The Time Robbers

Last week, I was running late to the doctor’s office. Flustered and nearly moved to pray for an open parking space, which, in West Los Angeles, is more precious than a free shot of Ozempic, I finally saw the glorious sight of red taillights. 

This would be my salvation, I thought as I waited for the woman in the parked car to leave. She fastened her seat belt and adjusted her rearview mirror. And then, with the engine running and her foot on the brake, the woman pulled her phone out of her purse and began scrolling. 

If you have ever anxiously waited for someone to leave a parking space, whether in Los Angeles or London or Budapest or Bogota, only to wait as the driver scrolled a phone, you have experienced my exasperation. 

Perhaps the woman was dealing with an emergency. But it didn’t seem like it. At that moment, I recognized her for what she was: a time robber. 

What could I write about this Yom Kippur regarding our obligations to others as well as to G-d that I have not written in years before? Perhaps there are one or two stones of accountability that I have still been left unturned, and one of them focuses on how we treat (or mistreat) time. 

The woman who sat for a long time and scrolled her phone while I tried begging her to leave via failed telepathy unknowingly robbed me of some time. But I also became a time robber by leaving the house late and not allowing myself enough time to find a parking space. I entered the doctor’s office 20 minutes late, causing every patient after me to also wait excessively that morning. 

Stealing time, whether maliciously or innocently, seems to be a modern epidemic, and if you open your eyes a bit more, you will see the time robbers, too. In fact, they are all around us: from the office workers who spend half of the day doing nonwork-related tasks on their phones or laptops, to the security guards who are hired to be extra alert, but who cannot peel their eyes away from their phones as they sit on stools and forget to look up for minutes on end. In terms of well-intentioned, but useless, people, those security guards are my favorites. 

And then, there are the doctors’ offices who overbook patients, so that you arrive on time for a 10 a.m. appointment and find yourself sitting with half a dozen other people who, amazingly, were also scheduled for 10 a.m. 

I believe that stealing time from your employer by not working, but still getting paid to work, is inarguably wrong. “When workers spend time in which they are supposed to be productive for their employer, they are not stealing time; they are stealing hard, green cash,” my friend, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Interfaith Affairs at The Simon Wiesenthal Center, told me. In Judaism, there are even prohibitions regarding wasting time in a shopkeeper’s store if you don’t intend to buy anything. That constitutes “stealing the time the employer had paid for the worker. And if the storekeeper is self-employed, it is much more subtle: Stealing his expectation,” Adlerstein, who lives in Israel, added. Isn’t Judaism amazing? Its laws are so sensitive to others that it even aims to protect a shopkeeper’s expectations. 

I believe that one of the worst ways to rob a person of time involves shunning the people we love. Pointing the finger squarely at myself, I think about all the times I am blessed to receive a phone call from my mother or father, only to squander the opportunity by scrolling my phone and offering them a detached, cursory “That’s nice” whenever they share a story. My father could call excitedly and inform me that Martians have landed in Jerusalem and helped Jews build the Third Temple, and I would mindlessly respond, “Uh, huh” and continue scrolling the contents of my Amazon cart. I am not fully there for my parents, and for that, I ask for their forgiveness, especially because there has never been a day when they were not there for me. 

Perhaps our parents will always love us, but the sight that truly hurts is one of parents ignoring their children by incessantly looking at a screen, rather than into the children’s eyes. I understand that phones offer parents and caretakers an escape, but do we ever approach that escape with semblance of moderation? Personally, I have been known to hide in the closet for up to 30 minutes with a bag of cheese puffs during the “Bewitching Hours” of the late afternoon, when kids manage to be both hopelessly energetic and deliriously tired. 

On Shabbat afternoons, I am known for responding with “five more minutes” to my children’s repeated requests to spend time with me. Sometimes, I feel burned out and need a few minutes to read (in case you haven’t noticed, this paper makes for excellent Shabbat reading material). Other times, I simply don’t want to play a tedious card game or sit uncomfortably on the floor and build a fort out of coffee stirrers. I now realize that is a foolish mistake; as long as my children actually want to spend time with me, I will no longer rob them of that time. I will even cut down the time I spend with cheese puffs in the closet to 15 minutes. 

I also recognize that phones today are everything — the grocery store, our kid’s classroom, the clothing store, pharmacy, bank, gym, office and much more — but a phone that offers everything … never offers everything. It is not our child. Our child is the one across the table, playing with her cereal and watching us carefully as she learns (or doesn’t learn) about boundaries and forms understandings about her parents’ priorities.  

Recently, I watched as an elderly man in a wheelchair tried to talk to his caretaker as they spent time on a sunny street corner. He was speaking with such vivid detail about the past, moving his arms to help bring the story to life. She was scrolling her phone and barely bothering to look in his direction. Moments like the one I witnessed on the street have instilled in me a deep fear of growing old and being forced to rely on the TikTok generation to pretend to take care of me (or express remote interest in my stories about a time when actual humans manned cash registers and drove cars). 

There is a reason why Judaism takes the matter of stealing time very seriously: Unlike books or money, we cannot offer time back to someone. If your child needed you when he was five years old, you cannot make up the time with him when he is 25 in the same way that he thirsted for it two decades ago (unless you attempt to put him on your lap and read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to a grown man with student loans and a beard).

There is a reason why Judaism takes the matter of stealing time very seriously: Unlike books or money, we cannot offer time back to someone.

Perhaps we ourselves are the biggest victims of our time theft. We rob ourselves of health, happiness, family and friends by making small choices each day. We refuse to make time for our health, until we are forced to make time for our ailments. 

In Judaism, however, there is one instance in which we are encouraged to steal time: When a soul enters the next world and undergoes its personal day of judgment, one of the questions it is asked is “Kava’ata ittim L’Torah?” (usually translated to “Did you establish firm times for Torah study?”). But some Jewish scholars saw a different interpretation: They read the question as, “Did you steal time to study Torah?” It’s a beautiful thought. 

“So many in contemporary times can justly claim that their schedules are packed,” said Adlerstein. “Nonetheless, the heavenly court doesn’t give the person an easy pass for that claim.”

Whether in traffic court for poor driving or heavenly court for not making time to study what it means to be a Jew, I’m committed to making small changes each day so that I can do the right thing. After all, time is precious currency, and I intend to spend it well. 

May we be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a healthy and peaceful year with more time well spent. Gmar Chatima Tova.

Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on X and Instagram @TabbyRefael.