Today is December 31. Tonight, millions will gather in Times Square and city centers across the world to watch the clock strike midnight. Champagne bottles will pop, confetti will fall, and voices will rise in unison: “Happy New Year!” At the stroke of twelve, one year will vanish into history, and another will burst into existence. Clean break. Fresh start. Out with the old, in with the new.
But what if this entire way of thinking about time is wrong?
The Bible presents a radically different vision. When Moses stood before Israel and outlined the Hebrew calendar, he designated the three annual pilgrimage festivals. The third of these pilgrimages is Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Bible describes it in striking terms:
The Bible says that Sukkot is celebrated “at the end of the year.” But here is what’s strange about that phrase. Rosh Hashanah, which Jews celebrate as the new year, falls on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. But Sukkot begins on the fifteenth of that same month. The new year starts on day one. The old year ends on day fifteen. For two full weeks, both years exist simultaneously.
How can a new year begin before the old year has ended?
In fact, Rabbi Jay Kelman points out that this same pattern occurs daily. In Western thought, Tuesday becomes Wednesday at the precise instant the clock strikes midnight. 11:59 PM is Tuesday. 12:00 AM is Wednesday. The line between days is as thin as a razor’s edge. In Jewish law, the new day begins at nightfall. But Jewish law recognizes a twilight period called bein hashmashot—literally “between the suns.” During twilight, the sun has set but darkness has not yet fallen. Is it day or night? In Jewish law, the answer is both. This is why the Sabbath begins before sundown on Friday and extends past nightfall on Saturday, stretching to twenty-five hours. The old day and the new day coexist during this in-between time.
Rabbi Kelman explains the significance of this: “Time, in Jewish thought, is not a singular moment, but that which links the past to the future.”
This understanding of time strikes at something fundamental about how we live. Modern culture treats time as a series of disconnected moments. We speak of “moving on,” “turning the page,” “starting fresh.” We want clean breaks and new beginnings. We want to escape the past and leap into the future.
But the Bible rejects this fragmentation. Time, in biblical thought, is not a collection of isolated instants but a chain linking past to future. A new day is born before the old day dies. We thereby connect days into weeks, weeks into years, and years into generations—an unbroken thread stretching back to Sinai and forward to redemption.
The Sages understood this when they taught that the first commandment given to the Jewish people as a nation was to sanctify time. Before the Exodus, before the liberation, Moses received this instruction: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months” (Exodus 12:2). Not a command about ethics or worship or law—a command about time itself. The Jewish people were to take time, that most physical and fleeting of commodities, and transform it into something eternal. To separate it from its physical limitations and fill it with meaning.
For creatures of flesh and blood, time is the ultimate enemy. It runs out. It slips away. Once lived, it’s gone forever. But for those who serve the eternal God, time becomes a bridge. The past doesn’t vanish—it teaches. Yesterday’s failures become tomorrow’s wisdom. Last year’s victories become next year’s foundation. In Rabbi Kelman’s words, “the past offers insight into the present and direction for the future.”
This is why the first three weeks of Tishrei function as they do. During Rosh Hashanah, the focus tilts toward the year ahead. The shofar blast summons us to attention: prepare yourself, examine your path, choose life. Even the foods carry this forward-looking symbolism—apples dipped in honey for a sweet year, pomegranate seeds for abundant blessings. Ten days later comes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the focus shifts to the year that was. We examine past deeds, seek forgiveness from those we’ve wronged, and only then approach God for pardon.
And then Sukkot arrives. Five days after Yom Kippur, we leave our permanent homes and dwell in temporary shelters. We recall the wilderness wandering—forty years when Israel lived in fragile booths under God’s protection. But we also look forward, praying for the sukkah of peace that will one day shelter all nations. Past and future merge. The wilderness and the messianic age occupy the same space. This fusion of what was and what will be creates eternity.
The ineffable Name of God—the four-letter Name too sacred to pronounce—contains this secret. The letters spell out past, present, and future tenses of the verb “to be.” He was, He is, He will be. Always. The God who brought us out of Egypt is the God who sustains us today and will redeem us tomorrow. He doesn’t exist in disconnected moments. He is the thread connecting them all.
And so the Bible calls Sukkot the time of our joy. Not happiness—joy. Happiness comes from circumstances. Joy comes from connection to something infinite. When past links to future, when yesterday’s tears water tomorrow’s harvest, when last year’s struggles become next year’s strength—that’s when finite beings taste eternity. That’s when we understand that nothing is ever truly lost, that every moment matters, that the story continues.
Tonight, the world will celebrate time’s end and time’s beginning as separate events, a clean break at the stroke of midnight. But the Bible invites you to see time differently. The year that ends and the year that begins stand together, hand in hand, part of a story that stretches from Eden to the world to come. Last year’s struggles can become next year’s strength. Yesterday’s tears can water tomorrow’s harvest. The old year need not finish teaching before the new year begins revealing its gifts. In the space between, in that sacred twilight, you’re part of something timeless.
