FROM RABBI FRED
Shalom/Aloha, Jewish Community of Kauai! It’s been a month – literally – since I had the honor of arriving on island, connecting with the community, and helping facilitate the holidays. The calendar says so, but so does the sky: we just have to look up, and notice where the moon is in its cycle.
As the nights get darker, and early risers notice a thin crescent over the sea off Lihue or Kapa’a or Anahola just before sunrise, the New Moon is just ahead. Every 29.53 days (on average), the moon passes between Earth and Sun, and a new cycle begins – both in the heavens, and on the Hebrew calendar.
The astronomy behind it is fascinating: e.g., since the moon’s orbit is elliptical, lunar month lengths vary by up to twelve hours; they’re shortest near perigree (when moon is closest and moving fastest), longest near apogee (its farthest and slowest point). And after our “synodic” new moon, which is when it returns to the same position relative to us on Earth, it’s still another two-plus days until the “sidereal” new moon, when it returns to the same point relative to the stars and universe. Amazing.
Our Jewish heritage celebrates these cosmic complexities, urging us to learn about and be awed by the cycles of Creation. And the Hebrew calendar proves the point, informed as it is by careful observations and calculations. Where western (Gregorian) time is solar, without reference to the moon – while Islamic and other calendars are entirely lunar, with nothing seasonal in them – ours is hybrid, or “luni-solar.” Like so much else about Jewish tradition, it’s more complicated, and richer as a result!
In short: we measure time by the moon, while adjusting so that holidays always remain in their season. Rather than a leap day (adding a February 29th into just under a quarter of our years), we periodically add a leap month – a second Adar, in early Spring , seven times every nineteen years – with 7/19ths being the time-tested ratio of prime numbers that keeps it all shockingly accurate, within minutes per annum. And, the length of our months roughly alternates, between 29 (khaser or ‘missing’) and 30 (maleh or ‘full’) days each.
Every new month is its own minor holiday, called Rosh Chodesh (literally “Head of the Month”). Tradition even gives this 12-or-13-times-per-year festival a feminist twist, nominally in merit of the women of the Exodus who kept the faith, but really in celebration of the life and light that are enabled where biological and cosmological cycles converge. Most Jewish holidays fall on the full moon, the 15th of each month; only Rosh HaShanah (“Head of the Year”), one lunar month ago, shares its date with Rosh Hodesh. As the ‘full’ and holy and holiday-heavy month of Tishrei winds down, this next Rosh Hodesh falls over two consecutive days: 30 Tishrei, which comes this year on Friday Nov. 1; and the First of Cheshvan, a.k.a. the Second of November, a.k.a. Shabbat.
For nocturnal animals, including night owls both avian and human, the cycles of the moon make a big difference. For the rest of us, Rosh Hodesh simply offers another periodic opportunity to take stock of our life and our world – to consider what we did and didn’t accomplish in the month that was, and to decide how we will be and what we will prioritize in the month ahead.
So think back to Rosh HaShanah: showing up at shul, seeing old friends, meeting the new rabbi (!), singing and praying and learning and feasting, and communing. Which of our “new year resolutions” are on track, and which have fallen behind? How have we nurtured the new and renewed connections we forged at St. Michaels, at tashlich on the pier, at Shabbat Shuvah at Lauren & Brian’s farm?
Think back to Yom Kippur, that full fast Day of Atonement (or At-One-ment): Have the messages resonated? Were the prayers pro forma, or did they actually move us toward lasting tshuvah (repentance-turning-improvement)? Can we continue to let the urgency of “the closing of the gates” call us to sustained spiritual and ethical work? Are we a bit more into our heritage, feeling a bit more connected to our shared community, gaining depth and insight and friendship along the way?
What a month it’s been – the anniversary of October 7th; the intensity of the holidays (and for me the privilege of being with y’all!); Nancy Golden’s memorial; pre-election preparations and jitters; huge news from the middle east and elsewhere in the world; the ups and downs of our own lives. Halloween now wraps up our Tishrei; a most consequential Election Day (November 5th) will define not just this new month of Cheshvan, but the entirety of 5785, 5786, 5787, 5788, and beyond.
The rabbis called this month “Mar” or “Bitter” Cheshvan, since it’s the only one all year without a single holiday. (This rabbi finds it somewhat bitter, since he’s not there, with you all!). But we might instead see it as a welcome pendulum-swing, even a detox, following the over-full festivities of Tishrei. In any case, Cheshvan embodies both the challenge and the opportunity of celebrating the normal, the everyday, the still-special ‘usual.’
Our friends and family and community; our home and neighborhood and island; our intricate bodies, educable minds, and elevatable souls; our privileged place in the ecosystem and biosphere, in society and the world: all of these are no less remarkable, for being routine. If anything, their ready availability makes them more amazing, more miraculous.
So, a blessing for us, just before Rosh Hodesh Cheshvan: may we savor it all. Despite the daily downs and ups of our lives; far beyond football scores; mindless of market swings; even aside from election outcomes – may we take nothing for granted, and deeply appreciate who and what is always around us, in this sacred-ordinary month of Cheshvan.
