Five years ago I was surprised, not to say ambushed, by the Jewish New Year in early September. What the heck? Honestly, even with all that’s happened since then, the Jewish calendar is still a mystery to me.
I know *something* about it, of course. I know (because I just looked it up again) that it’s a calendar with 12 months of 29 or 30 days. I know that it’s somehow based on both the moon and the sun, although I haven’t cared enough to learn exactly how it does that. I know that it syncs with the Gregorian calendar only once every 19 years. Well, sort of syncs:
- A 19-year Jewish cycle can span 6,939 to 6,942 days, while a 19-year Gregorian span is almost always 6,940 days. (Ed’s note: Almost always 6,940 days? Truly, this whole calendar thing seems dodgy to me.)
- The Jewish day begins at sunset/nightfall, while the Gregorian day begins at midnight, creating a built-in partial-day shift.
- Because of these minute daily adjustments, a complete, flawless mathematical lock of both exact systems takes millions of years, but for practical human life, it resets every 19 years.
Now, I would normally hold out for the complete flawless mathematical lock of both exact systems–I mean, why not?–but when the flawless option entails waiting for millions of years I can absolutely live with a rule-of-thumb. (At my age, waiting for the whole 19-year cycle might be just as out of the question.) As for the practical aspects, I’ve settled nicely into Acceptance Mode, where I just wait for someone to tell me when (Jewish) things happen this (Gregorian) year.
Acceptance, however, does not prevent surprise, as when some big Jewish thing pops up where I wasn’t particularly expecting it. When things coincide in the world that weren’t stored together in my head. Hello! On Friday, for instance, for the first time since I’ve been paying attention, September 11 memorial observances in the morning were followed by the start of Jewish New Year celebrations at sunset. My slight disorientation is akin to how I’d feel if the mid-June anniversary of my mother’s death suddenly landed on Canada Day next year.
It got me to thinking about different ways of being in the world but not entirely of it. For me, it’s a Jewish-year cycle wandering through the standard calendar in basically unpredictable ways. For you, it might be an enduring family or personal tradition with a variable timing or location. For some–shift workers, remote workers, long-haul truck drivers, farmers–it’s a work schedule with a rhythm not aligned to the Monday-to-Friday work week, two-day weekend, and fixed statutory holidays.
Being a little off the norm isn’t a bad thing; it’s not necessarily a good thing, either. It’s what we make of it. We can feel disoriented or excluded, or we can appreciate our different perspective: different from last year or different from other people’s as the case may be. And appreciation starts, I think, with being open to surprise.
