Sarit Kattan Gribetz | Princeton University Press | 2020

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern

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In her National Jewish Book Award-winning Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism, Sarit Kattan Gribetz seeks to uncover the rabbinic conception of time. Starting with a charming anecdote about having to get passports in her family renewed at both the Swiss and Israeli consulates (guess which one was more disorganized?), Gribetz, a professor at Fordham University, sets out to articulate how Jews have thought of time in unique ways. As she writes, "Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have contemplated whether time actually is (is time real? Is it an illusion?), what time is (is it a precondition of being? A part of an experience? A sense?), and how time functions (does it flow? Is it relative?)." Many of these questions were also considered by the ancient rabbis. Her volume argues that "the conceptualization and organization of time were mechanisms the late antique rabbis employed to construct various forms of difference and, occasionally, the mechanism through which they also unsettled such difference." Jews, of course, have considered the implications of time since the Bible. In later millennia, sectarian Jews at Qumran, far from the mainstream Temple in Jerusalem, saw the rhythms of the sacrificial and festival orders as templates for their own purity and prayer-focused communal life. Once the Second Temple was destroyed, rabbinic reconfigurations of time enabled the rabbis to forge a future for Jewish living—not only in an era without a Temple but in a crowded marketplace of minorities within an empire that had destroyed its sanctuary. Rabbinic sources, as Lynn Kaye, who Gribetz cites, has noted, challenged the idea that time is exclusively linear and progressive (anyone who has been to a Passover Seder has experienced Judaism's unique mix of inhabiting a moment somehow past, present, and future all at once). The calendar itself, also Gribetz notes, can "function as instruments of social, economic, religious, and political organization and control," particularly as it reinterprets occasions of the dominant culture (claiming Jewish origins for Roman festivals, for example). Such an interpretive measure, Gribetz writes, "undermine[s] the greatness of the Roman past" and "stimulate[s] Jews to act according to rabbinic halakhah, maintain their distance and difference from the empire, and stop short of living comfortably as Romans in roman society and adopting its temporal rhythms." Judaism's main unique contribution to the concept of time, the Shabbat, of course, receives due attention. Citing a Mekhilta that emphasizes that Jews' observance of the Sabbath signals their chosenness, Gribetz contrasts this with the Christian perspective. "Followers of Christ," she writes, "some of whom regarded Jewish Sabbath observance as a sign of Israel’s sinfulness and rejected it, read the biblical references to Sabbath rest as allusions to divine eschatological rest, and held that the day of the Sabbath was superseded by the Lord’s Day." The Mekhilta then can be read as an attempt by the rabbis to argue for Judaism's unique value proposition, a case for Judaism's belief in what day God mandates rest on. Much of the volume focuses on how the Rabbis saw time as a marker of gender difference. Men's unique time-bound commandments are distinct from women's time-related ones, such as the laws of family purity. Gribetz also concentrates on the Talmudic interest in how God spends his time. As she writes: "The exercise of inquiring into God’s time, outlining God’s schedule, and determining God’s daily activities through rabbinic Torah study thus becomes, itself, a way of getting closer to God." Though rabbinic literature is thought by some to be "short on theological contemplation, when rabbinic texts did address the topic of God, they imagined their God in time. In fact, they portrayed God as having a daily and nightly routine and schedule defined by time as the rabbis knew it." Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism is a thought-provoking, well-argued work from an emerging scholar. It will be of interest to all those who live a rhythm of Jewish life and learning centered on the unique way traditional Jewish thought has conceptualized how time works and how it can be spent meaningfully. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.