Aside from losing an hour’s sleep, I suffered no real ill effects from putting my mechanical – though not my body – clock ahead the one hour required by law. Nevertheless, I was searching for some great moral lesson that I could derive from this mundane happening. I came to the conclusion that springing ahead is a good Jewish trait – even a Torah value, if you will.

 

Judaism always insists that we look ahead and always consider tomorrow in our plans and actions for today. Our father Jacob said that “tomorrow I will attain my compensation and reward.” It is our nature to plan for our future even though that future is always unpredictable and uncertain. We plan for our retirement and even for our eventual demise. We are always planning ahead, projecting our future onto our current activities.

 

Our clocks are always set ahead, for as much as we live in the present we really live in our future. This most human of all traits governs our thinking and policies, both individually and nationally. We are always springing ahead.

 

We are to be comforted for our lost hour of sleep by the realization that in almost seven months from now we will turn our clocks back and regain that lost hour. Though there have long been proposals to keep Daylight Savings Time all year, Standard Time has not yet been eliminated, though it certainly has been curtailed. It seems that we cannot always spring ahead but must sometimes remember to fall back.

 

Our future is always built upon our past. Without an understanding and appreciation of that past, the future becomes even more murky and unpredictable. For a long time, over the past few centuries, much of the Jewish world has only looked to spring ahead. It almost consciously removed its past and only dealt with the great future that it imagined for itself – a utopian future that in many respects has never yet come into being.

 

And the great and good future that did come to reality, such as the State of Israel and the ingathering of the scattered exiles of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, was really built upon the longing and devotion of past centuries and generations. Thus, without the fall back, the spring ahead would never have occurred. The lack of historical perspective in almost all sections of the Jewish world today is one of the most appalling and disturbing features of the dysfunction that plagues our current Jewish society. By neglecting to teach our children of our past we limit their vision and hopes for their future.

 

But, just as, metaphorically, we regain the one hour that we lost when springing ahead by the process of later falling back, so too can we regain our past and help illuminate our future.

 

There is a debate raging in the current Israeli Hebrew press as to the reasons why Israelis who move abroad assimilate into their new society without retaining any Jewish connection, at a far greater rate than Jews born in those countries. Without my weighing in seriously on this debate, I feel that it is proper to note that the average Israeli school teaches little about our past and does not engender any feeling of Jewish self identity into its students.

 

It is no wonder that once the Israeli is no longer living in Israel, he or she has absolutely no moorings to the past and is extremely vulnerable to immediate assimilation and the loss of any Jewish identity. Generally speaking, we live in a “now” generation, desiring instant gratification with little thought about tomorrow or about yesterday. But it is clear that “now” is never satisfied, no matter how much material wealth and abundance is heaped upon it.

 

The nature of human beings is to somehow find satisfaction in dreaming about tomorrow and in reminiscing about yesterday. Only by springing ahead and falling back does our present situation in life take on some meaning and satisfaction. So, the changing of the clock does carry with it important lessons about us and our world. Nothing that happens in God's world is without meaning and instruction. In any event, I am looking forward to regaining that lost hour’s sleep later this year.

 

Shabbat shalom

 

Rabbi Berel Wein