Friday, September 12, 2008

"What has happened to this day?"


"The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are idle, and the wage is abundant, and the master of the house urges"—Pirkei Avot 2:15


Rabbi Steinsaltz writes:

“That ‘the day is short’ is a discovery which I make daily.

I wake up in the morning, and within a very short time I discover that it is midnight or 2:00 A.M.

And I wonder: What has happened to this day?

Where did it evaporate to?

Every Rosh Hashanah I regret that there is no double leap year, with a second month of Elul.

Had there been a second Elul, I might have been able to finish something before Rosh Hashanah.


But there is no second Elul, and again I feel that I am short of so much time.

The day is short, amazingly short, and it ends in tremendous speed; and thus go by weeks and months and years.”

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From "The Time Is Short and the Work Is Great" p.5, in On Being Free by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz