, it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor.”
The Purim story and Inglorious Basterds get similar jobs done! They are fun, action-packed, Jewish revenge fantasies! Rather than focusing on the suffering of Jews, the Purim story and Inglorious Bastards are primary process experiences. There may be millions and millions of Jewish victims in “every generation,” from those enslaved in Egypt to those butchered in the Shoah’s Kingdom of Night, but the Purim story and Inglorious Basterds tell the one story we are afraid to tell about ourselves: the story of what we would really like to do to the “other.” No wonder the custom on Purim is to get so drunk that we can’t discern the difference between the blessing of Mordechai and the curse of Haman. How else could we allow ourselves to feel the pent-up rage and vengeance against those in “every generation who rise up to destroy us?”
But the Purim story begins, “And behold in those days,” and Inglorious Basterds begins, “Once upon a time,” – reminding us that we are watching fables, tales, dreams, and fantasies that alas did not happen. The Purim story, like Inglorious Basterds, is a flight of the imagination, a meditation on justice and vengeance, an invitation to feel and even savor our most vicious and murderous feelings towards that evil “other.” Both bring to consciousness feelings and desires that many Jews could never bring up in mixed company.
I admit, for so many of my 60+ years celebrating Purim, I have had thrills and chills reading how we Jews wreaked havoc on those Haman-istians and emerged victorious. And even though I never go to action films, let alone violent movies, I thoroughly enjoyed and was even hyped up by Inglorious Basterds. Oh my, yes, yes, if God is not going to pour out his wrath on those “others” – and God is completely absent from both the Purim story and Inglorious Basterds – then damn it, I wish “we” could utterly destroy all those who rise up against us in every generation!
2024 – Israel at war with Hamas in response to Hamas’s horrific, brutal, nihilistic, barbarous acts of October 7th. What happens when our darkest fantasies can become reality? What is the cost of not recognizing and owning the feelings that lie deep in our psyche: Kill every last one of those…As Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt), leader of the Basterds, says: “We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us.” Or as Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine says, most clearly articulated by Gadi Eisenkot, former IDF General and now a member of the war cabinet, “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and will cause immense damage and destruction.” The Dahiya Doctrine is about achieving a sustained deterrent impact by intentionally using disproportionate force, extending to the destruction of the economy and state infrastructure with many civilian casualties. They will know who we are and won’t fuck with us anymore.
What a profoundly challenging moment. The liberating fantasy of those Inglorious Basterds blowing up a theater filled with evil Nazis can now be reality. The necessary, sustaining, dignity-creating and life – affirming fantasy of slaughtering the enemy in the Purim story – a story we Jews chant to a sacred melody to this day – that I will actually be chanting for my community on Saturday evening can now become policy. How privileged to live in this era. How burdened to live in this era. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and most important witness of the Kingdom of Night teaches: “Some stories are true that never happened.” These days we might add: Some stories that never happened can become true.
Fantasies of eliminating the other – dreaming of doing what we can’t possibly do – depend on our splitting victim and perpetrator. The Jews – victims – are about to be eliminated by Haman and his followers – the perpetrators. Splitting is a remarkably important way to defend against humiliation, fear, anxiety and powerlessness. But an adaptive skill in one period can be maladaptive in another and fantasies can become nightmares. To paraphrase Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The line separating victim and perpetrator passes right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.
These days, Jews and Palestinians are completely traumatized by their histories and by what they have done to each other over the past 100 years, and what many outside interests have supported them in doing to each other. They are both victims AND perpetrators. But neither can see how the other is a victim or how they themselves are perpetrators. So, each has fantasies about eliminating the other and seems prepared to fight till the death to do so. Not surprisingly, this is now metastasizing into the same splitting here in this country within the Jewish body politic Jews and between the generations in America. Everyone knows for certain who is the victim and who is the perpetrator and to even suggest that things may be more complicated will evoke attacks from all sides.
We Jews are in an unusual position as we celebrate Purim and begin preparing for Passover, where Pharaoh is the evil enslaver, and we, the victims, are redeemed by a God who justly and devastatingly plagues those Egyptians. Given this splitting between victim and perpetrator, with each side seeing itself as a complete victim and the other as an existentially dangerous perpetrator, and the present asymmetric power arrangements, there will be far more deaths for Palestinians in the next months and years. This is new for Jews. But Israel’s – and Jews’ – moral standing in the world, yet alone Israel being central to the next generation of American Jews, will be radically diminished. Of course, the understandable post-Holocaust response of mainstream Jewry is that the world has no right to morally judge Israel, after all we are ever the victim people dwelling alone.
Can each side discern, recognize, process, digest, heal, and transcend their trauma and legitimate fears of each other?
Can each side recognize that they are perpetrators and not only victims?
This won’t happen without very serious work at the psycho-cultural level that is both bottom-up and top-down and will require enormous investment. Right now, my guess is the total investment in all the people and every organization doing this work does not add up to what one F-35 costs. Until both sides can stop splitting their identities between victim and perpetrator and integrate that they/we are fully both victims and perpetrators, we will continue to kill each other ever more viciously with ever more distorting, distorted, and hardening rationalizations.
I can’t speak for the Palestinian side, but right now, my experience is that there is no possibility of American Jewish institutional leadership, nor, for that matter, almost any Jew of influence I know over 50 years old, to even entertain that we Jews are perpetrators. To do so would literally require a complete destabilization and breakdown of contemporary Jewish identity – both personal and institutional. (Progressives can’t do this either as they simply split the opposite way. They assume Jews – by which they really mean those bad Zionist Jews but often wind up blaming Jews in general -are perpetrators and assume Palestinians but too often include even Hamas – are victims.) There are simply no communal spaces or sustaining structures in Jewish life to help Jews through this very painful process…and I imagine the same is true for Palestinians.
But power itself is always contingent, which means the present asymmetrical nature of power can indeed shift in time, which should be humbling and unnerving. This is what Yitzchak Rabin z’l understood when he said Israel was at the strongest it would ever be during his time and, therefore, was specifically in the position to take a risk for peace. I assume few people would argue that Israel is safer, more secure or even more powerful today than it was when Rabin signed the Oslo Accords…or even the day of his funeral to which every Arab nation sent a representative or two days later when Yasar Arafat drove to Tel Aviv to pay a shiva call to Leah Rabin. Alas, we have come a long way.
There is an ancient teaching that the only holiday that will remain after the coming of the Messiah will be the holiday of Purim. When all our dreams are realized, we will still be reading how fragile our reality is and how even our most understandable fantasies can turn into nightmares. Happy Purim.
Purim, with its happy ending, Jews appropriately ascendant, ensconced in power, and safe from harm, sounds pretty good, especially this year, with increasing anti-Semitism, Israel at war, and hostages still in brutal captivity You might say that this is one of those years when we need Purim the most.
Of course, there is the other part of the Purim story — the part in which Jews straddle the line between justice and revenge, in which stubborn ideology leads to violent confrontation and a great deal of death. So, you might also say this is one of those years when we need Purim the least.
So, which is it? Is this the year we need Purim most or least? And, of course, the answer is “Yes.” We need Purim this year, both more than ever and less than ever, and that is because the issue isn’t Purim. The issue is us. And given God’s absence from the story as recorded in The Book of Esther — the only book in the entire Hebrew Bible in which God does not appear — it is especially clear that it is a story about us. There is no putting our response on God because God isn’t there.
In fact, the absence of God from the Purim story is like the joke about the man who visits a psychiatrist, and she proceeds to use a Rorschach Test on her new patient. Yeah, it’s an old joke, as indicated by the use of this test, but hang in, as it is still quite timely — the joke, anyway.
The doctor shows the patient an inkblot, asking what he sees. The patient replies, “It’s a picture of a man and a woman having sex.” The doctor moves on to a second image and again asks the man what he sees. The patient replies, “That’s a picture of two men having sex.” Seeing the third picture, the patient declares, “And that is a picture of two women having sex.”
The doctor puts down the cards and says to the patient that while there is much more to explore, it is clear to her that this man is rather obsessed with sex. The man replies, “Obsessed with sex? Doctor, you’re the one showing me all the dirty pictures!”
Like the patient in the story, we tend to think that our responses to life are driven by some external controlling force – – be it God or the doctor – – or by the events and pictures that surround us. While those are definitely part of what drives us, as this joke reminds us, it is about us more than anything else. And nowhere more than the Purim story is that the case, especially with God out of the picture and the story so multi-faceted.
So, which Purim story are you feeling this year? Are you aching to celebrate the good ending to a crazy story of unfairly victimized Jews who secure their own safety in totally justified ways and cheering at the demise of those who hated Jews and sought to kill them just because they were different?
Or are you planning to lower your voice, especially as you come to the passages that tell of violence committed not against Jews but by Jews, and perhaps skipping any public feasting or celebration, given the darker sides of the Purim story?
Whether you will observe the holiday or not, whether you are Jewish or not, does one of those responses make greater sense to you as you think about the story? And what about the parallels that people draw to current events, even as the equivalences that are made between then and now are far less exact than those who often draw them believe?
Each response has its logic and its merits, as long as whatever reading or practice we choose, we can appreciate that Purim is our Rorschach test. How we understand and celebrate the story is about us more than anything or anyone else. That means that whatever path we follow, we need to appreciate that the paths not taken are often as authentic, as legitimate, and as grounded in the text as the one we have chosen. In fact, in the absence of God, our choice is all there is, which is the deeper challenge that Purim invites, or dare I say, unmasks.
To be clear, this understanding of Purim is not so new. It is as old as the Talmudic teaching found in Shabbat 88a. The story recounts how God holds Mount Sinai over the Israelites at the time of revelation and tells them that if they accept the Torah, all is well and good, but if they refuse, then God will drop the mountain on them and kill them all.
Rav Aha bar Yaakov responds that if that were the case, then the covenant at Sinai is, in fact, no covenant at all, having been made under extreme duress. No Sage challenges this claim, and instead, the texts ask how and when the covenant came into force. The answer is that it happened at Purim when we are told that the Jews “upheld and accepted” that which Mordechai told them to do. (Esther 9:27). The covenant is about us — what are we willing to accept and do, and the answers to those questions are found only when we step back — if only for a while — from God and what the text says. That is the ultimate unmasking in this holiday of hiddenness, and that is the deepest power of the holiday.
Purim is the ultimate Rorschach test, and perhaps the one thing that we can all celebrate is the opportunity to answer its questions in genuine peace and real security for all. We may understand what that means in different ways, but unless we pretend that we are God — which even God doesn’t do in this story — we can take responsibility for our chosen readings, accept the partialness of whatever reading/observance we choose, and appreciate the freedom of others to choose theirs. To that, I can say “l’chaim” with a full, if somewhat broken, heart this year.
My son Micah, while only an adolescent, has a very old soul. Not like Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men (although sometimes yes), but rather like someone who – for as long as I can recall – has moved through the world with a deep sense of wonder. As soon as he could speak, everything came out in the form of a question. He was constantly tugging at the ontological threads of life’s great mysteries, from why the sky was blue, to why God created us in such a way that we could feel pain. Rarely content with the first answer he found, most of his questions would yield more questions, each one designed to get a deeper truth than the last, peeling away the layers of the onion that is our world.
So last week, it came as no surprise when Micah asked me the most important question that humankind has ever pondered, with only a 3-minute drive during which to answer it (in fairness, everything in Providence is 3 minutes away from everything else in Providence, so he’s gotten quite good at squeezing big talks into short drives).
“Abba, what is the meaning of life? Like, I’ve heard people say that it’s about finding what makes you happy and doing that. And you and I have talked about helping others as being really important, too. But it kind of feels like everybody has their own answer.”
As I’ve learned over my years of parenting, these moments in which the mundane gives way to the transcendent come with no advance notice. You never know when a simple back-and-forth will unfold into the most important conversation you’ll have all year. When a backyard game of catch becomes one of those quintessential memories of parenthood. When the impromptu ice cream excursion yields the sweetest moment of the summer. So when Micah opened with this question about life, I knew I didn’t want to miss out on what it could lead to.
Taking care not to give him a pre-packaged answer (he’s got a finely-tuned BS detector), I volleyed the question back to him. “What do you think it is, for you?”
“Well, I kind of think it’s a good thing that everybody has their own answer. Like maybe my purpose is to find out what I’m really good at, that also helps people, and then do that.”
“That’s a really thoughtful answer, Micah. It sounds like you’re well on your way to figuring things out, right?”
“But what about once you’ve found your purpose? What’s your purpose then?”
Noting that we were approaching our destination (Hebrew School) with no time to spare before the bell, I tried to leave him with an answer that would satisfy his curiosity until we picked up the conversation again while still giving him food for thought in the meantime. In other words, I did my best Yoda impression:
“What’s your purpose once you’ve found your purpose? To keep looking, Micah. To keep looking.”
Commands and Calls
As the book of Leviticus – Vayikra (“and God called”) in Hebrew – begins, we read a strange phrase in the first verse. “God called to Moses, and spoke to him…” (Leviticus 1:1). Why use two different verbs to describe what seems to be an otherwise simple act (i.e. telling Moses something)?
The medieval commentator Rashi, bothered by the same redundancy, ascribes a deep meaning to it. Throughout the book of Leviticus, he notes, “every speech, utterance, and command is preceded by a call.” Each word shared by God with Moses holds such importance that God first issues a calling to Moses, helping him to center his attention on the critically important charge to come. For both of them, stationed at Mount Sinai, each word held infinite possibilities for the fate of the Israelites, every utterance an eternity.
Here, Rashi sheds light on not one but two powerful lessons. The first is that God’s call to Moses was conveyed in love. As interpreted by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory:
“Vayikra, Rashi tells us, means ‘to be called to a mission in love’. This is the source of one of the key ideas of Western thought, the concept of a vocation or a calling, i.e., choosing a career or way of life not just because you want to do it, nor because it offers certain benefits, but because you feel summoned to it…This is what you were placed on earth to do.
“When we see a wrong to be righted, a sickness to be healed, a need to be met, and we feel it speaking to us, that is when we come as close as we can…to hearing Vayikra, God’s call.” (Covenant and Conversation Vol 2, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)
Sacks invites us to ponder the very same question that Micah asked me from the backseat: “What is the meaning of life?” Or, perhaps: “What is the meaning of my life?” By particularizing the universal, we are invited to attune ourselves to receive God’s call – no matter what form it may take.
Hearing that call means allowing it to put a claim on your heart. To accept a call is more than to sign a job contract or to say “yes” to an invitation. It is to commit one’s life, one’s livelihood, one’s lifeblood, to the fulfillment of that mission. Nechama Leibowitz, the 20th-century Israeli Bible scholar, noted that the burnt sacrifice discussed in the first chapter of this week’s Parashah (the “Olah”) must be the “choicest offering” (New Studies in Vayikra). In other words, not only must the sacrifice be “brought willingly” (Abravanel commentary), but it must be the best that you have to give.
Meaning Matters
Certainly, we in the Western world have witnessed a movement over the last 30 years, such that we are now encouraged to find meaning and purpose at work. Whether you take the cynical perspective (that this “movement” was actually created by corporations to encourage greater productivity and sacrifice for the “greater good”) or the hopeful one (that it was a worker-driven movement to reclaim dignity and power in the workplace), the results are clear: meaning matters. So much, in fact, that nine out of ten Americans would trade higher pay for more meaningful work 1, and 70% of employees say that their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work 2.
Whether you are someone who finds deep meaning in your work, or someone whose purpose lies outside of the 9-5, what is clear is that God, Rashi, and McKinsey all agree: we bring more of ourselves into the world when we feel truly called to do so, and all the more so when those gifts that we bring to bear are called with love.
Constant Callings
The second key insight that Rashi brings to us is precisely what I had hoped to convey to Micah during our brief philosophical conversation: we are not called just one time in our lives. There is a call before every invitation, every word, every yearning. There is a call coming from every person left behind, every heart left broken, every spirit left burdened. There is always a call, and the only question for us to ask is: are we listening?
Viktor Frankl, in his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning – which recounted his time in the Nazi concentration camps – encouraged us not to wait for God to call us but rather for each of us to activate our listening instead.
“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
(Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)
We are called not once in life, but each day, each hour, each precious moment. And it is not a monologue; a true calling puts a claim on the One who calls and the one who is being called.
When Time Stands Still
Remarkably, Frankl – whose sense of purpose came from his service to his fellow prisoners – wrote this whole book in just nine days. One can imagine that there were moments during that outpouring of wisdom that time stood still for him – perhaps both for better and for worse, given the context in which he lived out each of those nine days. And as a result, he produced one of the greatest works of philosophy in the 20th century – and perhaps of all time – in just over one week.
The Book of Leviticus, too, seems to pause time. While Genesis covers roughly 2,000 years and Exodus covers 80, Leviticus spans only 30 days in time. Once Moses receives his call, he gives himself over so completely to living into it, that it seems to break with the metaphysics of linear time.
Moses stands still in order to hear God’s word, and time stands still so that he can fulfill it.
May each of us – whether we only have 3 precious minutes in the car with a loved one or 30 years of career planning ahead of us – be blessed with the gift of hearing a call, the conviction to answer it, and the faithfulness to never stop listening for new ones along the way.