Festival Spiral
Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Festival SpiralBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
Early in the morning of April 8, 1981, I gathered with several hundred other people at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, to watch the sun rise and to bless it in what is surely the rarest and perhaps the oddest of all Jewish ceremonies -- Birchat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun, that comes only once every 28 years. It commemorates, according to ancient tradition, the moment when God created the sun in the first place.
Ancient Jewish tradition (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 59b) teaches: "Whoever sees the sun at its tekufah [transformative cycle-marker], the moon in its power, the stars [or planets] in their orbits, and the signs of the zodiac in their orderly progress, should say, 'Baruch oseh ma'aseh v'reshit. Blessed be the Doer of Deeds of "In the Beginning [Creation]."
Blessing of the Sun: Looking Forward: April 8, 2009
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Festival SpiralBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Early in the morning of April 8, 2009, Jewish communities (and whoever wants to join them) will have a teaching opportunity that comes only once every 28 years: the festival of Birkat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun.
In ancient rabbinic tradition, it commemorates the moment when God created the sun in the first place. In modern practice, it fits well into today's crisis of global "scorching" and the search for sun-based sources of sustainable and renewable energy. So spiritual communities other than Judaism might well join in blessing the sun on that day -- and during the months before and after.
YOM HASHOAH: MOURNERS' KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE
Darfur | Interreligious Relations | War, Peace, & the Jewish Community | Festival Spiral | Death and MourningMay 1, 2008 is Yom HaShoah (the Day of Remembrance of the Nazi Holocaust), observed one day earlier in the Jewish calendar than usual, because of not wanting to observe it on Friday as Shabbat is coming into the world.
It seems especially fitting to use as the Mourners Kaddish for today a rendition in Aramaic, Hebrew, and English of the MOURNERS' KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE that we at The Shalom Center have developed.(See three paragraphs below). Though it is of course a Jewish prayer, we offer the interpretive English translation below, in the hope it may be spiritually helpful for many people of many other traditions as well.
Whom do we mourn? -- Israelis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Americans?
Israeli-Palestinian Collision | Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace | War, Peace, & the Jewish Community | Festival SpiralBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
The day before Israelis celebrate the 60th anniversary of independence, they will pause for "Yom HaZikaron” (Day of Remembrance) to mourn those Israelis killed in various wars with the various Arab states and the Palestinian people over the last two generations.
In 2008, especially as we observe this 60th anniversary, we may need to rethink whom we should mourn –- especially since recently, there has been a concerted effort to persuade American Jews to publicly mourn the deaths of Israeli civilians killed in attacks by Palestinians. That effort intensified with the deaths of eight students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in March, 2008.
Blessing the Sun, April 8, 2009
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Festival SpiralOn April 8, 2009, the 28-year cycle of the Jewish ceremony of Blessing the Sun will come 'round again. Below you will find the essay on the celebration on April 8, 1981, of this extraordinary event -- one of the least-known but most joyful of Jewish ceremonies -- from my book SEASONS OF OUR JOY (Beacon Press). Let us begin to plan for 2009. -- Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Today [April 8, 1981] , as I complete this book, is perhaps the strangest of all the seasons of our joy for it will not come again for twenty eight years. It is the day of the Blessing of the Sun Birchat Ha Chamah.
On that day, according to the Talmud, the sun returns to where it was in the Heavens on the fourth day of Creation, That was when God set the sun and the moon to "serve as signs for the seasons." (Gen. 1:14). So today it is in a sense the season of the seasons, the cycle of the birth of all our cycles.
Sacred Food, Sacred Festivals: The Jewish Year as a Celebration of Nourishment
Environmental Justice | Sacred Foods | Festival SpiralHOW FOOD FRAMES THE FESTIVALS:
THE JEWISH PATTERN
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
The cycle of Jewish festivals has become intimately connected with specific foods, and the themes of the festivals lend themselves to focusing on specific aspects of what makes food sacred.
DAYS OF AWE: ROSH HASHANAH THROUGH YOM KIPPUR (Evening September 12, through September 22, 2007)
Rosh Hashanah is symbolically connected with eating apple slices dipped in honey. The apple evokes the round cycle of the year as it begins, and the honey hopes for its sweetness. The festival focuses on ten days (traditionally known as the Days of Awe) of tshuvah/ turning one's self in a new direction that culminate in Yom Kippur, a day of not eating or drinking at all.
Original 1969 Freedom Seder
Pesach | Festival SpiralRabbi Arthur Waskow, 6/24/2005
[This new version of the Passover Haggadah was published by Ramparts Magazine in February 1969. Its origins are explained in its Preface, below. For the fuller story, see the Preface to my book GODWRESTLING — ROUND 2. It seems to have been the first Haggadah, certainly the first widely circulated, that celebrated the liberation of other peoples as well as the liberation of the Jewish people.
Exploring "Shalom" with Teachers from The Shalom Center
Peace | Justice | Commentary | Earth | Lifetime Spiral | Prayer | Festival Spiral | CommunityRabbis Berman & Waskow; National Organizer Lenchner, 8/25/2004
Rabbi Phyllis Berman and Rabbi Arthur Waskow have been leading prayer services and teaching in both mulltireligious gatherings (e.g. conferences called by Jobs with Justice, the Religiou
