Week Six: Jewish and Christian Time

Two Page Essay: Compare and assess these accounts of ‘time’ in Christianity and Judaism.

In reading Raddi Greenberg’s account of the Jewish holidays, I am reminded of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, writer, and professor and Bernie Glassman, a Jewish Zen Master from New York. A deep understanding of the “threefold present,” as identified in class, is reflected in the life and work of both Wiesel and Glassman, men deeply rooted in Jewish culture and tradition. It has been years since I read Man’s Search for Meaning but I remember that essential to Weisel’s survival was his ability to remember life before the concentration camps, to imagine his wife greeting him at the door, for example, and to bring these memories into the present, holding them safely in his thoughts of the future.

I am then reminded of Bernie Glassman’s retreats at Auschwitz, retreats including survivors, children of survivors, children of Nazis, children of German soldiers, and children of refugees. Though the Holocaust, as an event, is of the past, the pain and suffering of the Holocaust is very much present today. Through entering into relationship with this suffering, i.e. acknowledging it and giving it space, these retreats transform and heal this suffering in time. In shifting the very meaning of this suffering now, this healing penetrates all time: past, present and future.

In his chapter “The Holidays as the Jewish Way,” Rabbi Greenberg explains that the rhythm of the Jewish year leads the Jewish people through a reenactment of the Exodus with Passover, the covenant acceptance with Shavuot and a reconstruction of the exodus way with Sukkot.[1] Like the Christian (in the fullest sense of the word) experience of time, while these holidays commemorate the historical past, more importantly, they bring this historical past into the present and summon the future into the present reality.[2] Greenberg writes, “Uniquely, the human being can anticipate the future redemption and bring it closer. Thus, an event that has not yet occurred can have a profound impact on the present, an impact strong enough to overcome even powerful past conditioning”[3] and, I would add, terrifying and violent conditions in our current lives (as we see in the writings and teachings of Elie Wiesel). The Jewish year and its holidays are designed to teach us how to deal with sorrow, to remind us of suffering and death when we become too comfortable in our daily routines, and to nurture us with visions of a perfect world[4] and belief in a final, universal redemption.[5]

While there are many parallels between Christian and Jewish understanding and use of time, with the 8th day (with Christ rising the first day after the Sabbath) a new time evolves; with the resurrection of Christ, time itself is transformed.[6] According to Schmemann, the Church continued to use the Jewish festivals of Passover and Pentecost because these holidays anticipated the experience of time of which the Church was now the manifestation and fulfillment.[7] These holidays represented a period of passage into joy and salvation, into a new ‘eon’ of the Spirit[8] (as they represented passage from exile to freedom in the Old Testament). Therefore, the early celebration of Easter is the fulfillment of time itself. Namely, through Easter, meaning (Joy) is given to time, thus transforming the reality of Christian life in this world (for Christians are no longer waiting for the savior; He has come).

[1] Greenberg 25
[2] Ibid. 27
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. 33
[5] Ibid. 19
[6] Schmemann 51
[7] Ibid. 56
[8] Ibid. 56-57