Weekly Torah Portion

Following the above section dealing with the death of Sarah the Torah state immediately states: “And Abraham grew old, coming into days, and God blessed Abraham with everything” (Genesis 24:1). The sages teach that the word for “old,” zaken, implies wisdom and the enigmatic term, “coming into days” can be seen as symbolizing a new state of consciousness achieved by Abraham, appearing as it does directly following the experience of burying Sarah and acquiring the first portion of the land of Israel. This new level of wisdom is bound up with understanding how to be a master of time and not its slave, how to “come into days.”

The root word for “world” in Hebrew, olam, means “to hide.” The world paradoxically both reveals and hides God within nature. In the deepest sense the cycles of time and nature are patterned on the needs and inner world of man, which in turn mirrors the Divine Creator. By observing the cycles of time and nature as revealed in the Torah, and through direct experience, we connect to a more spiritual Divine flow and perception of reality and time.

By understanding the Divine cycle of seven, as manifest first in the six days of creation and the culminating Shabbat, and subsequently sealed in all cycles of Jewish time and ritual, we enter into a Divine context of time. Through aligning ourselves with the Jewish calendar, based on the monthly renewal and cycle of the moon and by flowing with time in the context of the holidays as they correspond to nature and the agricultural cycles of the land of Israel, we open ourselves to the underlying framework and allegory of cycles in our lives. By studying the changes of nature and the seasons, we become privy to fundamental lessons of spiritual and emotional growth.

When we are slaves to time and not in tune with the secrets of cycles, time appears to be linear, a cold and impersonal force constantly moving beyond our control. When we start to understand the mysteries of time and cycles we begin to experience time as more circular, continually renewing and repeating itself. When we become masters of time we come to realize that time is a four dimensional spiral, continuing to return to the same place, but at each revolution on a higher plane. In this way the past, present and future flow through the same vertical coordinate on the spiral, always meeting in the eternal present moment.

Jewish tradition teaches that for God, past, present and future are all occurring simultaneously. The four letters of God’s name significantly are the same letters which comprise the Hebrew words meaning past, present and future. God, who creates and continually renews the world, including time, is the quintessential example of being simultaneously “in the world” and “out of the world.” Thus when man comes close to God he too is able to partake of a more Divine experience of time.

This secret of time is alluded to in our verse: “And Abraham was old, coming into days, and God blessed Abraham with everything.” (Genesis 24:1). “Coming into days” represents Abraham mastering time, by which he could experience this world and the World-to-Come simultaneously. This level was only reached by Abraham after he experienced burying Sarah and connecting to her by transcending space and time. This led Abraham to have one foot in this world and one foot in the World-to-Come.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in his classic work Lekutei Moharan (Torah 61; second section) explains that we have a hard time conceiving of God being above time because of our relatively narrow awareness and intellect. Yet when man broadens his consciousness the more time is nullified for that person. In a dream state for example the conscious mind is no longer in control and what remains is the pure power of imagination. Therefore in just fifteen minutes of dreaming it can appear that years have gone by. Yet to the one of even higher intellect long periods of time can become like only fifteen minutes, as for him time is even more nullified. This process continues infinitly; as the intellect becomes more and more clarified so too does the power of imagination, with the result being the ever greater nullification of time. For this reason a master of time can accomplish in a relatively short amount of time what others would take far longer to achieve, if at all.

Rebbe Nachman in fact translates the term “World-to-Come” as “the world that is always coming.” By expanding consciousness and connecting to a more Divine experience of time and cycles we increasingly free ourselves from the tyranny of time and learn to employ its inherent power.

This explains why the first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a nation in preparation for leaving Egypt, was how to mark time and formulate a Jewish calendar (Exodus 12:1-2). The word “Egypt” means “constriction,” “a narrow place.” Being a master of time is the main ingredient needed for going from a state of constriction to expansion, slavery to freedom, from finite borders to a state of eternity. Abraham, and by extension all his descendents, have the possibility of mastering time and extracting from it infinite possibilities.