BROOKYN, NY — The waxing and waning of the moon is regularly celebrated in Jewish life. The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle, familiar to Jewish children even as preschoolers who learn to welcome the new moon with regular Rosh Chodesh celebrations. In a popular depiction by Jewish painters, a minyan of men stand outside the shtetl shul and bless the new moon under a dark sky.
Once in a Rare Sun: Birkat Hachamah
BROOKYN, NY — The waxing and waning of the moon is regularly celebrated in Jewish life. The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle, familiar to Jewish children even as preschoolers who learn to welcome the new moon with regular Rosh Chodesh celebrations. In a popular depiction by Jewish painters, a minyan of men stand outside the shtetl shul and bless the new moon under a dark sky.
What about the sun?
In their daily prayers, Jews offer thanks for the sunlight: “He who illuminates the earth and its inhabitants,” and are enjoined to maintain an awareness of its benefits to our ecology as a source of vital energy.
But in an unusual ritual that in Jewish tradition comes around only once in 28-years and is to take place this year, Wednesday morning, April 8, Jewish communities everywhere are preparing to formally bless the sun.
By a Talmudic calculation, this follows the spring equinox occurring the evening before, Tuesday, at precisely the hour between 6-7 p.m. Israel time, when the sun is believed to have completed a cycle and has returned to its precise position at the time of its creation.
In advance of this event, Kehot Publication Society, the Lubavitch publishing house, published Birkat Hachamah – According to Chabad Custom.
