It’s a familiar tale from the Talmud. God sends Moses a thousand years into the future to sit in the back row of Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, and Moses is confused. He may have received the Torah at Sinai but he has difficulty understanding the Torah being taught by his descendants. The narrative resolves when Moses recognizes that their traditions are rooted in his teachings, and he is comforted.

This is a marvel of a story. In the imagination of the Babylonian rabbis, Moses travels through time to gain understanding and perspective. He is at first bewildered by the world of the future and then comforted by its connection to the past. Here, as throughout rabbinic literature, time seemingly folds into itself. In the words of the late historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “the rabbis seem to play with Time as though with an accordion, expanding and collapsing it at will.”

The canon of Jewish literature is filled with such imagined encounters across........

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