Tzelem in Eternity: Man’s Imitation of the Timeless Creator by Weaving All Three Tenses

 

This Shabbos I completed my annual siyum on Mishnayot — actually seventeen months and three weeks. I’d like to share with you what this completion stirred in me.

In the second part of the Moreh Nevukhim(chapters 13-30), the Rambam explains that time itself is an accident tied to physical bodies and their movement. Because God is not physical, He is not subject to time. Past, present, and future are all one to Him — a single, perfect “now.”

We, the Jewish people, are commanded to draw close to God by studying His ways and imitating His middot. Perhaps that is why the Torah uses the phrase tzelem Elokim precisely at the creation of man. Just as the ancient pagans believed their idols channeled the power of their gods, the Torah tells us that we are the living image through which God’s presence enters the world — not through stone, but through human beings who choose to walk in His ways. By imitating the Creator, each of us, and the Jewish people as a whole, becomes a living shadow and channel of the Divine in daily life.

And this imitation reaches even into the dimension of time.

Look at the structure of the Shemoneh Esrei: we begin with the Avot — the past, the God of our fathers and the covenant they forged. We then turn to our present needs — wisdom, repentance, healing, sustenance, justice. We conclude with the future — thanksgiving, acceptance of our prayer, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the coming of the redeemer, and Sim Shalom, universal peace. In one standing prayer we weave all three tenses together and stand before the King who experiences them as one.

The same beautiful pattern appears when we learn Mishnayot. We open with Berachot and the practical mitzvot of today — the present. We study the laws of the Temple, purity, and korbanot — the living past. And we are constantly pointed toward the future: the final Mishnah in Uktzin speaks of the World to Come, the reward of the righteous, and peace among the Jewish nation.

It is no coincidence that the Mishnah began to take shape toward the end of the Second Temple period, when the future looked increasingly bleak. Its compilation continued in Yavneh and was completed one hundred and thirty years later—precisely as the nation stood on the brink of exile. In Masechet Yadayim (chapter 4), we still see the Sages of Yavneh deliberating over the very laws of purity and sacrifices that were slipping into the past—yet carefully recording them so the Jewish people could carry their entire heritage into an uncertain future. Thus, the Mishnah was born as a portable Torah, a vessel that would allow us to survive as a nation no matter where history might scatter us.

By learning it, we do more than remember. We imitate the One who is beyond time. We pull past, present, and future into a single holy act — and in that moment we become a little more like the God whose Name itself means “Was, Is, and Will Be.”

May the merit of this siyum — and of all the siyumim we make together — help us continue to walk in His ways, until the day when past, present, and future truly merge in the final redemption, speedily in our days.