So you have been living next to this Jewish family for 27 years.
They take their religious practice seriously and you have come to
recognize the multifarious rituals. For Passover they burn their
remaining bread in a little bonfire and eat dry matzo for eight
days, celebrating freedom by recalling their experience in
captivity. Pentecost they slip out to the synagogue and study all
night, to commemorate the joy of receiving the Torah. And for
Tabernacles they set up outdoors for eight days, eating in
decorated little shanties to remember their forty-year trek
through the desert 3300 years ago.
So here you are now and it’s April 8, 2009, and you are
scratching your head, trying to figure out why all the Jews in
your neighborhood are congregating in little clusters, looking up
at the sun and pronouncing a small blessing. What in the world is
going on?
It turns out this is another interesting Jewish observance, one
you have never noted before for good reason: it is celebrated
every 28 years. It is known as the Blessing of the Sun (Birkat Hachama
in Hebrew).
The premise behind this is the idea that the sun has a
28-year cycle. After that amount of time elapses it returns
to the identical position in relation to the earth. The
particular point being celebrated is the one designated by
tradition as representing the original placement of the sun, what
is described in Genesis as the “creation” of the sun on the
Fourth Day. (The classic Bible commentator, Rashi (1035-1105),
asserts that the sun was created earlier but positioned and given
its current role on that day. This seems to fit with the
retrospective viewpoint provided by science.)
The text of the blessing recited is simple enough. “Blessed are
You, God our Lord, maker of the work of Creation.” It allows for
a glimpse back in time to the moment when the conditions were
established for the possibility of human life.
Here in the United States this practice comes with a humorous
history. Four cycles ago, back in 1897, most Jewish immigrants
who took the Law seriously were located in New York. When the
time came to recite this blessing, people began to gather in
groups in the time-honored manner. The problem was they were not
attuned to the local laws prohibiting public gatherings without a
permit. The result was arrests and inconvenience, as
misunderstanding bred annoyance and hilarity.
An item in the New York Times of April 8, 1897
describes a scene straight out of the Keystone Kops. Officer
Foley, the well-meaning Irish cop, is dismayed to find a large
crowd in Central Park. He advances menacingly upon the man who
looks like the leader, a Rabbi Klein. Klein sees the cop waving
his billy club and has little confidence in the ability of his
heavily accented English to extricate him from this imbroglio.
What to do? Simple: he takes off on the run through the park with
Foley nipping at his heels. Eventually everything was sorted out
before the local magistrate, with assistance from a rabbi whose
American language skills were more developed.
All in all, the thought that we are returning to a primordial
equilibrium is inspiring. It suggests that our routine need not
smother our creativity. If the golden orb up yonder gets to start
afresh, why not you and me? Sure we have a few rings around the
trunk, a few trips around the block, but so does our circular
buddy up there. Maybe it is time for us to do some global warming
of the spirit.
For me at age fifty, this is my second time experiencing the
solar renewal. Just making it through to the next time will be an
enormous challenge. We have certainly come a long way since
Officer Foley chasing Rabbi Klein around Central Park in 1897. I
pray that 2037 will signal wonderful advances for the world in
general and for you and me in particular.
