It's About Time

Before you take your first bite of matzah next week, ask yourself the following question: What is the matzah meant to symbolize? I know, I know, you think you know, every school age kid knows: the children of Israel left Egypt in a hurry, with Pharaoh in hot pursuit and there was no time for the dough to rise. What does matzah symbolize? Easy. Matzah symbolizes the haste with which the Exodus occurred – the first, and perhaps last time a group of Jews left an event promptly.

But before you sit too secure in your Hebrew School education, I ask you to recall the passage we recite at the very beginning of the seder. Holding up the matzah, we say, Ha lachma anya, “this is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in Egypt,” a bread of poverty that we humbly eat today, prompting us to identify with the stranger and to invite all who are hungry to come and eat at our seder tables.

All of a sudden, our simple question is not so simple. Is matzah about a hurried exodus, or is it about a timeless historic sensibility?

We’ll return to that question, but before we do, let’s dig a little deeper. The common understanding of the Exodus, its drama, its excitement, arises from its immediacy. Heeding the Israelites’ cry, God responded with alacrity to bring about redemption. And without advance preparation or forethought, the Children of Israel put their trust in God and by means of God’s responsive mighty arm, Israel was liberated, b’hatzot, literally at midnight. Yet, if we read elsewhere in the haggadah, the we know for sure that the Exodus was anything but spontaneous. “Blessed be He who keeps his promise to Israel. God calculated the end [in the time of Abraham] – hishev et ha-ketz – a planned enslavement of four hundred years, after which they would leave with great wealth. So which was it? B’hipazon, in haste? Or hishev et ha-ketz, an anticipated outcome resulting from long term divine planning? If it was in haste, then how do we make sense of a God who was unaware of Israel’s suffering? If it was all part of a divine plan, then why in the world would God knowingly allow Israel to exist in a protracted state of limbo for four hundred years?

Before we answer these questions among others, I need to define some terms. The ancient Greeks had not one, but two words corresponding to the English word “time.” The first, chronos, refers to sequential time. Seconds, minutes, hours, weeks and months. Chronos is a temporal term covering past, present and future – the henceforths, hithertos and heretofores of our lives. 525,600 minutes to a year. Chronos, as in the word “chronology,” is time as it is most traditionally understood.

But the Greeks had a second word for time – kairos. In Greek mythology, Kairos was the son of Zeus, the God of opportunity. As a rhetorical term, kairos refers to a decisive or crucial point in time, a propitious opportunity, a moment which, if you miss or neglect it, can turn to disaster. If, like me, you rely on popular culture to help you understand complex philosophical distinctions, try this. To understand kairos, think of the popular song “Time of my life,” a song all about once-in-a-lifetime opportunities – that is, kairos. Then, to understand chronos, ask yourself, when you think of that song, do you think of the 1980’s movie "Dirty Dancing" or do you think of the Black Eyed Peas? That is a question of chronos, in other words, the time period into which you were born.

But understanding this distinction between the two kinds of time is only the first step. What is really important is to realize that our lives are constituted by both. Each and every one of us is allotted a certain amount of time – chronos. Sometimes it drags too slowly and sometimes it passes too quickly. Some of us are blessed with an abundance of time, some of us are not granted enough. But regardless of the quantity of chronos, the quality or worth of our lives is ultimately measured by kairos. We all know that it is the opportunities taken or not taken that determine our self worth and worth in the eyes of others.

Kairos is also, incidentally, what makes for great love poetry. Whether it is the biblical Song of Songs, which we will read on Passover, or the 17th century metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, it is the anxiety of a lover wedged between the urgency of present desire and “time’s winged chariot hurrying near” that produces great romance. It is precisely because we are aware that time always moves forward, that we are prompted to be responsive to the imperatives of the present – romantic or otherwise. Each one of us knows full well the durative nature of time, the deserts of vast eternity that lie ahead – and for that matter, exist beyond our control. What is in our control, what signals a life well lived, what announces us as actors on the stage of this world is our ability to seize the moment, to be the subject – not the object – of our existence, to insist, that although the duration is not ours to determine, it is in our power to assert the unique quality of our humanity in a world that may tempt us to do otherwise.

Which, I believe, is what Passover is all about. What is this upcoming festival of liberation if not a time to reflect on what it means to be a free man or woman? A springtime observance, always occurring just as the first buds emerge, and bringing with it the possibility of renewal. A holiday that teaches us that servitude – whether to the pharaohs of the past or present, to forces external or internal – is in some way a diminution of our God-given infinite potential. If nothing else, Passover demands that we ask ourselves whether as free men and women, we are asserting our humanity here and now, in this moment of opportunity called our lives.

The answer to the questions of whether the matzah symbolizes a sudden act of liberation or an ongoing state of being and whether the Exodus was premeditated by God or not – is yes! Both are true. The key to understanding the poetics of the Passover haggadah is to appreciate its conscious and constant juxtaposition of different kinds of time. Think of the rabbis of Bnei Berak who study all night, oblivious to the passage of time, until they are interrupted with the news that the moment of morning sh’ma has arrived and if they don’t act, they will miss it. Ben Zoma, a man of seventy, or like seventy, wonders if he is commanded to recall the Exodus all of his days, or each and every day. B’khol dor va-dor, every generation tells the story of the Exodus. We are doing nothing that hasn’t been done before, but it is incumbent upon us, l’fikhakh anu hayavim, we – here and now – are obligated to give thanks. The story of the haggadah extends from our ancient past into a messianic future with a promise of Jerusalem – but in the middle we give thanks, hallel, for our own freedoms. And of course, though we welcome Elijah, the prophet bearing the eternal promise, it is the angel of death who gets the final word, a sharp reminder of the inescapable fate that awaits us all.

The Passover Haggadah is many things, but it can be read as a theological document intended to alert us to the poetics and politics of time. Our freedom, our humanity stems from an awareness that that though we cannot make time stand still, we can, as free men and women seize those moments of opportunity that lie within our control.

University of Pennsylvania professor Arthur P. Whitaker told the story that when he had the opportunity to interview Generalissimo Franco of Spain, he saw two boxes sitting on the leader’s desk. The box on the left was labeled “Problems that time will solve.” The box on the right was labeled “Problems that time has solved.” It seemed, Whitaker observed, that the leader’s management style involved no more than shifting the papers from the box on the left to the one on the right.

Tempting as Franco’s management style may be, it is antithetical to the message of Passover. Time may sometimes heal, but it does not solve, and those who think that the passage of time in and of itself solves problems are abdicating their obligations as free men and women. Passover is a wake-up call to those who would surrender the urgent demands of today to the passage of time. Most importantly, Passover remind us that in a world bursting with opportunity, filled with potential and limited only by the length of our lives and the capacity of our imagination, we dare not miss our windows of opportunity. In every generation, we are obligated to praise, laud, exalt, elevate and applaud the God who set us free, to love, to celebrate, to achieve, to express the fullness of who we are – as befits a humanity created in God’s image.