The Rabbi's Library
by Rabbi Joshua
Hammerman |
"Saving
Daylight"
(The Jewish Week
03/09/2007)
On Sunday, March 11, Hebrew
school students nationwide will file into class, either more
cantankerous and exhausted than ever - or an hour late. That's
because this year, for the first time, daylight savings time will
begin on the second Sunday of March.
Since 1986, we've sprung forward
an hour on the first Sunday of April, but two years ago the
federal government decided that we needed one month more of DST.
Even normally impetuous Israelis will be waiting until March 29 to
spring forward. This year we're the ones jumping the gun, much to
the chagrin of airline pilots, computer programmers, parish
ministers and Hebrew school teachers, all of whom stand to suffer
from this sudden clock-shock, this mini Y2K.
Advocates claim that we'll save
up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day by being less reliant on
light bulbs during working hours. But really, when's the last time
we had a 9-to-5 workday? That's so 20th century! In an era of
24/7, with filled pre-dawn commuter trains and midnight
teleconferences to Hong Kong, are we really saving anything? The
shift was, I suspect, a bone thrown to environmentalists, buried
in a 2005 energy bill granting tax breaks to Big Oil. Little did
they know how this little, obscure add-on would wreak havoc on bar
mitzvah schedules nationwide.
Didn't Congress realize that
these cherished dates are often assigned sometime around the time
of baby's first step? Don't they understand how difficult it is to
determine that precise moment when Shabbat ends, that instant when
both the Havdalah candle and Bunsen burner can be lit, filling the
air with the mixed aroma of sweet spices and bite-size cocktail
franks? With receptions thrown off schedule, how many
Shabbat-observant relatives will now be forced to wait an ungodly
extra hour for the sun to set in Syosset before making that
mouthwatering pilgrimage to Leonards of Great Neck?
While I've never been a big fan
of Shabbat afternoon bar mitzvahs, we do them occasionally to
alleviate the morning glut. It just so happens that my
congregation has three planned for this March. It's not easy to
explain to exasperated parents how it is beyond my rabbinic power
to make the sky darken on demand. The biblical Joshua could make
the sun stand still, but this one can't even perform the cheap
trick of making three stars appear an hour early.
Joe Lieberman, where were you
when we needed you to explain to your colleagues the complexity of
Jewish time?
Did Congress realize that my
brief window to enjoy a Saturday night dinner and a movie has now
been narrowed considerably? Do they understand that, with 7
o'clock Friday night candle lighting times in mid-March, my
internal biorhythmic clock will now expect summer to begin before
Mothers Day?
I yearn for the good old days,
pre-1986 (except for the mid '70s energy crisis years), when DST
began at the end of April. The Passovers of my childhood usually
ended early enough for us to be able to go out for the traditional
P.P.P. (Post Pesach Pizza) after it got dark. Even post '86, there
were years when Passover would begin in March and therefore before
the clocks change. No longer. Instead, we are condemned to begin
the holiday at an hour when the youngest child is more likely to
be counting sheep than cups, plagues and questions.
The extension of daylight time
may even have cosmic implications, throwing off Elijah's timing;
he may begin to question his ability to handle that sip of wine
from every seder table. The prophet Malachi assures us that Elijah
will "turn the hearts of parents to their children and children to
their parents." Well, Elijah now has his hands full, what with
parents trying to placate hungry children while waiting for the
sun to set so the seder can begin.
Were you thinking about that,
Congress?
I am writing this on the day that
I turn 50. At no time in my life have I had a keener awareness of
my growing need for daylight. I recently marked that peculiar rite
of passage where I strategically placed a pair of reading glasses
in every room of the house. Last fall, for the first time ever, I
didn't grimace when a wedding videographer asked my permission to
set up extra lighting for the ceremony. Not only did I give the OK
to those intrusive, obnoxious beams, I positioned one over my
right shoulder so I could read the fine print on the Ketubah. So I
should be exulting that now there will be one more hour of light.
But my birthday triggered this
reflection: Perhaps this premature daylight savings has little to
do with preserving energy and everything to do with saving
daylight. I've always been a baby boom baby, born at the tail end
of the postwar population explosion. While I am beginning to sense
my mortality big-time, millions of older boomers must really be
getting worried about their own darkening shadows. And these are
precisely the people who now sit in Congress, the ones who voted
to move up DST two years ago. They voted to delay that moment each
day when they have to reach for their glasses.
Dylan Thomas' classic poem now
rings true for more people than ever before.
Do not go gentle into that good
night,
Old age should burn and rave at
close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of
the light.
Our instinctive rage against the
dying light is being played out on an economic and political
stage, with grave consequences to caterers and 13-year-olds. Maybe
it is time to stop raging for a moment. We can't cheat Father Time
by delaying night for one hour. If we would choose rather to
convert our waning physical light into regenerative spiritual
luminosity, we just might save much more than a few barrels of
oil.
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is
spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn.
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