Boulder Aish Kodesh

As winter approaches, we shift in our mindset toward most aspects of our lives. People tend to need more sleep. Shabbat comes in earlier and leaves earlier. In the yeshiva world, the winter session is the longest, the most grueling, and the most productive. It is a time when the teachers will choose more difficult material and push the students to develop new skills.

And winter is a time when most of the work is happening underground. The bulbs that take seed in the fall do not show their blooms until spring. So, too, winter is a time for real spiritual growth and deepening, but most of that change will not be apparent until much later. If we can accept that, and understand how to work with it, then we will not be frustrated. Rather, we can be proud knowing that, come spring, our garden will flourish.

Avraham, or Avram, as he is first known, has to understand that his life will not show immediate rewards. The story does not even join him until he is 75 years old. His son by Sarah is not born until he is 100 years old! When Hashem tells Avram to walk to Canaan, which would become Eretz Yisrael, the first thing Avram has to do once he gets there is to leave because of famine.

Avraham understands that people are reached, and relationships are built over time, and not in moments. The Torah penetrates a person’s life slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly. But it is important to know that, even though we don’t see anything happening, it is happening just the same. We remember the story of Rebbe Akiva who, as a poor ignorant shepherd at the age of 40, thought he could never come to learn Torah. And one day he was walking with his sheep when he found water dripping from the edge of a cliff. The water was dripping down onto a rock. When he looked closely at the rock, he saw that the drops of water had actually worn a hole through the rock – one drop at a time. At that moment, he realized that if the water could wear a hole through the rock, then the Torah could penetrate him as well.

So this is a time when we should not be focusing so much on accomplishments, but on processes. We should be looking to understand our experiences by different standards – how hard did we try? How have I grown over the last ten times I have learned, as opposed the last one or two times?

Each season of the calendar has its essence – and if we can know the essence of times, we can harness them rather than be frustrated by them, and allow ourselves to flow with a cycle that always takes us to new levels of growth.