Book Review: Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar

David J. Zucker, PhD, before retiring was the Rabbi/Chaplain and Director of Chaplaincy Care at Shalom Park in Aurora, Colorado. He publishes in a variety of journals. See his website, www.davidjzucker.org. His latest book is American Rabbis: Facts and Fiction, Second Edition, (Wipf and Stock, 2019). Other publications include The Torah: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (Paulist: 2005); The Bible’s Prophets: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (Wipf and Stock: 2013); The Bible’s Writings: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (Wipf and Stock: 2013); and [with Moshe Reiss, z”l] The Matriarchs of Genesis: Seven Women, Five Views (Wipf and Stock: 2015).

BOOK REVIEW

Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar by Dalia Marx. Tr. Peretz A. Rodman (New York: Reform Judaism Publishing, 2023) xxii + 377 pp. Cover and interior art by Elad Lifshitz. Reviewed by David J. Zucker.

Twelve months in the Jewish year. Twelve different faces, twelve different phases. In order to understand, see and experience a full year, and its constituent parts, Dalia Marx addresses each month with an array of approaches. Each chapter begins with a kavanah, a meditation, followed by a kind of overview of that particular month. This is followed by a poem or poems of the month. In this introductory segment she features a number of sections which she describes as iyunim “that examine a series of topics, and a ‘Prayer of the Month.’” The author explains that the “kavanah is an intention-setting prayer or meditation that spells out [her] . . . wishes…during each particular month. The short introduction to each chapter, labeled ‘At the Gates of . . .’ previews the iyunim sections. In each chapter [she highlights . . .] a poem, song, or piyut (liturgical poem) written for or mentioning the month’s events. The iyunim sections address various subjects that arise from the nature or events of the month. The Prayer of the Month might be a prayer recited during a particular month or another prayer that illuminates an aspect of the month. There are numerous sidebars along the text, where [she has]…placed midrashim (exegesis), supplementary piyutim, thoughts, and additional materials” (p. xviii).

The book is an interesting mixture of broad themes, but also includes some very personal remembrances of the author herself, born and reared in Israel. Marx highlights the fact that pluralism and diversity are “important elements in the message of the book.” She also notes that by “design the narrative voice . . . is sometimes personal and sometimes academic . . . . Sometimes the perspective is historical, and sometimes it is cultural and religious.” She also

explains that it is important for her “to challenge the supposed contradiction between what is considered ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ . . . [by] presenting the entire range of the Jewish discourse in Israel and beyond” (p. xviii). There definitely is a feminist aspect to this book, for example she writes about the more recent “customs that highlight a different female biblical figure on each day of S’firat HaOmer” [counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot]. She then offers her list of forty-nine individual names from Eve, Adah and Zillah to Hannah, Abigail, and Michal, to Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth (pp. 202-03). At times the tone of the book sounds a bit polemical. Rabbi Dr Marx earned her PhD at the Hebrew University and smichah [ordination] from HUC-JIR. She is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Liturgy at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campus in Jerusalem. She has published several books and is the chief editor of T’filat HaAdam, the Israeli Reform Prayerbook (MaRaM, 2020).

In her section on Nisan, which naturally includes Passover, Marx mentions that the “tradition of adding a food to the seder table in order to note the role of women preceded the orange and feminist revolution by centuries.” She writes of Rabbi Eliezer of Worms (13th cent. CE Germany) who explained that “those who place another cooked food [do so] in memory of Miriam.” She

likewise refers to Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz (17th cent. CE Eastern Europe and Israel) who explained that “the four cups of wine stand for the four Matriarchs” (p. 187).

The book was originally written in Hebrew, and published as Baz-zeman

masa’ot be-luah ha-shanah haYehudi-Yisre’eli, the creative effort of an Israeli woman writing for Israelis. This work “attempts to offer insight not only into Israeli culture and religious expression but also more broadly into Jewish culture and Jewish religious expression” (p. xviii). Yet it also seeks to appeal to the experiences of people living in English-speaking countries.

The book is enhanced by numerous engaging and whimsical drawings by

Elad Lifshitz. It also includes a Glossary, a Diagram of the Hebrew Calendar Year, as well as sections listing Sources, Permissions, and [end-]Notes.