Rabbi Preps for ‘Leap Second’ with Timely Message

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015, the day will officially be a bit longer than usual – because an extra second, or “leap” second, will be added.

“Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, so leap seconds are a way to account for that,” explains Daniel MacMillan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

While world experts expound the reasons why June 30^th will get an extra second, Rabbi Anchelle Perl of Chabad of Mineola, NY, takes ‘time out’ to see this as a teaching moment – or second – on making every moment in life count with good resolutions and extra acts of goodness and kindness.

The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, often spoke of the clock as a “silent preacher”! It never utters a single word – yet when one looks at it and realizes that the hands of the clock (i.e. the hours, minutes and seconds) are moving continuously, this serves as a lesson in making better use of one’s time.

The Rebbe always underscored the value of time. ‘If you allow a second to pass without utilizing it, we have not merely lost the action or would-be accomplishment, we are also lacking the gift of that very second.’

Note: This teaching on the good use of one’s time by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe becomes even more significant this year, as June 30^th, with its extra leap second, is the 13^th of Tammuz in the Jewish calendar. On this very day in 1927, he was granted release from his sentence of exile to Kastroma in the interior of Russia.

Twenty-seven days earlier, the Rebbe had been arrested by agents of the GPU for his activities to preserve Judaism throughout the Soviet empire and sentenced to death, G-d forbid.

International pressure forced the Soviets to commute the sentence to exile and, subsequently, to release him completely. The actual release took place on Tammuz 13, and Tammuz 12-13 is celebrated as a “festival of liberation” by the Chabad-Lubavitch community all around the world.