The Calendar of Relationship
The Calendar as an Indication of Our Attitude Towards God
From Hadesh Vol. 1, Iss. 8 — Calendar
By: Josh Black
The calendar is an integral part of any civilisation. James Burke points out that the ability to measure and orient oneself within time is the key which allowed man to build up a prosperous functional society. Without a calendar we have no ability to tell where we have come from and no real ability to see where we are going.
The Hebrew calendar serves all the common uses of a calendar– like being a framework for planning the future– with a few additional features. The calendar determines the unique ebb and flow of our relationship with God. One of my favorite examples of this can be seen in how the Tishrei holidays reflect the marriage of the Jewish people to Hashem.
Rosh Hashana is the time when we crown Hashem King. Surely God needs no coronation, since He’s koneh hakol, the Creator of everything! Yet Hazal say that there is no King without a people. It takes a people willing to serve Him to make Him into their King. This act of choosing Hashem as our Ruler and accepting Him into our life is akin to a bride who chooses her husband and accepts him into her life. Rosh Hashana is like the first stage of marriage, kiddushin.
Yet kiddushin is commonly understood as the groom giving something of value to the bride– how could Rosh Hashana, the day when we give something to Hashem, be parallel to the groom giving something to the bride? Interestingly, the Rambam does codify into law the option for the bride to give the groom an object of value. This only works if the groom is so wealthy that the act of accepting the gift will cause significant joy in the bride. Receiving becomes giving. Only because God is koneh hakol does our coronation of Him effect the “kiddushin”.
Yom Kippur is the time when God’s judgment is finalised. Once we have crowned Hashem King, He judges us, and those judgments are sealed on Yom Kippur. Our roles are concretised. This time is akin to nesuin, the final stage of the marriage ceremony. We and Hashem are now locked into a covenant like that of a husband and wife.
Nesuin is commonly understood as the wife entering the husband’s abode for the first time. This is why Ashkenazim have a custom to lock the newlyweds in a “yichud room”. The chuppah is considered a faux home for the blessings of nesuin to be recited. How is this realized in our relationship with God?
On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, we are the holiest versions of ourselves. We strove and struggled to perfect ourselves for the day, and we wear white or our nicest clothes. We abstain from physical pleasures, like eating or bathing, and become something like an angel. That angelic state– that’s us entering into God’s home. The Kohen Gadol would enter into the very sanctum of the shekhina, the kodesh hakadoshim. This is true nesuin.
This extends into Sukkot, seven days of chag we celebrate with God in the intimate space of the sukkah. This parallels the sheva berakhot, which are called that, not because of the number of blessings, but because of the number of days they can be recited. Others recite the sheva berakhot for the couple, paralleling the seventy nations coming to Jerusalem and praising God while Israel sacrifices 70 bulls on their behalf. The final day, Shemini Atzeret, is the culmination of the celebration of our unique relationship with God, on which only one bull is brought.
Finally, we reach Cheshvan. Cheshvan has a bad reputation, being referred to as Mar (“bitter”) Cheshvan, owing to the fact that there are no festivals during this time. This is a profound misunderstanding of the beauty of the month. It is the most special time for a newlywed couple. The sheva berakhot are over, the crowds depart, and the new couple is in the quiet intimacy of their new home. For a couple that got married for all the wrong reasons, this can indeed be bitter. But for a healthy couple, this is the happiest time.
The takeaway is that our relationship with Hashem is not stagnant. The calendar directs and channels the flow of our emotions with God. Pesach should feel like zeman cherutenu, Shavuot should feel like zeman matan Toratenu, Sukkot should feel like zeman simchatenu, in the same way that a Western child feels joy and gratitude during December. The calendar is not simply a tool of a functional society, it is an integral means of connecting to God.
The calendar serves as a conceptual benchmark for something we feel very strongly about here at Hadesh. Somewhere in Israel there is a Jew, a religious Jew. He grew up in New York, and spent a year in Israel. Inspired to return to his homeland, he made Aliyah. He keeps Shabbat, puts on tefillin, and even learns every day.
However, if you ask him when the year ends, without any hesitation he’ll tell you… December. He asks when the next Jewish holiday is. “What day is Pesach this year?” He thinks his birthday is in June. If this seems rational, then you are living in the problem.
Despite his religious lifestyle, his view of the world defaults to the Gregorian calendar instead of the Hebrew. By looking at the world and seeing December instead of Tevet, in a small way, he sees the world as a Goy instead of as a Jew.
Now this may seem inconsequential, but it is an indication that he adopted the entertainment and financial and political lenses of our non-Jewish neighbours, seeing the world through their eyes instead of through the eyes of the Torah.
This mental paradigm that many Jews are unwittingly locked into is the exilic mentality. Given that we were sent from our homeland long ago and made to wander, we found ourselves adapting, using the practices of our host countries. We did everything we could to survive, including changing the way we think. We found (and continue to find) ourselves viewing the world through the lens of the non-Jew.
Now that we have the land of Israel and are for the most part secure, it is time for us to escape the exilic mentality, or in other words, to renew our civilisation.
We need to once again not only learn as Jews, but to see the world as Jews.