Embracing the Time We Have Together

One of the most difficult aspects of life is understanding the shortness of time we have on this earth. When we are children time seems eternal, almost never ending, as we embrace moments of joy and celebration with birthdays and holidays. As we get older, time almost seems like an enemy taking away aspects of ourselves as we age and see those we love disappear from this earth. Time is an enigma which we struggle to stop or control, but alas we cannot and eventually we all realize the difficulty of dealing with the passage of time in our lives.
This week we Jews read about the strangeness of time as we learn about the struggle of Jacob to marry the woman he loves, Rachel, and how time is used both as his enemy and friend in the quest to find that love. Jacob sees his love Rachel and falls for her at first sight, just like his father, Isaac, did for Rebecca. Just like Isaac, he also has to deal with an unscrupulous family member in Lavan who is the father of Rachel but also the father of Leah, the oldest sister. Jacob asks to marry Rachel and thus promises Lavan to work for him for seven years to earn the right of marriage. The story goes that Jacob was such a good worker that Lavan wanted to trick into working for another seven years, so he decided to switch sisters on their wedding night. But the story has a deeper concept.
According to rabbinic tradition, Jacob asked Rachel, “Will you marry me?” She answered, “Yes, but my father is a deceiver, and you will not be able to best him.” He asked her, “What is his deceit (in what will he be able to deceive me)?” She told him, “I have an older sister, and he will not marry me off before her.” He said, “I am his brother in deceit.” Jacob gave Rachel signs (so that he would be able to recognize her on the wedding night). When Leah was brought under the wedding canopy, Rachel thought: “Now my sister will be shamed (when Jacob discovers the fraud and does not marry her).” She taught the signs to Leah. This is why Genesis 29:25 relates: “When morning came, there was Leah!” — because Rachel had given her the signs and Jacob did not know until the morning that they had been switched.
What I find so fascinating about the story is that in most of our Torah siblings spend most of their time hating each other and trying to kill one another and in this story we see two sisters bound by a unscrupulous father who choose to tie each other together by the fate of the other out of love and respect for one another. Jacob gives Lavan seven more years of work in order to gain the right to marry Rachel but its Leah who we Jews are tied to by family line.
Some people see the time Jacob spends working for Lavan as a tragedy of being tricked. I see the time as a blessing because it was given out of love between sisters choosing to look out for one another throughout their life, very much worth the time.
Jacob spends his life mourning time while Leah and Rachel nurture the time as an opportunity to be together. What makes our time worth the moment it’s spent? I think about this so much in life. How we spend our time is worth contemplation but it is also important to use that time to build something in your life worth having. Jacob had a twin brother who he never makes a true peace with and when they are gone that time is lost forever. That, in my opinion, was the real wasted time. We try to hold on to time but in the end we have to let that time pass and let the moment move on.
Time for us is similar to a basket, a solid container into which we place our relationships, our goals, our health and even our hopes for the times to come much like Jacob used his time to build his family. Our purpose in life seems to be to clutch the basket of time with all our might so that nothing might fall out. All the time we have is in it; hence it becomes what we might consider to be our most important possession. But time has its own way with us. Clutch as we might, in time, relationships which we cherished fall from the basket leaving us bereft of much of the purpose for which we hold on to it. I think often of those I love who are gone now and I only wish I understood beforehand how short my time with them truly was.
When I was young I thought I would have my whole life with my whole family, but now that my brother has left this earth, and then my father, I see how short the time we had together was and I wish I could still have one more moment with them. When I was young there was always going to be time, time with my parents, time with my brother, and time to build my dreams. Now that I am in my 40s I often wonder where the time went and whether I used it well. When I think of the early struggles of Jacob and the sacrifice Rachel made for her sister, I see that the best time we can spend is with people we love, and try to never waste a moment of that time. In the end it’s that moment of love we hang on to all our life, let the little stuff pass like water through a basket.
Rabbi Lipschultz is the Rabbi of Beth Judah Temple in Wildwood NJ. He can be reached at dvjewish@rof.net