This Jewish leap year, let’s make Adar I a time of Jewish growth centred on learning, spirituality, tzedakah and joy
Rabbi Avi Finegold
Founder, The Jewish Learning Lab, Montreal
Rabbi Philip Scheim
Beth David B’nai Israel Beth Am Congregation, Toronto
Rabbi Scheim: The month of February has 29 days once every four years, when, as is the case in 2016, we have a leap year in the Gregorian calendar. But gaining a single day pales in comparison to a leap year in the Jewish calendar, like this year, where we gain an entire month. One week from now, we will mark the beginning of Adar I. Who said there is no benefit to being Jewish?
Other than yahrzeit observances and holidays following later than usual on the Gregorian calendar (including the unusual juxtaposition of the last night of Chanukah and New Year’s Eve 2017), the additional month in the Jewish calendar has limited impact on our everyday lives, since our schedules and routines are so much more tied to February than to Adar.
How do we make more of this gift of a month added to our current Jewish year? With time so precious, and often seemingly so scarce, should we not be celebrating the fact that 5776 gives us 29 extra days to add Jewish meaning to our lives?
What will we do with the extra time? Sure, we can binge-watch five seasons of The Good Wife, but can’t we find some meaningful ways to strengthen our
Jewish lives?
Rabbi Finegold: Well, for starters we could publicize the fact that we get two Purims. We could easily get a boost in communal participation if we chose to celebrate that holiday twice.
In all seriousness though, the Talmud mentions that when farmers were not in their busy season, the yeshivot would hold study months, referred to as yarchei kallah, literally the easy months.
But while many movements have designated times to study, and many have even chosen to do it at times when people are typically on vacation (the Limmud movement, which started in the United Kingdom, meets during the last week of the secular year), our extra month falls right when many people are so busy at work or with the inevitable weather delays that our northern environment provides.
What if we used Adar II as an opportunity to integrate some facet of Jewish life into our day-to-day activity. Imagine if we promoted Adar II as a make-it-to-minyan month, or a sign-up-for-a-Jewish-class month?
In fact I would like to lead by example: anyone who reads this and signs up for my Jewish Learning Lab adult education classes in Montreal during Adar II can bring a friend for free!
Rabbi Scheim: One of my most memorable teachers in my university years was the late Prof. Yonah Frankel of Hebrew University. A renowned scholar of midrash and aggadah, Prof. Frankel was also a confirmed yekke, making every second count. Heaven help the student who would show up one minute late to his class. Prof. Frankel refused to relinquish even a millisecond of usable time.
Every minute offers mitzvah opportunities. This year’s benefit of an additional month in the Jewish calendar, as you suggest, can spur us to add to our learning, and spirituality. It can also lead us to explore opportunities to volunteer, to engage in tzedakah work, to plan that put-off trip to Israel.
I am with you in suggesting the marketing of the added month of Adar to the benefit of our Jewish growth. Maybe that’s what the sages intended when they taught, “when Adar comes, we increase our joy.”
Rabbi Finegold: You know what happens when a yekke marries a Chassid? You have a wedding that starts exactly two hours late.
Let us not forget to add the joy in our lives this month as well. Indeed, if we ignore the dialectic between the driven, focused part of ourselves and the joyful “chassidic” parts of ourselves, we can miss out on much that Judaism has to offer.
Our proposed month of increased Jewish growth should certainly be one where the yekke marries the Chassid. I know for me what that ends up looking like is ensuring that I am quite meticulous about bringing joy into my life. I am sure that we all have our particular ways of expressing the merger of the exacting and the messy, yet fun parts of our nature. I hope we use the extra Adar to express them fully.