A Wedding Stuck in Time & Mishpatim

So many of the laws in Torah given to the Israelites this week on Mt. Sinai seem stuck in time:

Daughters sold by their fathers and what to do if the acquirer decides he doesn’t want her anymore; skimming the first yield of your vats; giving God your first born son? (What is this, Rumpelstiltskin? Snow White?)

Others are more translatable to today’s world—like what to do if you find your enemy’s ass lying on the ground, heavily burdened by a load on its back. (Well, you help the animal even though you hate your enemy—duh! It’s not the animal’s fault, i.e. don’t take it out on the one who didn’t do anything to you.)

Or what about “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…”—which doesn’t mean you take someone’s eye or tooth out if they took yours out. Rather, the payback should be equal to the infraction; the punishment should fit the crime. Isn’t that something we’re stilling learning? Take a look at our Criminal Justice system.

But it’s so easy get stuck in the details, which don’t just seem stuck in a time very much past and only sometimes make sense to us in our time.

Similarly, we get stuck in time in our present daily lives—sometimes specifically stuck in figuring out time, thinking we can “conquer” it or “beat” it. We get bogged down by all the things that need to get done, thinking that once we’ve done them all, we’ll get to what really matters. Yet, that might never happen because we’ve filled our days with the “have-to’s".

We treat things like our children as “disturbing" us, taking us away from our “work”—a distraction (those among us who haven’t been there, please speak up)—while our children are screaming for attention, reminding us that they are what matter most.

I had just heard Oliver Burkeman, author of Time Management for Mortals talking about this very thing with Krista Tippett (the title is deliberately misleading) when I had a terrible dream.

I dreamt that I’d missed my daughter’s wedding just getting things ready for it. All I could think of was, what are we going to do about the food for a park wedding?

I woke up crying.

I talked to her that morning, and she told me how she was stressing about the food thing for the park wedding!

And here we got her a beautiful dress, and she’s not going to be able to enjoy it; it won’t feel like a real wedding.

She’s dreaming again of doing it in Dominican Republic. Her fear of Covid is gone at this point; her fiance just had it and she didn’t get it again. And by the summer, it will all be better…

Finally, after much discussion, I say, “Fuck it. Let’s do it in D.R.”

“Really, Mommy?” she says sweetly.

“Yes. These are the important things in life. Let’s just do it. No regrets.”

“Aaaaawwww, thank you, Mommy…”

She’s so happy. I’m so happy. It’s settled.

Then it’s not.

She calls the next day; the timing is all wrong. She’s rushing. She’s trying to please everyone, and finally realizes that’s not possible—a good lesson for life.

Here we are again, faced with time.

Like the timing in Torah being all wrong for us. Yet it’s also timeless.

Because, what is time, after all? We plan, we do everything according to what’s “right,” but anything can change in a flash. If there’s one thing we should have learned from Covid, it’s to let go of the plans, let go of the to-do’s as much as possible, and just remember that paying attention to what really matters is the most important thing.

I was just reading the Piaseczner Rebbe again yesterday. He taught that time is a construct of humanity, the way we count the days and the seasons according to the sun or the moon. Yet if we treat time as sacred, that changes everything.

May we remember what is sacred each time we begin to worry about time—and act on it.

And say Amen.