In ancient Israel, Jewish life was tethered to the agricultural seasons. Sukkot, the Festival of Tabernacles, marked the end of the agricultural year and was also known as the harvest festival. Passover, as well as commemorating the end of slavery in Egypt, doubled as a celebration of the springtime harvest, and Shavuot paid tribute both to the giving of the Torah and to the beginning of the wheat harvest.
Between Sukkot and Passover, Jews locked up their silos and set down their plows, embracing winter as an opportunity for contemplation and reflection. While Yom Kippur provided an exalted moment for introspection and the realignment of priorities, the bleak, cold winter months presented a physical and spiritual challenge: to create light in the darkness.
Families huddled together around a fire, discussing the harvest and how they might improve their yield in the coming year. At the same time, they considered how they might draw out their inner light in order to correct past social and spiritual gaffes.
Unfortunately, this respite is no longer the norm, as modern life has rendered the concept of seasons virtually meaningless.
With most of the population now employed outside the world of agriculture, and with once-seasonal fruits readily available all year, the average Jew struggles to connect to the significance of the harvest seasons or find meaning in the winter months between them. Tethered to mobile devices and tasked with providing for their families in a harsh economic climate, so many people make no distinction between one day and the next, living life as an endless stream of workdays.
A research paper published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (Bloom, Geurts and Kompier, 2012) explains that feelings of happiness and personal well-being rapidly increase when one takes a break from the stresses of daily life. A quick vacation simply won't do. According to the research, the human body needs at least eight days to disconnect, destress and feel refreshed. But too few people have the time and money to make a long vacation a reality, and even fewer are actually interested in or capable of disconnecting, no matter how much this would benefit their physical, mental and spiritual health.
While we may pride ourselves on our productivity and connectedness, in reality, we are losing the war on time. Lacking proper rest and reflection, we are merely automatons doing more work rather than better work; slaves to a system that promotes mastering a set of task-specific skills, rather than original, independent and empowering thought.
To be clear, this is not a new phenomenon. For decades, our society has been developing an addiction to constant engagement, an unhealthy preoccupation with work, news, and multimedia stimuli that has dampened our desire to seek out meaningful connections with other individuals and curtailed our appetite for introspection and self-discovery.
But winter is coming, and it is time to reclaim it for our own good.
Just as winter nourishes the land, priming it for a bountiful spring awakening, it is our challenge and responsibility to embrace the Jewish "off season," a period almost entirely devoid of holidays, to cultivate our spiritual sides. Instead of slogging through the dreariness and allowing one day to flow into the next for months at a time, we must integrate introspection into our daily routines and create light in the darkness. After thousands of years, it is clear that the ideal way to achieve this goal is by engaging with our core Jewish texts.
Whether one chooses to delve into a chapter of the Bible every day or a page of Talmud throughout the course of the week, connecting with Jewish knowledge allows us to disengage from the world while simultaneously discovering our true selves as we explore our history, heritage and traditions. No matter the amount – even a single verse – Torah study helps us reclaim the original spirit of the winter months, swapping our rigid schedules with the freedom of expanding our minds and plumbing the depths of our souls via textual analysis. The simple act of setting aside time to learn Torah refocuses our lives and our priorities, re-establishing the very essence of the seasons in our hearts, minds and actions.
While we no longer have to spend the winter months huddled around a flame for the sake of physical warmth and light, it would serve us well as individuals and Jews to utilize the weather-enforced respite to find our own unique ways to connect with the written word and rekindle our passion for life. Winter does not have to be seen as bleak and dreary. Celebrating it as a time for contemplation, reflection and spiritual discovery, an incubator for true enlightenment, turns it into time well spent.
Winter is coming, and the time of personal illumination awaits.
