5781 Introduction to year SIX of MISAVIV
A different shape of time — זמן שנשתנה צורה
What has happened to time? Was it flowing differently in recent months? Have the days and weeks been knitted together with an alternate stitch? Were we taking time for granted before? Or could it be that what we thought was "normal" wasn't really normal at all?
Perhaps when we stay in the same place, when we experience space as more contiguous and condensed, then we experience time in a different way as well.
In previous years, has our little Hebrew Circle Calendar affected your "vision" of time? Has it helped you to see Shabbat as the central culmination of the week? Have you felt it in your daily life—that every month is a circle, with its holy days of rest gathered at its heart? These ideas have been baked into the design of Misaviv from our first year—until now.
This past winter I merited to spend a few lovely Shabbats along the mystical Pacific shoreline in Venice, California, with Rabbi Peretz and his family (check out his wonderful eponymous podcast!). On one of those days of holy rest, I had a new vision of my Hebrew Calendar, with Shabbat occuring not only in the center of each month but also in its outer ring!
It is still true that Shabbat is at the heart and root of every month. But doesn't Shabbat encompass (makif, sovev) the month as well? Isn't its expansiveness (revachah) better represented on the outer rim? On Shabbat we are enveloped in spaciousness and delight, and we are re-ensouled (vayinafash). On Shabbat we take the deep breath that animates our weekly climb.
So I called my legion of employees into an all-staff meeting, and I proclaimed: "Shabbat is still the center, but from now on it is also the outer rim!" And the wise functionaries at Deuteronomy Press sprang into action—calculating algorithms on their fingers, scribbling designs on napkins, and scratching their heads in rhythmic succession. Together, we bring you this new (and improved?) vision of time.
The one wedge-like day of our calendar, which leads into the center of each week, is no longer labeled as Shabbat. Now it is Erev Shabbat—Friday!—a day when we experience a compressing of time, almost like we are being squeezed. On Fridays, there never seems to be enough time to get things done. Yes, Friday is a sort of funnel or vortex, and Shabbat is the central gathering point. But Shabbat is also the vast space that opens up through the portal of candle-lighting (hadlakat neirot) and kiddush. The week that has been funneled and sharpened to a point becomes a vast expanse of delight.
The geometrical form being hinted at here is the torus—something like a holy bagel. This is also the shape that the moon makes in a full revolution around Earth. The apex of the torus leads rapidly down to a valley, right at its center point—like a wormhole—and then this inner surface rises briskly to its opposite peak, deep within and beneath. The "beginning" and "ending" are linked.
סופו נעוץ בתחילתו sofo nautz b'techilato—("its end is rooted in its beginning") ––הן גאלתי אתכם אחרית כראשית hein ge'alti et'chem acharit k'vereishit—("thus I will redeem you, in the end as in the beginning") ––סוף מעשה במחשבה תחילה sof be'ma'aseh, ub'emachshavah techilah––"last in deed, and first in thought"
This is the shape of time we are presenting to you this year. And the same idea is expressed in our beautiful cover image, by Rachel Udkoff, based on Sefer Yetzirah. Here we see a depiction of the 22 letters of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet combining into 231 unique pairs (or double that if you count reversed pairs). These are the 231 gates or paths that manifest the world, including space and time. On this year's cover, which was originally made as a laser cutting, you can see the convergence of letter paths between opposites poles, gathering in the center like a star. Make that star your Shabbat, and make it your portal to an all-embracing, all-encompassing outer rim, and you have learned to use Misaviv 5781.
We no longer have the luxury of languishing in petty orthodoxies of exiled time. Our time must become the advent of time that is fully Shabbat (yom she'culo shabbat). To prepare for the imminent Sabbath year (shmitah), and our great homecoming (the Yovel), we must bring forth a consciousness formed and imbued on both sides by the redemptive Sabbath frame.
Jorian Polis Schutz / יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Deuteronomy Press
5780 Introduction to year five of MISAVIV
Of Rings and Rhythms on G-d’s Earth - טבעות ותקופות בטבע אלוהי
All living beings keep time. They may not have “calendars” or “memories” in the same way we do, but that doesn’t mean they fail to keep time. The best-known example is the way trees leave rings in their trunk for every year they have lived. Each ring contains the story of growth for a full cycle of seasons, writ upon the vascular cambium within the bark. But in truth even this original wooden circle calendar is not so simple to consult; the science of dendrochronology is dedicated to deciphering these signs as they differ from species to species and from year to year. A climatic event such as a drought could result in such a narrow ring that it is mistaken for part of its neighbor. Have you ever had a year that was so difficult or unremarkable that as soon as it was over its memory was blurred?
Time is rhythm. Sometimes spring blossoms come earlier in the year, and sometimes later, but the rhythm is kept. G-d’s creatures seem to know when to come out of hibernation, when to seek a mate, when to produce fruits, when to drop their leaves. It is an ingrained sense, but it also comes with the capacity to learn and adapt, as the world changes. Many animals shift their behavior along with lunar cycles; some also respond to street-lamps. G-d willing our little handheld luminaries do not bring out the “lunatic” in us.
The Torah teaches us to pay attention to natural cycles of time. Back when our months were less fixed, the decision to “impregnate the year” (le’aber et ha’shanah) with a leap month was made on the basis of close observations of the barley crop, and fruit trees, and even the birthing of pigeons and lambs (Sanhedrin Tosefta 2:2-4). Rabbis were adept at knowing the springtime from a thousand small signs written in chlorophyll and flesh.
To this day, when we plant a tree its fruits are prohibited to us for three years (orlah), and on the fourth year they are sanctified and offered up. Only on the fifth year are we able to partake and enjoy (Levit. 19:23). It is as if the Torah wants to impart a healthy respect for the invisible but essential rhythm of rooting down.
This is the fifth year of Misaviv. Perhaps we too have rooted down in the fertile soil of your imagination. Can you reflect on what “rings” you have laid down in your core since the first time you joined our circle? Do you keep time as you once did, or in a different way? Did the collaborative work of our artists contribute to your temporal fruits?
The great gift we have as humans is to be able to grow not only in space but in time. The Hebrew calendar is a powerful technology for accomplishing just that. But it is even more powerful when we realize how all cycles and rhythms are one. For we contain all of creation within us; we may choose our influences and likenesses, and spiral towards our Source with the collective force of all life. Those of us who inherit the great living tradition of the Jewish year are part of a higher organism, a tree of life (eitz ha’chayim) whose rich fruits are our deeds and decisions, in the present ring, to make our ancient months illuminated and new.
Jorian Polis Schutz, יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Deuteronomy Press
5779 Introduction to year four of MISAVIV
Time Jumping - קפיצת הזמן
Is time travel possible? Can we jump from time to time, even in our minds, just as we jump from point to point on a line? Can we ever go back even as we move forward, somehow moving in both directions simultaneously?
When we take our calendar as a circle and our journey as a spiral in time we have a different frame to approach such questions. There is no wide gap between past and future if particular coils are compressed. When we are coming around the bend towards a repetition of past events we make choices that bring us backwards, or forwards, or maybe a combination of both.
When it’s time to start cleaning for Pesach, who doesn’t feel that time has warped and brought us back to where we just have been? This is because time does expand and contract for us—especially when we are involved with scrubbing.
This year is a leap year, what we call a shanah me’uberet (pregnant year), so we will have two Adars in a row. If you get the first one wrong you will immediately have a second chance. And you can use Little Purim (purim katan) in the first Adar as a dry run for the holiday to come—but only if you are on a sufficiently high spiritual level.
In truth we are always rehearsing the future and recapitulating the past. It is taught in our tradition that from Wednesday (yom revi’i) to Friday (yom sh’lishi) of every week we may be warmed by the glow of the approaching Shabbat, whereas from Sunday (yom rishon) to Tuesday (yom shlishi) of each week we still bask in the light from the previous Shabbat. Perhaps the same can be said in general for the months of the year: from Tishrei to Adar we are still in the fold of the previous Rosh Hashanah, while from Nisan to Elul we anticipate the light of the Rosh Hashanah to come. On a leap year, the 13th month (Adar 2) is added right in the middle, so maybe it is up for grabs.
Every ḥag (holy day / festival) is a sort of worm-hole in space-time, a pinhole for transcendent light. Through our experience of these days it is as if we exist in all generations: bayamim hahem bazman hazeh (“on those days, in this time”). It is as if the cumulative history of the day—and perhaps too its future—is stored for us in a supernal cloud, to which we are granted access.
When we add our personally significant days to the year—like birthdays or yahrzeits (memorials) for loved ones and teachers—these too may become lynchpins of past and future worlds, of prophetic insight and renewed retrospect. We cannot resurrect those who have departed this life, but we can bring ourselves to a place and time where dialogue with their spirits is real. Think of a yahrzeit as a supernal landline, and the intervening years as a superfluous spiral cord that we can twirl in our hands.
On this fourth year of Misaviv, we offer to you our multi-colored, multi-faceted illumination of the circle dance that will come to be known to all of us, and to all time, as 5779. May these months and weeks be a source of blessing for both our past and future. May we bring Shabbat ever closer to the center of our lives. May we return forwards even as we return back, and may we remember—no matter where and when we are—that all our blessings continually flow from the Source of Time.
Jorian Polis Schutz, יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Deuteronomy Press
5778 Introduction to year three of MISAVIV
Strength in Circleness - חיזוק במעגליות
Some people say “third time’s a charm,” and indeed in the Jewish tradition there is a legal basis to this. When a person claims ownership of a field and then works it for three consecutive years, the claim becomes a full-fledged reality that demands no further tests. Similarly, an ox that gores three times can no longer be regarded as an “accidental” agent of damage. In other words, “three times” is a threshold of credible proof that something is lasting and real. This rabbinical mechanism, called ḥazakah, is a reasonable approach to our muddy world, given the impossibility of continuous measurements and the correlation of persistence and permanence. Of course, some things appear three times and then go away, and even an ox that has gored three times can potentially mend its ways (especially if its owner does), but ḥazakah is nonetheless a tried and true foundation stone in Torah law, our very own “third time’s a charm.”
Two points make a line. Three points make a triangle—or, with a little imagination, a curve. And indeed this is the geometric crux of the concept of ḥazakah: we conclude that there is a smooth curve when we only have evidence of three points. We dare to presume that a quality persisting for three distinct cycles is not a fluke but rather partakes in an equidistance to a center that holds.
When free will is involved, all bets are off (for better or worse). So when we achieve a visual symphony on the subject of the Jewish months, with thirteen contributing artists, there are no guarantees. Each of the three times we have produced this calendar has been a miracle in itself, and we expect that only miracles will preserve us all the way to seven years (our goal), or G-d willing beyond. On the occasion of the third we may strengthen ourselves and breathe in with renewed faith, but the truth is that our success depends on our deeds—and on yours.
We believe that the circleness governing the traditional Jewish sense of time is essential to recover in our day, and we believe that artists are uniquely poised to assist in this task.
If the third year of our calendar is to become a ḥazakah for anything it should be for the reality that the pictorial possibilities of our months are in endless supply. Each lunar cycle represents particular cosmic energies, constellations and permutations of divine names, long histories of human happenings, as well as seasonal rhythms of natural growth. But each month was also given to us, entrusted to us, and blessed to be an illuminated frame for attentiveness to the actions the Holy One hopes we take.
The term ḥazakah is related to the word for strength, ḥazak, as in grasping something strongly enough to stake your claim. Indeed this is what we often do with our possessions—and even with our sense of time. We strangle it, give it a choke-hold, in order to make it ours. But we could also imagine an alternative vision of strength, and of ḥazakah, rooted in the round.
We make the bold, beautiful claim of circularity in all that we do. When we rise up and when we lay down, when we go in and out or on our way, we honor rolled scrolls that have no beginning and no end; we carve our calendar from lunar and solar spheres, and we find our holy Shabbat at the center of everything. We love the world enough not to let its discontinuities disturb our experience of what is real, what is true, what stays long.
We strengthen ourselves by communing with brothers and sisters in vision—like you—who stand around in your various places living your lives with hopeful breath and renewed old song. Let us presume to believe that though we are few we are strong, for our pointilized demographics disclose a great hidden curve that reveals itself more and more with every turn.
With blessings for a year of joyful journeys, healthful stays, and holy returns.
Jorian Polis Schutz, יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Deuteronomy Press
5777 Introduction to year two of MISAVIV
On Tables and Testimony - על הלוחות והעדות
We have gotten used to tables, in telling time. We reach out and take our days and weeks from them, like a buffet line. They are well-arranged in columns and rows. Even next year’s days may be known in advance. Time has been foreseen and pre-prepared; we must only pick up our utensils and chow down.
But there was a time when time knew no tables, when the year was a series of circles, and each month was not closed until a person like you or me looked up at the sky from our backyard garden and saw that glorious sliver of renewal (hit’chadshut) that was the new-born moon-month (chodesh). He who was graced with such a vision was immediately obligated by G-d to pack up and travel to Jerusalem, if it happened to be within the range of one day and one night’s journey—even if the vision occurred on the Sabbath and the journey would violate Sabbath prohibitions (Mishnah - Rosh Hashanah 1:4-6).
It was upon our vision (al piy re’iyah) that the Torah intended for the Jewish calendrical system and sense of time to be built. And it was upon our testimony about our vision that the sanctification of the month depended, twelve times a year (and sometimes thirteen). Yes, there was a gathering of sages in Yerushalayim that set the paramaters for valid testimony with their cheshbonot (calculations) and their tables (luchot). But these figurings amounted to nothing without the pollination, so to speak, of the Jewish visionaries who traveled from afar with their lunar report, their celestial testimony, their intangible but indispensable treasured wares. It was this testimony that lit the fires upon the mountains and sent out Jewish runners to the ends of the land carrying good “news” of the month’s dawn.
We were plunged into the era of calendrical tables by exile, after the Roman conquest of our people. Hillel the Second, head of the Sanhedrin in the 4th century CE, felt that our system was so threatened by imperial decrees that we needed to set it on a permanent basis. In terms of regularity and reliability, the fixed tables he invented—which we have been following ever since—are clearly an improvement. Who wants a system of telling time that is vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and human error, not to mention the geo-political realities of roads? Who wants to experience each month, until the very last day, unaware of when the new month will dawn? And who wants to be unable to see in advance on which day of the week our beloved holidays and pilgrimage festivals will occur? And yet, this is the vision that the Torah sets forth, and this is the first commandment given to us, just as we are leaving mitzrayim (Egypt) and becoming a people for the first time: “This month is for you…” (ha chodesh ha’zeh lachem, Exodus 12:2). Time was intended to depend upon our individual capacity to see; this was such a new idea (chiddush) that according to our Sages even our greatt teacher Moses had to be taught by G-d to look at the moon in its renewal: “like this, see and sanctify” (k’zeh re’eh v’kadeish, Mechilta 12:2).
We who have been involved with producing the Misaviv Hebrew Circle Calendar for 5777 are not, alas, capable of instantly throwing off the temporal regime of the Roman world. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, we are all deep in exile still; we barely know the difference between advertisements, information, and sacred truth. We are accustomed to tables that are “useful” but bankrupt of intentions other than to self-promote or sell. Yet, like you, we may contribute our vision to the re-vision of time and space that we need in order to emerge upright and ready for the redemption. Our calendar is a circle, and it offers a new vision of each month. We do not claim to transcend the epoch of fixed tables, but we do believe that it is our duty to bring the memory of our intended testimony into the very midst of our present time. Such testimony will matter again in future times, when the faithful art (emunah/omanut) of our nation is truly restored.
Calendars in general have this cosmic quality, though we often forget: they are celestial apparatuses that reach down into and affect our daily lives. May we be blessed together by this collaborative project and its second year of fruits. And may we fix time (kov’ea ittim) both by studying the alternative vision for the world that the holy Torah offers—as well as by bringing this vision into our world, and mamash fixing our time.
Jorian Polis Schutz, יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Orphiflamme Press
Director, Yeorvelah, LLC
5776 Introduction to year one of MISAVIV
On Circular Time - מעגל על הזמן
We walk in circles, literally.
Every step we take on the surface of G-d’s earth is part of a great circle that ultimately encompasses the globe.
It is easy to forget this fact because more often we seem to move in a world of lines. We go down boulevards and up elevators; we have destinations; we can measure our progress on a simple chart or stock graph. Lines give us a feeling of directedness, empowerment, accomplishment. On the contrary, the roundness of circles can seem idle, indecisive, self-defeating. Expressions like “walking in circles,” “round and round we go,” “here we are again,” imply that moving in circles is unproductive and monotonous.
The same dynamic applies to time. We experience time moving forward inexorably; we arrange history as a timeline; we use rectilinear calendars with the days stacked upon each other and progress marked in a well-ordered series of a rows. At the end of the week, a magical corner is turned without turning, and we appear again at the front.
There is no crime in this arrangement. It corresponds to the way we generally read, line after line. But ultimately such forms are arbitrary, obscuring our involvement with cycles. For time moves just as much in circles as in lines, and the Jewish tradition firmly upholds this—even in the way we read. The word sefer (ספר) now refers to any book, but it once only meant “scroll,” that ancient frame for our holy texts, which sends out a flat section like a linear emissary from the rolls and then soon after “gathers it in” to the forever-furl of its brother pole. It is a powerful metaphor for our own lives, which seem to emanate from and return to a place beyond time, and which at times feel as if they are superimposed on primordial rolls, with prophetic letters shining through.
There are circles to be found explicitly in Torah. The manna, which sustains the people in the desert for forty years, is round (Ex. 16:14). The etrog we hold together with the lulav on Sukkot unites circle and line in one gesture. The unique prayer power of Honi the Circle Drawer (Honi HaMa’agel) is set apart from his generation by a circle drawn in the dirt (Ta’anit 23a). But there are also more hidden references. What is the deeper meaning of the first two rivers going out of Eden, which are said to encompass (ha’sovev) the land? What are those ma’aglei tzedek, (circles of righteousness?) that King David sings about in Psalm 13? What is the significance of the stones that Ya’akov places in a circle around his head before he dreams of ascending and descending beings (28:11)? And why does the Torah tell us just as we exit Egypt that G-d does not lead us on the direct route but rather “curves” (vayaseiv) the people towards the desert path (Ex. 13:17-18)?
The Hebrew calendar is an incomparable marvel of circles within circles, of temporal rhythm and symmetry, of balance between solar and lunar. Each month (chodesh) follows the cycle of the moon, beginning and ending with its renewal. The seven-day shabbat cycle is extended into the weeks (sefirat ha’omer), into the years (shmitah), and into the weeks of years (yovel). We journey along with the patriarchs and matriarchs and with the children of Israel in a spiraling journey of ascent; we return to the same place/time, and we remember, but we are changed. The beginning of the solar year, Tishrei, is opposite the beginning of the lunar year, Nisan; Sukkot is opposite Pesach, one marking the beginning of the rainy season, and one marking its end. On Simchat Torah we move from the final to the first Torah portion, proving that the cycle does not pause or finish, and we learn that the final letter and first letter, seemingly enclosing the “white space” of the world, spell the word lev (לב), heart.
On this first year of a new sabbatical cycle, we welcome you to join us in this new evocation of the holy imagination, for the purpose of a new circular inhabitation of Jewish time-space. And we invite you to consider submitting sketches and concepts for, G-d willing, next year’s calendar.
The circle is necessary. It reminds us of our equidistance to the center, no matter where we stand, and the equivalence of every arc and angle in this world. The intention of MISAVIV, G-d willing, and its potential toledot (offspring), is not to overthrow the rectilinear regime on time, but to show that another possibility, and indeed many other possibilities could exist. And that these could be just as practical guides through the year as their counterparts, while representing a beautiful, holy window to cyclicality, spirality, and to the great circle of which we are all a part, and all will become a part, as our Sages teach:
In the future the Holy One will make a circle (machol)
for the saintly ones, and He will sit between them in the garden of Eden, and each one will show with his finger, as it is written (Isaiah 25:9), “And it shall be said in that day: ‘Behold, this is our Lord, for whom we waited, that He might save us; this is G-d, for whom we waited, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation’” (Ta’anit 31a).
עתיד הקדוש ברוך הוא לעשות מחול לצדיקים והוא
יושב ביניהם בגן עדן וכל אחד ואחד מראה באצבעו
שנאמר ׳ואמר ביום ההוא הנה אלהינו זה קוינו לו
ויושיענו זה ה 'קוינו לו נגילה ונשמחה בישועתו׳ (תענית
לא.)
With blessings for a year of joyful spiraling ascent,
Jorian Polis Schutz, יונה בן שלמה
Publisher, Orphiflamme Press
Director, Yeorvelah, LLC