Do We Have Time for Everything?

 Hi,


As we celebrate Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkot, the Shabbat during Sukkot, I am reminded of the book of Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) which we read at this time of year.

There is a time for everything as Chapter Three teaches us.(See the link below).


I have developed a new insight to these verses this year.  After being exposed to covid on Yom Kippur last Sunday, "it was time for me to test positive."  I have had a relatively minor case I suspect and although still testing positive, I feel great and am blessed.

I think about timing.  If I had tested positive before the vaccines, this note could be coming to you by way of the world to come.  As I wrestled with minor symptoms, I couldn't help but be so thankful that this was the time I got covid.  Knowing many people who either died or knew someone who died from covid, I have wrestled with the "luck of the draw" and how fortunate I am that I should be just fine.

I also thought about the fact that Sukkot reminds us of the precariousness of our world and our lives as we live in temporary huts for a week.  As I sat around bothering my wife who was happy to stay six miles (oops, I meant six feet) away from me, I thought about the ways in which we spend our time.  

Years ago when I had cancer, two years ago when I had a heart attack, and now, I am again reminded that we should live each day as if this is our last day, and also live each day as if we might live forever.  And so we all seek balance.

I hope that as we all deal with the temporary nature of our lives, we will take these words of Yehuda Amichai to heart.  

Let us remember that Sukkot is a time to be happy.  May we find happiness in the midst of our world and make time to enjoy and celebrate what we have, while making time to share our blessings either financially or as volunteers.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Bruce Aft

A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history 
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures 
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

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