Our Calendar

Our calendar is a perfectly designed system. From the macro level of each day to the macro multi-year cycles, the calendar is a basic building block of Jewish life. While our days are measured against the solar calendar (“it was evening and it was morning” Gen 1:5) and Shabbat comes every seventh day whether we will it or not, the calculation of the months are for the Jewish people to determine (“this month is for you the first of the months” Ex 12:2).

Our months are marked by the moon, each beginning in the darkness of the new moon. The word for month is ḥodesh from ḥadash meaning “new” (see R’ Ye'ela’s commentary from last week). The fifteenth of each month is signified by the full moon. The festive times in the holiday cycle are on the fifteenth of the month.

In ancient days, before the advent of widespread artificial lighting, the night belonged to the darkness. The brightest nights were when the moon was in her fullness. If we are trying to throw a party into the wee hours of the morning, it helps to have some light for people to stumble home by. Additionally, the pilgrimage festivals of Passover and Sukkot occur on the fifteenth, giving any lagging pilgrims the opportunity to travel by night as well as day.

Each lunar month has a variable length of 29 to 30 days. This variance, and the addition of an intercalculary month, keeps the lunar calendar in line with the solar calendar. That is, the Hebrew calendar avoids the temporal drift that affects the lunar Islamic calendar, causing Ramadan to occur in any season. Nowadays our calendar is mathematically fixed, but that was not always the case.

Originally, as recorded in Mishnah Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the month was determined by eyewitness testimony. These witnesses would see the new moon and report to the Sanhedrin (“High Court”) in Jerusalem. The leaders of the Court would interview the witnesses, asking if they saw the moon “in front of the sun or behind it? to its north or its south? how high was the moon and how wide? in which direction was it tilted?” (Mishnah RH 2:6). Once the testimony was accepted from two valid witnesses, the court would send word to the entire Jewish people, both in the Land and in the Diaspora.

Originally, they would light torches on the mountaintops from Jerusalem all the way to Babylon (think “the beacons are lit, Gondor calls for aid” from Tolkien’s Return of the King). Once a torch was lit on the hill of Beit Baltin, the torchbearer would wave the flame “back and forth and up and down until the entire Diaspora [meaning Babylon] was seen aflame like a bonfire.” The calendar is what connects the Diaspora to the Land. No matter where we live, we live under the same sky.

This moon is Marḥeshvan, the eighth month of the Hebrew calendar. When I was young, I was taught that name Marḥeshvan means “bitter” Ḥeshvan. The month has barely started, why is Ḥeshvan so bitter? It is not because of the tannins or that we let the month steep to long (please talk to me about tea), but a reference to the lack of special days this month, other than Rosh Ḥodesh. Another explanation for the name is that Mar refers to a “drip (of water)” as Isaiah wrote “the nations are like a drop from a bucket” (Is 40:15).

This could be a reference to the start of the rainy season in the Levant, where the first drops are descending from the sky, per our request at the end of Sukkot. Speaking of rain, tradition holds that the Great Flood of the Bible began in the month of Marḥeshvan – connecting this new moon to this week’s Torah portion.

Additionally, according to Ashkenazi custom, Ḥeshvan is one of the two months subject to the Fast of BeHaB. That is when, following the aforementioned festivals of Passover and Sukkot, we fast from dawn until nightfall on the first Monday, the first Thursday, and then again on the following Monday (SA Oraḥ Ḥayyim 492). Out of respect for the festive month, this fast is pushed back into the subsequent month – from Nisan to Iyyar, and from Tishrei to Marḥeshvan. The name BeHaB comes from letters that stand in the days of the week counting up towards Shabbat – א for Sunday, ב for Monday, ג for Tuesday, and so on. The origin of this fasting tradition is unknown.

One proposed idea is that this fast atones for any inadvertent transgressions committed during the week long festival, like working during the intermediary days or improper conduct with the opposite sex. Another possible reason for this fast operates as an extra opportunity to pray for rain in Marḥeshvan and for the crops in Iyyar. Nowadays, this fast is not as widely practiced is it once was.

Agriculturally, when Marḥeshvan arrives, the fields are empty and the festivals are completed. The storehouses are bursting and the winevat is overflowing. There is no more work to be done. Most of our ancestors did not have to go back to the office after Sukkot. This month, Marḥeshvan, was a time to relax and tighten one’s belt – literally – because the food in the pantry is all that there was until the world comes back to life in the spring. The rains are coming and it is time to stay inside. The major upside of this time of year is that we just rolled the Torah scroll back to the beginning. If we are going to be bored, we might as well reread the best stories that the tradition has to offer.

Going back to the name Marḥeshvan, neither of the proposed explanations are very satisfying. Recently, my teacher R’ Dr. Wexler taught that the Hebrew name Marḥeshvan is a corruption of the original Akkadian name of the month - waraḥsamnu, from the roots w-r-ḥ “moon” and s-m-n “eight”. During the Babylonian exile, the Jewish calendar adopted the names of the months from their fellow Semitic-speaking Mesopotamian neighbors. Over the generations, the sounds in this word experienced a metathesis where the m sound and w switched places, giving us Marḥeshvan. This gives us one last connection to this week’s Torah portion – this metathesis is a reminder of the Tower of Babel (Babble), a legend about the legacy of language-mixing and confusion in an ancient city between the rivers that tried to build a ziggurat to the top of the sky. Jews have no need of ziggurats or cathedrals because, as Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, we have “a palace built in time.”