Have you noticed that everything is moving faster these days…? A year feels like a month, a month like a week, and a week is a day. It was wonderful seeing everybody on the High Holidays. It was my 11th year celebrating with Congregation Tifereth Israel, but it felt as though we were there just a month ago.

On Yom Kippur this year, I was bestowing a blessing I called “May you Fast Forward!” — to be spiritually propelled forward through the short interval of self-denial. The common greetings are “May you have an easy fast,” or “May you have a meaningful fast.” I’m not a big fan of the former because the point is not to have an easy fast, but one that is meaningful. But besides being propelled forward spiritually, it also feels appropriate to be moving faster in time.

Isaiah 60 opens with “Arise, shine, for your light has dawned; the presence of the Lord has shone upon you!”  It closes with “The smallest shall become a clan; the least, a mighty nation. I the Lord will speed it in due time.”

The Internet definitely helps in the process of the speed of light; the words flying through semiconductors. A recent story from Israel demonstrates this idea. Forty-nine years ago, during the Yom Kippur War, a shofar and a tallit were found on the battlefield, identified only with initials. Search efforts were made all this time by a fellow soldier, but to no avail. Just before this year’s High Holidays, the fellow soldier’s grandchildren suggested posting it on social networks. Through multiple sharing of the post, 49 years of search came to an end in less than an hour and a half. The owner, whose survival status was unclear until that moment, was found and was reunited with his religious artifacts.

It is evident that humanity can neither predict nor fathom the future; we can’t even imagine it. And it comes to us faster and faster. When it’s time, God says, it’ll happen like a light, like something appearing out of nothing. Last Shabbat, we started once again to read Genesis — the word of God that created something out of nothing, the way we connect heaven and earth.

There are two different opinions regarding the final redemption. One predicts that we will build the Sanctuary of God with our own hands; the other predicts that it will come prepared from heaven. Surely, we can’t really know. Until recently, I was on the earthly side, perhaps the one more rational. But this year, reality made me expand my imagination. A few weeks ago, I officiated at a wedding in the synagogue’s garden. The young couple had made their own beautiful huppah out of simple birch wood. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the couple offered to leave it for me.

Overnight, the huppah became a Sukkah in my backyard. On the earthly side, it simply saved me the time and effort to build one. But on the heavenly side, a Sukkah, which is a sanctuary, came to me prepared. It felt like my own gift from heaven, a wedding gift in the marriage of heaven and earth, like a word, a light, appearing suddenly in one instance and creating a new reality. The Lord had speeded it in due time.

In the new year of 5783, may we all fast forward.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela