The Times Of Your Life

Marking time by the Jewish calendar can help Jews frame their identities.

JANICE P. ALPER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

hat is Jewish
time? And how
can we really
make it part of
our lives? Im-
mediately what
may come to
mind is anything
that starts later
than called for, be
it a meeting, a wed-
ding, a dinner en-
gagement, or a public
event.
I do not know how
this came to be regarded
as "Jewish time," but when I
hear this expression I think of
the Jewish year cycle of cele-
bration or particular events that
mark the passages in a lifetime.
As a Jewish educator, I also look
at a year as a school year or a
program year and regard the in-
evitable holidays — American
and Jewish — as measurements
within the year.
The issue of time and how it
is measured has preoccupied us
for generations. When we read
biblical stories of people who
lived to be more than 100 years
old, or of Sarah who gave birth
at age 90, we are often flabber-
gasted. How could this be? SOme
biblical scholars say the count-
ing of time as we know it was
different in the ancient Near
East of more than two millen-
nia ago. Time was probably
measured by the seasons, the
phases of the moon; perhaps
what we call three or four
months was a year in that era.
The tradition of marking time
according to a Jewish calendar
has always been what Jews call
"Jewish time." My grandmoth-
er's birthday was two days be-
fore Yom Kippur. To her dying

Janice Alper is executive director

of Jewish Educational Services.

day
w e
never
knew what
that correspond-
ed to in the secular cal-
endar because we did not know
the exact year of her birth in
Poland.
She and my grandfather
counted the births of their seven
children by the Jewish calendar.
While each of them had a sec-
ular birthday, the accuracy was
specious and came to light
when, as adults, they sent for
birth certificates in order to
apply for passports. They dis-
covered that the birthdays they
were celebrating were not on
the days they were born. My
mother, born two weeks before
Rosh Hashanah, became 10
days younger. My aunt, born
somewhere around Tisha B'Av,
became a week older and one of
my uncles, born after Shavuot,
became a month younger.

Conscious of Jewish year

For those of us who do not
consciously measure time by the
Jewish year cycle this may be
difficult to fathom. Yet, know-

We
also
taught our stu-
dents, who were
now of many
different ages,
how to measure
time by the
parshiot, Torah
portions of the
week. We ex-
plained that
every week we
read a different
section of Torah and
that we can identify
Jewish time according
to these portions. You
may recall receiving an
invitation, especially to a
bar or bat mitzvah celebra-
tion, that invited you to join the
family on Shabbat such and
such — i.e. Noah, Yitro, R'eh,
Shoftim, etc. Our students were
interested in looking up the
Torah portions for their b'nai
mitzvah. Parents revisited their
own b'nai mitzvah portions and
went back into the Chumash to
research them once again, look-
ing at them with fresh eyes.
Sometime during the late
summer, practically all Jews,
observant to secular, become
conscious of the approaching
high holiday season. People talk
about the holidays being "ear-
ly" or "late." I chuckle when I
hear this. In my mind, the hol-
idays are right on time. They oc-
cur according to the Jewish
calendar, a lunar calendar.
The lunar calendar — differ-
ent from our solar-based daily
one — has 12 months with a to-
tal of 354 days. Periodically an
additional month is added for a
leap month. This is done in
Adar, the month of Purim. We
have Adar I and Adar II, Purim
always being in Adar II. This is
why the dates of Jewish holi-

ing
when
you have a
Jewish birthday,
your special Jewish time, helps
to frame some of your identity.
A few years ago, when direc-
tor of a synagogue school in Cal-
ifornia, I started monthly
Jewish birthday celebrations.
We looked up the date of each
child's Jewish birthday and once
a month honored those children
whose special days occurred.
Each child got a pin or badge
which said, "My birthday is in
Tevet" (or Kislev or Nisan, etc.).
This served to help the children
and their families become con-
scious of the Jewish year.
The parents, not wanting to
be left out, asked us to look up
their Jewish birthdays. Even-
tually, whole families became
conscious of the Jewish calen-
dar in their lives. They knew
which Jewish holidays occurred
around the times of their Jew-
ish birthdays, their marriage
dates, and could figure out older
relatives' birthdays, death dates
UFE page 116
and other significant date^.

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