Intro
Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
Ep. 5-3: It’s About Time (Family 3/10)
One of the most labor intensive moments on the Jewish calendar is Passover. That’s true if you’re a regular person making one seder. If you’re also a rabbi on a college campus and trying to cater and facilitate two dozen seders in student apartments and frat houses all at the same time, it’s even more labor intensive. And you know who was that rabbi in his very first job out of rabbinic school? This guy.
Actually, it was even crazier than that. Because on the day before Passover, the fridge died, we didn’t have enough food, and that whole afternoon I was racing around town trying to find every kosher rotisserie chicken I could get my hands on.
When I finally came home half an hour before the first seder, my two-year old son Jonah said to me, with a totally straight face, “Abba, you came to visit us!”
Dude. From the mouth of babes and all that.
I had been so busy taking care of other people that I forgot to focus on the people who were closest to me. Chicken-procurement grade: A+. But family time-management grade? F. Lesson learned.
This is the third episode in our miniseries on family. Last week we talked about the idea of committed, or covenantal relationships. Today I want to focus on maybe the most basic way we express those relationships, which is through the most precious commodity any of us has: Time.
As my rotisserie chicken/Abba-you-came-to-visit-us story illustrates, in many cases our relationships really do come down to time management. Because how we choose to spend our time is a fundamental way that we live out our kavvanot, our intentions. If we have an intention to prioritize certain relationships, and we want to stay true to that intention, then how we spend our time is our opportunity to walk our talk.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily always mean spending time with our families. If we have dependents, then working so that we can provide for them is a very important way of staying true to our kavvanah. And, for most of us, it’s not as though cherishing our committed, family relationships is our only kavvanah. We may have an intention to do good work in the world, to be a good citizen, to stay physically and emotionally healthy for ourselves and others.
All of that is a balancing act—because we can’t do all the things all at the same time! So managing our competing kavvanot, i.e. mindfully managing our time, is essential.
Judaism, of course, is a tradition that’s all about time. We measure time in terms of seven- and even fifty-year cycles, with the Sabbatical and Jubilee years. We measure it in terms of holidays and months. We measure it in weeks and days, and we measure it in hours and even minutes and seconds in some of our practices (like the way that matzah has to be fully baked within 18 minutes of the water touching the flour).
Of all of our time-oriented practices, though, Shabbat is far and away the most significant. (Plug here: you might want to go back to last season’s seven-part miniseries on Shabbat practices. Link is in the show notes.) And, as I often talk about, Shabbat isn’t just a 25-hour holiday that comes once every seven days. Shabbat is also a state of mind, and it’s something we can access every seven hours, every seven minutes, even every seven seconds.
For our purposes today, I want to invite you to think about Shabbat as a chance to check in with your family time management. And for our practice, I’m going to suggest that you do a bit of journaling–and, if it’s appropriate, a bit of conversation with others in your family if that makes sense.
So here we go.
First off, find a time when you can spend 10 or 15 minutes a week reviewing your schedule. Maybe it’s Sunday nights. Maybe it’s Friday afternoons. Whatever works best for you.
Take a look at how you spend your time. How much time are you spending on work? On your bodily needs, like food, exercise, or your health care? How much time do you spend on your phone? What about staying in touch with people who matter to you—and, like, actually staying in touch, not just casually seeing their updates on social platforms? Are you learning? Are you growing
Take a look at the whole picture. And maybe ask yourself, Is this reflecting my intentions? In particular, am I giving as much energy, attention, and presence to the people and relationships most important to me?
If your answer is yes, try to notice what makes that yes possible. And see if you’re able to stick with it in the coming weeks.
If your answer is no, try to notice what’s getting in the way. It may be something you don’t feel like you can do anything about—a work schedule you don’t have control over, for instance. If that’s the case, how are you feeling about that? Do you feel resistance? Are you maybe able to bring some softness to that, and to consider it more gently?
Maybe there’s something you can do, and maybe there isn’t. If there’s a change or adjustment you’d like to make, what’s a step you can take? If there isn’t, maybe you can hold the situation with hesed, kindness and compassion for yourself and the ones you love?
You might already have your own version of this practice. What I hope is that by bringing this version of weekly, Shabbat consciousness to your time management, you’ll be able to live a little more clearly in alignment with your intentions.
I hope you’ll try doing this practice for a few weeks, and let me know how it goes.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
ENDING
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern. Thanks for joining us.