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JEWISH
WOMEN'S
Why The Hebrew
Calendar Matters
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Parshat Va'aera: Exodus 6:2-9:35;
Ezekiel 28:25-29:21.
T
he Mayan apocalypse now
behind us, we may safely shift
our calendrical concerns from
Mesoamerica to the Mediterranean, to
the wonder we witnessed little over a
week ago when the Gregorian calendar
segued one secular year into another
with an error of only 26
seconds.
Such precision should
put us in proper awe of the
authors of the Jewish cal-
endar, who synchronized
not simply the solar cycle,
but the lunar and liturgical
revolutions as well. With
their attention to minutia,
the rabbinic mathematicians
matched the months and fes-
tivals to their proper seasons,
ensuring in perpetuity that
we would celebrate the vernal feast of
Pesach in the spring.
With all their care and creativity, the
calendar's calculators were either unable
or unwilling to align this week's parshah,
which speaks of the plagues that preced-
ed the Pascal sacrifice, with the holiday
that celebrates the Exodus. When Va'aera
is recited in synagogue this Shabbat, the
sense will be similar to that if we were
served matzah at kiddush following said
service: There is nothing particularly
problematic, but it does feel out of place
in January.
To liberate ourselves from this afflic-
tion of incongruity, we may pass over
the pestilence and frogs and jump to a
neglected portion of the parshah, the
Levite genealogy. While less epic than
the narrative that is central to both the
seder and our sedrah, studying the fam-
ily tree that interrupts the story yields
special fruit to the punctilious reader
who can discern the proverbial forest.
The list of Levitical descendants
reveals that the priestly tribe, who would
be entrusted with the countless details of
the sacrificial service, had already exhib-
ited their scrupulousness by maintaining
the highest concern for endogamy, even
when exiled in Egypt.
While our other tribes were less
attentive to the injunction against inter-
marriage, our forefathers and mothers,
in general, were careful to maintain
cultural and religious separation from
their Egyptian hosts.
According to the midrash, our ances-
tors in Egypt meticulously observed four
mitzvot: preserving Israelite mores of
purity and Hebrew names, restraining
their tongues from unholy
speech and speaking the
sacred tongue. The Jews'
dedication to fulfilling every
jot and tittle of tradition,
especially in the diaspora,
became a point of both Jewish
pride and Christian persecu-
tion from the time of the early
papacy.
The centrality of detailed
Divine law to the Jewish peo-
ple was established in Egypt
with the first commandment
to the Israelites, of which we will read
in next week's Torah portion. While we
received the Decalogue and hundreds
of other statutes in the Sinai desert and
on its summit, God's inaugural legisla-
tion was given to Moses in Egypt — His
command to establish a calendar.
From that time forward, what would
set Jews apart from the nations of the
world would be our unique setting of
sacred time, especially the Sabbath and
holidays and their accompanying myriad
of delineated dictates. When sects such
as Sadducees and Essenes sought to
secede from Judaism, they did so by
establishing their own calendars.
It was the desire to separate the
daughter religion of Christianity from
her Jewish mother that prompted
Gregory and his papal predecessors to
devise a calendar that could calculate the
Christian Passover — Easter — without
recourse to the Jewish calendar and its
rabbinical regulations.
With the creation of a calendar
comes a consciousness of history
through which the faithful of all alma-
nacs gaze at the chronicles of heaven
and Earth and declare that God is not
only in the details, but in the days and
dates as well.
❑
Announcing the
Jewish Women's Foundation's
2013 Grant Cycle
The Jewish Women's Foundation of Metropolitan
Detroit is pleased to announce that it is now
accepting requests for funding in 2013.
Letters of Intent are due no later than
noon on Tuesday, February 12, 2013.
For the grant guidelines, instructions and forms,
please visit our website: www.jewishdetroit.org/jwf
and click on 2012 Grant Guidelines and Instructions
or contact Helen Katz, Director
Katz@jfmd.org or 248.203.1483
The Jewish Women's Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit is dedicated to expanding opportunities
and enriching the lives of
women and girls through strategic grant making and education.
The Foundation empowers its Trustees as philanthropists, social advocates and leaders.
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Conversations
• How has Judaism's obsession with details affected the Jewish psyche?
• How does following a different calendar affect Jewish identity in America?
• What significance is there to the fact that the entire world today follows
the Gregorian calendar?
LAPEER RD.
ORION
January 10 • 2013
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