Since college, my nomadic religious sensibilities have had me moving back and forth between a variety of Christian communities, as well as into ever deeper engagement with non-Christian religious traditions, primarily with Jews and Judaism. From one perspective, it is certainly the case that St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547 AD) would have looked down on my incapacity for stabilitas, the virtue of staying put that he enjoined upon the monks beholden to his Rule. But from another, there are certain key insights that this life has afforded me with respect to the history and shape of Judaism and Christianity that I would not have gained through staying in one place.
Part of the reason for that is that liturgical cultures are designed as much to insulate as illustrate: in constructing the world in a particular manner, religious communities are teaching their members to see the world in a very specific way, from a vantage that does not always welcome or encourage critical deconstruction through stepping outside of one’s line of sight and looking at reality from a different angle. Moving from place to place, community to community, narrative to narrative, I have constructed and deconstructed my view of the world several times, aided throughout the course of my academic career by the tools of critical thought and research that scholars use to do philological, literary, and historical work on religious texts, thinkers, and communities. I am grateful to God that I have been able to walk that path without losing my faith, since it certainly is the case that this kind of discipline, as we use it today in fields like religious studies or classics or academic theology, is influenced by secular epistemological ideals that are sometimes contrary to the epistemology of faith. Handled rightly, though, they need not sever the openness of the soul to faith, and can actually be an important faculty of iconoclasm for the mind, one that will prevent us from idolatry and, through the embrace of an ever-wider view of things, enable us to see the interconnecting unity that is always present to us in the pluralism of the world.
This comes home to me especially when I contemplate the way that Judaism and Christianity structure Time through their respective liturgies. It should be noted first that while all Jews and Christians share, among themselves and even with one another, certain essential features of their calendars, there is no universally Jewish or Christian experience of Time. Ancient Israelites, Early Jews, and Early Christians, together with their medieval, renaissance, early modern, and contemporary descendants, have all structured time liturgically in response to several different stimuli, including but not limited to unique experiences, beliefs, and practices of particular communities (e.g., liturgical differences between Samaritans and Rabbinic Jews, or Ethiopian and Rabbinic Jews), historical events that impact or shape those communities in a big way (e.g., Chanukah, the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325), or attempts to coopt and sacralize secular calendars (as is especially clear in Christian cases, but is also on display in the ancient Israelite retconning of ancient Near Eastern experiences of time). Jewish liturgical cycles influenced Early Christianity because the first-century members of the Jesus Movement were practicing Jews, first, who framed the significance of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Spirit around Jewish festival culture (Pascha, Pentecost), and second, because the churches of late antiquity and the middle ages wanted to present themselves as the valid heirs of ancient Israel, and so went to great lengths to format their liturgies to match the remembered or imagined aesthetics of the Jerusalem Temple and biblical Judaism. And in turn, Christian liturgies have influenced Jewish liturgical life, though more often negatively, through the embodiment of Jewish attempts to resist assimilation into Christianity in various liturgical activities (Kol Nidrei is probably the best example).
But among Christians themselves, there is not a common calendar: Eastern and Western Christians live according to very different constructions of time in their liturgies, and among Western Christians there is division between a more Catholic, Anglican, and high-church Lutheran liturgical cycle on the one hand and the barren worshiping year of Christmas and Easter in the lower-church Protestant settings. At times the calendrical issue constitutes a bone of contention between East and West, as with the dating of Pascha, while at other times, different liturgical years reflect the distance that can alienate the Eastern experience of Christianity from the Western. Yet at a deeper level, all of these various liturgies are attempts to make sense of time from the experience of Christ as received in these various communities, and so from a metacognitive standpoint, must be complementary. Just as the Jewish liturgical year says something about Time as the creature of God, so, too, the Christian liturgical years say something about how Time has been recapitulated in Christ.
The first and most important observance of the Jewish calendar, the building block around which the entirety of the Jewish conception of time is constructed, is Shabbat, the “seventh” day of rest. It seems unlikely that Shabbat was an ancient Israelite observance: probably, the practice of resting every seventh day emerged initially from festivals involving the cessation of labor in connection with the lunar cycle.1 Textually, Shabbat was later developed by reference to the Priestly creation narrative of Genesis 1:1-2:3, where God “rests” on the seventh day, signifying, among other things, God’s taking up residence and rule in the created order. In Early Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism, Shabbat is the fundamentally holy day: it is, as Abraham Joshua Heschel, arguably the most famous Jewish theologian of the 20th century, called it, the “temple in time,” a temporal corridor in which God can be encountered just as the Jerusalem Temple was a spatial sanctuary for the divine presence.2 Observant Jewish life revolves around Shabbat: the preparation and cleanup of the evening meal on Erev Shabbat (Friday evening) in time to “greet the Sabbath bride,” in the widely adopted kabbalistic language is a pressure that sends Jewish teachers and children home from school early on Fridays. Many families unplug during the Sabbath, turning off cellular devices and not activating any electronics so as to truly rest. Some study Torah, others read, others play games, and some simply nap.
Layered atop the weekly cycle of Shabbat is the festal cycle, which is what people typically think of when they talk about the Jewish calendar. “Unlike calendars of the ancient world that were based on nature and couched in myth and ritual drama,” writes Aaron Demsky, “the Hebrew calendar marks the beginning of the year rooted in an historiographical event - the Exodus from Egypt.”3 This is half-true. It is certainly the case that the concatenation of different ancient Israelite calendars into the text of the Hebrew Bible reflects an attempt to structure the Israelite consciousness of Time around the events of the Exodus and the entry into the Land of Israel. It is also certainly the case that the nuts and bolts of the calendar are derived from the agricultural and civil cycles of planting, harvest, and taxation, which were likely not dissimilar from those in use in Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and so their sacralization by specifically Israelite sacred history represents a cultural assimilation of a preexistent calendar that is, indeed, rooted in the cycles of the natural world. This is obviously what stands behind the calendrical disputes of Early Judaism: following on the statement of the Priestly author in Genesis 1:14, that God made the celestial bodies to mark Israel’s liturgical calendar, ancient Jews disputed with one another, sometimes quite vigorously (or viciously), over whether that calendar is lunar, solar, or lunisolar.4 The Rabbis acknowledge the tension of the natural, the historical, and the sacred by identifying at least four New Years in Jewish Scripture: the 1st of Nisan (the king’s new year, and therefore the civil new year), the 1st of Ellul (the fiscal new year), the 1st of Tishre (Rosh Hashanah), and the 1st or 15th of Shevat (the new year for the trees; see Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1.1).
Despite the liturgical new year on the 1st of Tishre, to which we will return below, most contemporary Jewish accounts of the liturgical year begin with Pesach or Passover in the Spring, on the 14th of Nisan. The logic for doing so in antiquity would have been that Pesach was the first of the three great “pilgrimage festivals” at which, in accordance with Mosaic legislation, all able Israelites were expected to appear in Jerusalem to celebrate, the other two being Shavu’ot or Pentecost and Sukkot or Tabernacles (Exod 34:18-23; Deut 16). Today, it is one of the major Jewish festivals that most Jews, regardless of their stream of tradition or level of observance, are likely to share. Pesach celebrates God’s act of redemption in the liberation from Egypt at the time of spring planting, and is followed by the Counting of the Omer up to Shavu’ot. Shavu’ot—the Greek Pentecostes, the Feast of “fifty days” after Pesach—remembers the gifting of the Torah at Sinai.
Liturgically, Rosh Hashanah is the true new year for Rabbinic Judaism, but its importance is inextricably tied to Yom Kippur and Sukkot which follow it. In ancient Israel, it probably did not exist as a separate holiday from Yom Kippur and Sukkot,5 and all three likely received their classical form in the exilic and postexilic periods.6 The original feast, still visible in its present tripartite form, was clearly a celebration of God’s Kingship, arguably the dominant concept of the yamim noraim (“Awesome Days” or “Days of Awe,” the so-called “High Holidays” in Anglophone Judaism) and Sukkot. At Rosh Hashanah, God’s kingship is highlighted under the visage of God’s creation of the universe, not just in the past but as an ongoing act of sustenance annually renewed. The Jewish liturgical year thus begins with an acknowledgment that God’s creative act and his kingship are inseparable. In the words of the late, great Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
The word מלך, “King,” when applied to God means, first, that God is the sole ultimate Sovereign of the people Israel, who accepted His kingship and covenant at Mount Sinai. At that ceremony, God undertook to guide the Israelites’ destiny, while the people accepted their vocation as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” bound by God’s laws. The second and wider meaning is that God is Sovereign over the universe and all humanity—with whom, via Noah, He made a covenant after the Flood (Genesis, chapter 9). That covenant, with its seven laws, embodies the fundamental principles of human conduct under God. Though God’s sovereignty is not yet recongnized by all, it will be in the end of days. Hence our prayers often end with the prophecy of Zechariah (14:9), “Then the LORD shall be King over all the earth.” The sovereignty of God is the ultimate sanction against tyranny. It implies that all human authority is delegated authority, to be exercised only within the constraints of the covenant. Sometimes God is referred to as קונה which, though I have followed by translating it as “Creator,” literally means “Owner” of heaven and earth. This represents the idea that because God created the universe, He owns it. The world and its benefits do not belong to us. What we possess, we hold in trust from God. This is the legal basis of divine sovereignty of the universe—similar to the ancient concept of “eminent domain” by which all ownership of land within a country is ultimately vested in its head of state. As Sovereign of the universe, God rules by right, not power.7
At Yom Kippur, God’s kingship is highlighted under the visage of judgment. The days which elapse between the new year and the Day of Atonement are intended as days of repentance in the rabbinic mind, in view of God’s forthcoming decision on who will live and die in the coming year. Hence the Avinu Malkeinu prayed during these days:
Our Father, our King, we have sinned before You.
Our Father, our King, we have no king but You.
Our Father, our King, deal kindly with us for the sake of Your name.
Our Father, our King, renew for us a good year.
Our Father, our King, nullify all harsh decrees against us.
…
Our Father, our King, forgive and pardon all our iniquities.
Our Father, our King, wipe away and remove our transgressions and sins from Your sight.
Our Father, our King, erase in Your abundant mercy all records of our sins.8
On Yom Kippur, God’s just judgment is executed not in gleeful wrath but in compassionate mercy for Israel and the world: God does not exercise his kingship like a human despot, but like a loving Father. At Sukkot, God’s kingship is especially associated with the transition from olam hazeh, the “world” or “age that is,” to olam habah, the “world” or “age to come.” The text to which Sacks alludes in the quote above is from Zechariah 14:
Behold, a day of the Lord is coming, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of you. 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. 3 Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. 4 On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward, and the other half southward. 5 And the valley of my mountains shall be stopped up, for the valley of the mountains shall touch the side of it; and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzzi′ah king of Judah. Then the Lord your[a] God will come, and all the holy ones with him.[b] 6 On that day there shall be neither cold nor frost.[c] 7 And there shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light. 8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter. 9 And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one. 10 The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem shall remain aloft upon its site from the Gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Han′anel to the king’s wine presses. 11 And it shall be inhabited, for there shall be no more curse;[d] Jerusalem shall dwell in security. 12 And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will smite all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet, their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths. 13 And on that day a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them, so that each will lay hold on the hand of his fellow, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other; 14 even Judah will fight against Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the nations round about shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance. 15 And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the asses, and whatever beasts may be in those camps. 16 Then every one that survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths. 17 And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them. 18 And if the family of Egypt do not go up and present themselves, then upon them shall[e] come the plague with which the Lord afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the feast of booths. 19 This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the feast of booths. 20 And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar; 21 and every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the flesh of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day. (Zechariah 14:1-21, RSV)
Sukkot is in some special way associated both with the transience of this life, looking back to the Israelite indwelling of booths as they awaited entry into the promised land during the years of wandering, as well as to the future stability of all things under God’s sovereignty. The megillah for this feast, the Book of Qoheleth or Ecclesiastes, emphasizes the impermanence physically represented to observant Jews in the temporary dwelling of the sukkah. And yet Sukkot is “the time of our rejoicing,” the festival in which more than any other, both in antiquity and today, Jews are called to be joyful before God in celebration of his kingly provision for the world, not least of the rains which are prayed for at the end of this feast.
The calendar is littered with other festivals, some ancient, some late antique or medieval, and others wholly modern. Chanukah was introduced as a sort of winterized Sukkot by the Hasmoneans as a commemoration of the success of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucids; once popularized in Palestine and the Diaspora, it was received by the rabbis but had little importance until the contemporary period, when it functioned as a kind of Jewish alternative to Christmas. Various holidays related to contemporary Judaism or Israeli politics, like Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Yom HaAtzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), have emerged in the last century. More ancient holidays, like Tu B’Shvat, the arboreal new year, have been recast with environmental themes in contemporary Jewish thought.
Taken as a whole, the rabbinic calendar adapts the biblical calendar to express a particular theology of the Jewish past, present, and future. On the one hand, the historic canon of feasts runs from Pesach through Shavu’ot to Sukkot; on the other hand, the latter two are divided by the liturgical new year, making Sukkot, a feast of future redemption, the first festival of the year after the fast of Yom Kippur. Each Jewish New Year thus immediately looks forward to the resolution of the current world drama, while each Spring looks backwards on the accomplished feats of Israel’s redemption. If the natural and agricultural cycles are the ground on which these sacred narratives of Israel’s history are built, then what those cycles signify is both opaque until revealed in Israel’s national life and expounded by the logic of the Jewish festal calendar as ratified by the rabbis. Time for Judaism is a revelation of God’s Kingship—in nature, in the life of Israel, and in the life of the world to come, when Time itself will be transformed.
Pars II to follow.
See Jacob L. Wright, “How and When the Seventh Day Became Shabbat” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/how-and-when-the-seventh-day-became-shabbat).
See the reprint: Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005).
See Aaron Demsky, “The Essence of the Hebrew Calendar” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-essence-of-the-hebrew-calendar).
See Sacha Stern, “What is the Bible’s Calendar?” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/what-is-the-bibles-calendar). See also Michael Segal, “The Jewish Calendar in Jubilees: A 364 Day Solar Year” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/jewish-calendar-in-jubilees-a-solar-year).
See Karel van der Toorn, “Rosh Hashanah with the Early Israelites” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/rosh-hashanah-with-the-early-israelites).
See Zev Farber, “The Origins of Sukkot” (https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-origins-of-sukkot).
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, The Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2013), xlvi.
The translation is from Sacks, The Koren Siddur, 148. Obviously, this prayer, attributed to the early second century sage Rabbi Akiva, bears similarities to the Avinu of Jesus.