Calendar
Our Rabbi's Message
April 4th 2008
By Rabbi Aaron KriegelOur world became synthetic with the institution of the solar calendar. It was precisely at that point in time that we forget how to read the skies and know about the full moon and the new moon. It was precisely then that we forgot how to tell when spring was happening by looking at the trees and not at some human invention on the wall that was divided into 365 parts.
Things went down from there. We developed clocks and then watches. With the clock came the minute and when we became good enough at inventing, we invented a way to read and create seconds into the world.
We still had an idea that the day had twenty four hours and we were always aware of that idea, at least until the development of the digital watch. It was at that precise time in our history that we forgot about the long view of time and became interested in parsing the moment. We were more interested in imitating the perfect nature of machines than just living the day from sunset to sunset.
One of the great pleasures of our Judaism is the calendar. It is not like the Islamic calendar which is only lunar, but rather a combination of lunar and solar times. It allows us to tell what part of the month we are in just by looking at the heavens. It allows us to watch the old day fade away with the sun and with the appearance of stars. It allows us to really understand spring and winter.
In fact anyone who knows anything about Pesah knows that the holiday brings with it the spring. We know that Pesach begins with it the first full moon of spring. Even when our people was locked up in the ghettoes at night, we still had the ability to read the skies, still had the ability to recognize that time was one aspect of life that could not be entombed in the Renaissance or the industrial age or the computer age.
The Jewish calendar allows us to recognize the beat of the world. And that is why we read about the new month this Shabbat, a month that inaugurates the spring.
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