Rabbi Jacobson leading a study of The Sabbath, by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 9/19/25
Rabbi Suzie Jacobson
Qabbalat Shabbat, September 19, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston
Eternity Utters a Day
“I have NO time.”
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
“Time waits for no one.”
“Always racing against the clock.”
“Time flies.”
“Too much to do, too little time.”
“Time is money.”
“Never a moment to breathe.”
“Every second counts.”
“Working around the clock.”
“24/7”
I’m pretty sure I say at least one of these clichés every single day. Maybe it’s a personality flaw—but I do love to kvetch about my busy schedule. As one of my oldest friends likes to remind me, I really do it to myself. Even at 19 I was the same way—taking six classes, working full time, and joining every club on campus. Even my hobbies are time-consuming. There’s always so much to do, and never enough time.
Maybe you feel the same—juggling jobs, kids, and endless responsibilities stacked on a Google calendar with twelve colors and overlapping meetings.
I often find myself wishing I could be in two places at once. Or that I could add an extra day to the week. Or tack on a few more hours to the evening… or maybe just skip sleep altogether.
None of this is reasonable. And our society’s penchant for over extension is not great for one’s physical or mental health. It is also not great for our relationships. Though wishing for more time may feel ubiquitous, we all exist on the same plane of reality – there are only 24 hours in a day.
Tonight is the fourth Shabbat of Elul. Over the past weeks we’ve studied Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath. My colleagues have shared beautiful teachings about making Shabbat meaningful. Tonight, I want to use Heschel’s work a little differently. At its core, the book is a meditation on time itself. Heschel believes most of us misunderstand what “time” even is.
He writes:
“Time to us is a measuring device rather than a realm in which we abide. Our consciousness of it comes about when we begin to compare two events and to notice that one event is later than the other; when listening to a tune we realize that one note follows the other… But is time only a relation between events in time? … Moreover, do we only know what is in time, merely events that have an impact on things of space? If nothing happened that is related to the world of space, would there be no time?”
Heschel is calling us out for treating time as if it were an object or a commodity. We don’t have enough hours in a day, we race against the clock, we declare we have “no time,” because we are treating time as if it is something we control or own.
But time, he says, is not a thing. It’s spirit. Its holiness is revealed in Shabbat, when God designates time itself as sacred.
He explains:
“What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit. It gives us the opportunity to sanctify time, to raise the good to the level of the holy, to behold the holy by abstaining from profanity. Spirit in the form of time, eternity, is, indeed, an absurdity to all those who think that the spirit is but an idea in the mind of man or that God is a thing among other things… One must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive the presence of eternity in a single moment. One must live and act as if the fate of all of time would depend on a single moment.”
Ok this is quite philosophical, but the meaning is quite simple. Shabbat, and our holidays, many of which are coming quite soon – are meant to teach us this: by pausing, we recognize that life happens in the present moment. God, holiness, the universe – whatever word works for you — is not a tangible object to be manipulated — but rather the experience of living fully in the present moment.
(Turn to neighbors, are there moments in life when you feel this pause in time? When you are able to be fully present in the moment?)
Some examples:
- It’s the moment when you are laying with your small child as they fall asleep and you, for even a moment, stop thinking about work or worries and just feel their small body and breathe in your love for them.
- It’s catching the eye of someone you love across a room, knowing exactly what they’re thinking.
- It was when I sat with my dad as he was dying and I stopped fearing his death for just a moment, and for the first time thought “I’m just so happy to sit with you while you are still a person in this world.”
These are all interpersonal moments of connection that pull us from the hamster wheel of stress, ego and ambition.
Jewish rituals are designed to also give us this pause, to help us feel and understand the holiness of time.
It’s the moment during high holiday services when Avinu Malkeinu or Ashamnu or Shalom Rav pulls us from distraction and invites us into a moment of true prayer and connection.
It’s the hunger pain on Yom Kippur that clears our minds and pulls us deeper into contemplation.
It’s the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashannah or the smell of the etrog on Sukkot or the thrill of dancing with the Torah on Simchat Torah… that break us open and remind us we are alive, changing, growing.
I often think of the saying: you can’t step into the same river twice. Except maybe we are the river. We’re always changing, and it’s these moments of pause that let us see how and why.
Heschel’s final words in the book are: “Eternity utters a day.” What does that mean? I think it means that every single day is spoken into being by eternity, and so every moment carries infinite meaning. But we’ll never notice that if we treat time like sand slipping away.
This very moment is sacred. It’s not meant to be useful—it is holy simply because we are alive in it. Shabbat and our holidays are gifts that remind us of this truth: eternity is always here, waiting for us in each moment we choose to pause and notice.