I've Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night

The sun governs our lives.  We adjust our watches to the lengthened days at this time of year to compensate for more sunlight hours.  Later we will reset them.  Days are measured not only by the placement of the sun overhead but by its anticipated appearance.  For example, we call the midpoint between sunset and sunrise, midnight.

We adjust the years to the rotation of the earth around the sun using the “leap year” as a Band-Aid to remedy the true year of 365 1/4 days.  Otherwise, we would eventually end up with New Year’s Day being where Thanksgiving is now.

For ancient man, time was more easily calculated by observing changes in the celestial bodies.  Each evening the star change their positions ever so slightly.  Yet those slight changes enable us to grasp the passage of days and weeks and seasons.  The sun, however, remains basically the same.  The days grow warmer or colder but the brilliant orb does not radically shift its position.

In Judaism, time is marked by the waxing and waning of the moon.  While Jewish holy days always seem to come on different days each year, the always appear on the same days of the lunar cycle.  Rosh Hashanah, for example, always is marked by a new moon.  The Festival of Booths, Sukkot, falls when a full moon is visible in the heavens.

In this way, the seasons ebb and flow according to a lunar cycle which is both predictable and visible.  Interestingly, the eastern churches also celebrate the holiday of Easter using the same cycle, unlike their western counterparts, which have adopted the solar year as the yardstick for the passage of time.  For the eastern sects, Easter invariably coincide with Passover while most American churches celebrate the holiday on a consistent solar date.  And we know the solar calendar really makes our days slightly longer than twenty-four hours.  A complete revolution of the sun necessitates adding a full day to our calendar every four years.

Still, the moon, like the sun, is not a completely accurate measure of time either.  The moon revolves around our planet every twenty-five hours, not the twenty-four hours of the sun’s day.  Left alone for long stretches of time, spring would gradually slip into winter and winter into spring.  So, to keep our lunar calendar in “sync” with the solar calendar it too is adjusted every now and again.

When the moon catches up with the sun at the beginning of a new cycle (and it will do this approximately every twenty-nine days) we witness a “conjunction” or “new moon.”  When the old moon has faded away and yielded a new view of itself in the heavens, we celebrate a “Rosh Hodesh.”

A mystical quality hovers around the moon.  It is not unlike the shadow of our personalities.  To us, the moon appears to have strength all it sown.  Hence, we call someone under an unknown power, a lunatic or a looney.  But that too may be lunacy for the moon has no power of its own.

The sun casts its own light over the world while the moon is merely reflective.  The only reason we can see the moon at night is because it reflects the light of the sun on the other side of the earth and, like a mirror, returns it to us in the darkness.

The moon therefore becomes a paradigm for humanity.  Just as the Divine exists outside of us, each person is endowed with a reflective quality to mirror the brilliance of the Holy One, blessed be He.

Happy Birthday!

In most of the world the sun is our guide.  Its slight movement across the sky determines the marking of our calendar: short days and long nights mean winter while long days indicate the warm, summer months.  Yet, does the moon impact measuring time? 

We peer into the night sky and gauge the waxing and waning of the moon.  We consult astrological charts which also refer to changes in the moon.  When people behave peculiarly, we even ask if they are luna-tics, i.e. affected by the full moon.  Is this night orb important at all?  Jews have marked time with both the moon and the sun as reminders us of the passage of the seasons. 

How long is a year? 365 ¼ days?  What if we are off by a few hours? (We always are!).  Isn’t then measuring time arbitrary?  What does a year mean anyway?  That the earth completed a pass around the sun? 

Another wrinkle.  Light—which marks the passage of days – is not the same everywhere.  Our day in America is not the same in all countries.  It is not eve the same within the borders of the United States.  Come to think of it, it is not all the same even in New York.  Time is therefore relative, not universal.  Yet, our lives are driven by our time-pieces. 

Time is important.  For example, nobody in my family ever knew exactly how grandpa was.  He ran from Czarist Russia and certain death when he was just fourteen.  Unfortunately, many things were left behind in the old country.  Including his age.  We never learned grandpa’s birthday.  We tried to figure it out after he died, but it was all guesswork.

Age and dates are important to us.  That is why we have busied ourselves with carbon 14 dating.  We have worked back into time to trace the roots of our presence.  For thousands of years the only measure of human time on earth was the Bible.  Scholars investigating the genealogies of matriarchs, patriarchs; of wars and treaties, prophets and saints have read backward to determine the present age of the world.  They read all the “begots” with a measured eye.  According to their estimate, the world is now five thousand seven hundred sevemty-odd years old.

According to the biblical account, the date of the birth of the world this year fell on September 16, 2012.  All the years of the lives of the ancient ones along with the passage of marked epochs of time bring us to this special birth date. 

Why is this date so important?  It celebrates an arrival.  Your birthday is important because you entered the world on this day.  All the gifts that you have brought would not have happened without you.  That is why the cake, candles and song.  You are both wanted and needed.  It is the same with the birthday of the world.  We fete its arrival with food, song and celebration.

Birthdays are also the occasion of re-assessments of self and being.  Every year we consider who we are, what we have become and where we have veered off the path of personal revelation, unfolding of the self.  Birthdays are a time of renewal.  Vows of weight loss, making more time for family, being a more considerate friend are all components of becoming.

September 16th is important as it celebrates both a beginning and renewal.  We wish the world a better future.  We have abused it far too much with de-forestation, pollution, lack of concern for life-forms that are dependent upon us, an absence of love.  We have uprooted without planting.  We have disemboweled the earth without replenishing it.  We have ravaged all but the heartiest of animals. 

At the same time, this yearly Rosh Hashanna is a call for renewal for inter-personal changes.  It does little good to treat the dog well if we abuse people.  Remember:  all people are as unique and as gifted as you.  Every person carries a blessing that they alone can give.  For the Jewish tradition it is said that any person can be the emissary of God.  The pauper on the street, a child’s face, your girlfriend may be the chosen one.  Since we do not know who the hidden emissary may be, we must treat everyone as if they are the One.

From the entire Jewish community, may this New Year be a time of renewal of hope and determined love.  May you be blessed.  May you be the blessing in 5772.  And, of course, happy birthday world!