View From a Height

Happy Chanukah - V

After a day off for Shabbat, we're back.

Just a quickie - about the Jewish notion of time. One of the blessings we say when lighting the menorah reads, "...Who performed miracles for our Fathers in those days, at this time." One might think that just means Winter, or on this calendar day, but Matis Weinberg makes a deeper point about the Jewish notion of time, contrasted with the traditional Western view.

He claims that Jews think of time not as a line, but as a spiral, coming around to the same place on the X-Y plane every year, but with a different Z. We are different each year, but the time is the same. The time is special, and in fact, Weinberg claims that the time of year for events has been set up far in advance. It's when the People and the Moment meet, that something, like Chanukah, or the Exodus, happens.

Weinberg, by the way, is brilliant, and I can't really do his ideas justice here. If you get a chance to read his Torah commentary, or his unfinished Patterns in Time set, one on Rosh HaShanah, one on Chanukah, you should do so. He draws in ideas from Western culture, as well as Jewish tradition, and he's really an original thinker in an area that, after 3000+ years, doesn't produce much originality.