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    Holiness in Time

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    Tikvah
    Rabbi Heschel argues that Judaism emphasizes holiness in time over space. While we are often focused on physical things that occupy space, this can lead to being enslaved by material possessions. True spiritual living is found in facing sacred moments in time, such as experiences of religious insight, rather than amassing information or possessions. We must not surrender unconditionally to physical things, but recognize that moments lend significance to things, not vice versa. Judaism shows us how to find meaning through engaging with the dimension of time.

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    Holiness in Time

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    Tikvah
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    Rabbi Heschel argues that Judaism emphasizes holiness in time over space. While we are often focused on physical things that occupy space, this can lead to being enslaved by material possessions. True spiritual living is found in facing sacred moments in time, such as experiences of religious insight, rather than amassing information or possessions. We must not surrender unconditionally to physical things, but recognize that moments lend significance to things, not vice versa. Judaism shows us how to find meaning through engaging with the dimension of time.

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    Rabbi Heschel argues that Judaism emphasizes holiness in time over space. While we are often focused on physical things that occupy space, this can lead to being enslaved by material possessions. True spiritual living is found in facing sacred moments in time, such as experiences of religious insight, rather than amassing information or possessions. We must not surrender unconditionally to physical things, but recognize that moments lend significance to things, not vice versa. Judaism shows us how to find meaning through engaging with the dimension of time.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    70 views2 pages

    Holiness in Time

    Uploaded by

    Tikvah
    Rabbi Heschel argues that Judaism emphasizes holiness in time over space. While we are often focused on physical things that occupy space, this can lead to being enslaved by material possessions. True spiritual living is found in facing sacred moments in time, such as experiences of religious insight, rather than amassing information or possessions. We must not surrender unconditionally to physical things, but recognize that moments lend significance to things, not vice versa. Judaism shows us how to find meaning through engaging with the dimension of time.

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    Holiness in Time, Not Only in Space

    We are often blind to the dimension that lacks physical substance, and that can
    lead to enslavement to things.

    By Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

    In this excerpt from his classic book on the Sabbath, Professor Heschel argues that Judaism
    shows a bias for the dimension of time over space as the realm in which we seek to imbue our
    lives with holiness. His point is arguable, but his influence is felt in the writings of many Jewish
    thinkers of the late twentieth century and beyond. Reprinted with permission from The Sabbath:
    Its Meaning for Modern Man, published by Noonday Press.

    We are all infatuated with the splendor of space, with the grandeur of things of space. “Thing” is
    a category that lies heavy on our minds, tyrannizing all our thoughts. Our imagination tends to
    mold all concepts in its image. In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are
    spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is
    thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a
    thing.

    The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as
    a matter of fact. This is obvious in our understanding of time, which, being thingless and
    insubstantial, appears to us as if it had no reality.

    Indeed, we know what to do with space but do not know what to do about time, except to make it
    subservient to space. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we
    suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face.
    Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every
    moment of our lives. Shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of
    space. The intentions we are unable to carry out we deposit in space; possessions become the
    symbols of our repressions, jubilees of frustrations. But things of space are not fireproof; they
    only add fuel to the flames. Is the joy of possession an antidote to the terror of time which grows
    to be a dread of inevitable death? Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness, they are a
    threat to our very lives; we are more harassed than supported by the Frankensteins of spatial
    things.

    It is impossible for man to shirk the problem of time. The more we think the more we realize: we
    cannot conquer time through space. We can only master time in time.

    The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred
    moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a
    spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place
    where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines
    of measured time. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is
    eternal in time.
    Our intention here is not to deprecate the world of space. To disparage space and the blessing of
    things of space is to disparage the works of creation, the works which God beheld and saw "it
    was good." The world cannot be seen exclusively sub specie temporis [under the aspect of time].
    Time and space are interrelated. To overlook either of them is to be partially blind. What we
    plead against is man's unconditional surrender to space, his enslavement to things. We must not
    forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends
    significance to things.

    Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ph.D. (1907-1972), born in Warsaw and educated in Poland and
    Germany, was Professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
    America. Among his books are Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Earth is the
    Lord's, and Israel: Echo of Eternity.

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