Among the songs that I remember from my parents’ collection of phonograph records of Yiddish folk music was a melancholy and poignant melody whose lyrics expressed the lament of a poor and humble tailor that the holiday season and its celebrations were coming to an end and that he would soon be returning to his workday tasks and responsibilities. Two weeks ago, we in the Jewish community marked the conclusion of our late summer/early autumn festival season. Although Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at the beginning of this three-week interval are devoted to the solemn themes of divine judgment, penitence and atonement, the mood is leavened by the spiritual fervor that permeates the worship, by faith in God’s willingness to forgive our shortcomings and transgressions, and by the hope that a New Year will mark a new beginning for ourselves and our dear ones. Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, whose roots are in the ancient celebration of harvest and ingathering, and Simchat Torah (“rejoicing with the Torah”), marking the conclusion and recommencement of the annual cycle of scriptural readings, are the last of the season’s holidays and their mood is one of unalloyed joy.
Two months will elapse until the next holiday, Chanukah, the sole opportunity in that interval for leisurely and extended rest, celebration, spiritual renewal and family togetherness being the weekly Sabbath. Borrowing a term from the Christian liturgical tradition, I think of these two months as “ordinary time.” The challenge for me and for religiously-involved Jews is how we maintain focus, direction and commitment during this time. When the “peak experiences” of the intense and crowded holiday season have come to an end, how do we make the ordinary special? How do we avoid becoming distracted, discouraged and overwhelmed by our busy daily routines to the neglect of our spiritual needs?
Jewish tradition provided a partial answer by prescribing a regimen of daily rituals and observances – prayers to be recited morning, noon and night; blessings to be said before partaking of food and on many other occasions; and the obligation to engage each day in study of Torah as one’s time and circumstances allowed. The purpose of such rituals is to infuse our everyday lives with an awareness of God’s presence; to evoke a sense of gratitude and of our dependence on Divine blessing for the fulfillment of our needs; and to provide us with guidance and inspiration from our sacred texts. Often, however, our prayers, our ritual observances and our study can become hurried, rote and uninspired. Taking that into account, the rabbis who shaped the Jewish tradition taught the ideal of kavvanah (focus, concentration, intention); prayer, ritual and study were to be carried out with focus on the meaning of what we are reading or reciting and with the intent of serving God.
According to the rabbis, the world’s existence rests on three pillars – on Torah, on service of God through prayer and on “deeds of lovingkindness,” a term which denotes not only the giving of charity but any act of benevolence, support and reaching out to assist a fellow person in pain or in need. When we see in him or her one who like us is fashioned in God’s image, when we act as God’s agents to provide for him or her, such acts, no less than our prayers and the words of scripture, are a path to the divine. Such deeds, no less than our worship and our studying and meditating over the words of Torah help make ordinary time special.
