I once had an editor who suggested that
when I write a Torah blog it should be scholarly and highfalutin
because the audience is very religious and knows a
lot of stuff. Great I thought, so since they were already “brains” it was my
job then as a writer to introduce a little heart and common sense; it was my
job to take the Torah out of the heavens and
bring it into the world of practicality wherein it was meant to turn man into a
mensch.
This week’s biblical reading Ki Tissa teaches us a practical lesson
about time, even to those who are “very religious” —perhaps most especially to
them. Regardless of our orthodoxy level, it is not beyond human nature to
misuse time—sometimes dangerously so. In Ki
Tissa we read about the Sin of the Golden Calf and can’t help but wonder
what kind of person builds a golden calf? Our own immediate grandstanding reaction
is, “I wouldn’t have participated.” Even the most non-religious Jew amongst us
today wouldn’t build a golden idol, well except maybe Bernie Madoff. Yet, the
rabbis teach us that the Israelites who committed this unfathomable sin were not “derelicts” but were righteous
people; not only were they righteous but they had reached the level of
Adam prior to sinning. Yet, in an Olympian dive, they plummeted from their
highest level to their lowest point in history. How long did it take them? I’ll
take God’s word for it: He tells Moses, “They have speedily left the path I commanded them.”
Many years ago Rabbi Zlig Pliskin came
out with a book entitled Guard Your
Tongue, but more aptly for our age would be a book called Guard Your Time, for it is the
mismanagement of precious moments where sins are born and potential dies. And
it is in our age of too much information and distractions that we must be ever
more vigilant.
A brilliant young Torah sage was once asked when he had the time
to become so smart seeing that he was so young. He replied that everything that
he knew he had learned in five minutes.
“But you are so smart,” people said. “How could it be that you learned everything in five minutes?”
“But you are so smart,” people said. “How could it be that you learned everything in five minutes?”
To which he replied, “Every time that I had five minutes, I learned
something.”
In today’s times, unfortunately, we don’t see the cumulative magic
of minutes. We think that the only thing five minutes can produce is minute
rice. The fact is if we did indeed appreciate minutes, would Americans spend 34
hours
a week watching TV? Would people spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook,
on Twitter, on YouTube? Are we not all
guilty, even the very religious, of taking God’s precious time and wasting it,
of building some sort of wasteful “calf” instead of engaging in tikkun olam—fixing the world.
In our minds we justify that we are just killing an hour not
realizing that the hour is really killing us. If we don’t want the evil inclination to defeat the years
of our lives, then we must defeat the moments of our lives. By
allowing just a few moments to go unguarded, never mind hours and days, we give
satan—and trouble—the
opportunity to seize the helm as we learn from the Sin of the Golden Calf.
Remember, as well, that the Angel of Death was only able to take King David’s
soul by distracting him from Torah study for a few moments.
Friends, single moments can make you or break you. It thus becomes
a simple case of mathematics: What do you want to add up to? Do you want to
fill your days with good deeds, Torah and kindness, or to be sucked into the
time-free-yenta-zone of social networks, tweets, TV, too much shopping and
other distractions that can propel us to speedily leave the path that God has
shown us. The average person lives just over 40 million minutes in a lifetime.
What is your mitzvah-to-minute ratio
so far?
Upon the death of a great sage people came to question one of his
disciples and asked him what was most important to their teacher. The disciple
responded, “Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment.” May we, too, all
be committed to dedicating our very best to the minutes of our life so that
when they add up to hours, days, and years we will have something to show for
them.
Some say time is a healer, but I say time is a stealer; it will take
and steal the best of you if you don’t commit to giving it your best. It’s time
to put up a sign on our lives which reads “No loitering!” And as
Rabbi Hillel wisely asked, “If not now [my friends], then when?
