Yom Kippur Reflects on God's Gift of Time

On Yom Kippur, we all are asked to perform a very delicate, often painful procedure on ourselves: It’s called ‘heshbon nefesh.’

What is the commodity that each one of us possesses every moment of our lives, yet we never have enough of it? It is with us as long as we live, yet it cannot be seen or felt or heard. We do everything we can to save it, yet we never stop spending it, and we always run out of it. We make it and cherish it, yet we also waste it, and sometimes even willingly kill it. At times it crawls, and at other times, it flies.

The answer, of course, is time.

Judaism is a religion of time. The first thing which God calls holy is neither a person or a place, but Shabbat, an island, or better, an oasis, in time. The first commandment which God gave to the Jewish people as a nation was the command to establish a calendar and take control of our time.