Author: rabbi

This is a year of return. Four hundred years ago, in 1619, the first African stepped onto the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. In many ways, that event was more significant than landing on the moon. In fact, one could argue that if those Africans had not proceeded to make the colonies rich, our history would be very different—if it existed at all. People have always wanted to measure time. Ancient man looked up at the night sky and began counting the number of days to complete the phases of the moon; that gave us months and eventually years. We poured sand through an hour-glass to achieve more precision. The strange thing about time is that even our most advanced clocks are instruments that can only measure the passage of time from some point in the present to some other point in the past. Nothing measures time in the future. And as we look back, we see patterns and cycles that seem to repeat; markers and turning points that tell us how low we sunk and how far we have come. This year is such a time of reflection.