This week’s parshat Emor charts a deceptively simple list of festivals and holy days.

Time plays an enormous role in Judaism. The first thing G-d declared holy was a day: Shabbat, at the conclusion of creation.

The first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a whole, prior to the Exodus, was the command to sanctify time, by determining and applying the Jewish calendar. The prophets were the first to see G-d in history, seeing time itself as the arena of the Divine-human encounter. Virtually every other religion and civilization before and since has identified G-d, reality and truth with timelessness.

So time in Judaism is an essential medium of the spiritual life. But there is one feature of the Jewish approach to time that has received less attention than it should: the duality that runs through its entire temporal structure.

Take, for instance, the calendar as a whole. Christianity uses a solar calendar, Islam a lunar one. Judaism uses both. We count time both by the monthly cycle of the moon and the seasonal cycle of the sun.

Then consider the day. Days normally have one identifiable beginning, whether this is at nightfall or daybreak or—as in the West—somewhere between.

Why do Jewish holidays begin at nightfall?

This is based on the story of creation in Genesis, where at the end of each day it says, "And it was evening, and it was morning; day one," "And it was evening, and it was morning; the second day," etc... By mentioning evening before morning, the Torah defines a day as beginning with the evening, followed by the morning.

This definition of the passage of time is not only relevant to how we set up the calendar. It has profound implications as to our attitude to life itself. Everyone agrees that life is full of ups and downs. We go through periods where the sun is shining upon us and we feel on top of the world, only to turn a corner and be faced with difficulties and obstacles that drag us down. But it isn't long before something pleasant comes our way to pick us up again. The question is: which one wins the day, the ups or the downs? In other words, is life a series of disappointments dotted by the occasional glimmer of hope, only to be crushed by another surge of gloominess? Or are we on a journey upwards, with challenges along the way to make us even stronger in our quest for enlightenment?

Does darkness extinguish light, or does light conquer darkness? Does night follow day or day follow night?

The Jewish view is clear. "And it was evening, and it was morning." First the night, then the day. Darkness is a pathway to the sunrise hiding behind it. A challenge comes our way only to help us tap in to and reveal our inner powers that have until now remained unfathomed.

At Jewish National Fund, we have found one of the best ways to shine light on the real Israel is to bring people there to experience it firsthand. From the JNF Travel & Tours team and the wonderful trips they put together to the JNF partnership with Media Watch International to bring non-Jewish college students and professors to Israel, every single one of the thousands of people that JNF brings to Israel sheds a little more light on this dark world.

That's Jewish time—the comfort in knowing that no matter how dark it may seem, it is light that will have the last word.


Shabbat Shalom,

Yossi