The Babylonian Talmud asks a seemingly strange question: what does God do all day long? It answers with a detailed daily schedule, in which God spends three hours studying Torah, three hours feeding the world’s creatures, three hours sitting in judgment, and three hours hanging out with the Leviathan.

Rabbinic texts discuss all sorts of topics related to human uses of time, too: the proper times for daily prayers, weekly rituals, and annual festivals; instructions for constructing communal calendars; warnings about lucky and dangerous times; rules about paying workers in a timely fashion and about how accurate witnesses need to be when they testify about the time of a crime.  

Together, these texts provide a fascinating lens into how an ancient community conceptualized its relationship to time and used time to build bonds between individuals and with God. In this talk, we will explore what it means to study the ancient history of time and timekeeping, and what we learn about the past, about Judaism, and about ourselves and our communities when we pay attention to how we conceive, organize, and use our time.  

This talk is the opening of a *new* three-part online course for YJAA members taught by Prof. Gribetz. The classes, to be held on a Tuesday night in January, February and March, will explore different themes related to time and Judaism, and will allows us to do a deep-dive into rabbinic texts in an accessible and engaging way. There will be a nominal $18 fee to register for the 3-part course.

If you’d like to start studying in preparation for this talk and the classes, please review our Proposed Chavruta Program information and sign-up form.