Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

Time, in its essence, is an unceasing flow on which human beings have imposed meaning with arbitrary divisions and markers — years, months, weeks, days, minutes, and seconds. These units of time serve as measures for human activity in education, commerce, leisure, agriculture, and religion.

Jewish time grew out of God’s imposition of order on the primeval chaos. First, God separated the light from darkness, creating day and night. Then, as a reflection of God’s cycle of creation and rest, the work week was differentiated from Shabbat. Later, at the time of the Exodus, God mandated th...