Parshas Tetzaveh/Tzav 5771

Rabbi YY Jacobson

• February 9, 2011
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• 5 Adar I 5771
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  Tradition Vs. Individuality

  Making Peace Between Solar Jews and Lunar Jews

  Rabbi YY Jacobson

  • February 9, 2011

  Change in Tradition

  The changes which The Islamic Brotherhood is proposing for a “free” and democratic Egypt reminds me of this story:

  A few years prior to the Gulf War, Barbara Walters filed a report on gender roles in Kuwait. In the report, Barbara noted that, in traditional Islamic fashion, women customarily walked approximately ten feet behind their husbands.

  Barbara returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives.

  Curious about this change in tradition, Barbara approached one of the Kuwati women and asked for an explanation.

  "This is marvelous," Barbara said. "What has enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?"

  "Land mines!" replied the Kuwati woman.

  Two Roads

  Two divergent roads have defined the voyage of our people. If I was asked to sum up the core of all Jewish arguments from time immemorial till today I would say it is the conflict between the sun and the moon, between “Solar Jews” and “Lunar Jews.” The first group believes in consistency; the latter group cherishes creativity.

  There were always the Jews whose primary focus has always been on the need to confirm to the unchangeable truths of life: tradition, law, moral boundaries, justice, ritual, and faith. These do not change with time, space, or circumstances. Just because Voltaire gave us Enlightenment, Nietzsche taught us about the Will for Power, Tocqueville explained to us democracy, Freud discovered the subconscious, Barak Obama called for change, and Egypt is at the brink of transformation, our core values—what makes us human and Jewish—still do not undergo change. “What was good for my great-great grandfather is good for me,” these Jews rooted in tradition exclaim. “Learn from the sun,” they say. It has been doing the same thing for the past 5771 years and is still shines strongly and effectively. We shall follow its example.

  In contrast, the lunar Jews focus on the constant changes in history: The fluctuating trends, the cultural developments, the novel inventions, the technological revolutions, and the newly discovered wisdom. These Jews allow their ears to absorb the sounds of progression and the alterations in the human climate. They aspire to define a Judaism—or a philosophy of life—that would be relevant to the contemporary conversation of humanity in its journey toward progress. “Learn from the moon,” they exclaim. Every day it is different. It waxes, it wanes; it even disappears once in a while. It forever assumes diverse shapes and demeanors.

  Their anthem is this:
  Rooted in the tombs of yesterday
  Growing, thriving toward the sky.
  Not satisfied with answers carved in clay
  Give us new life or we will die.

  In some ways, it was this perspective which gave birth to the contemporary Jewish world. As the winds of modernity swept Europe, as Enlightenment and Emancipation cast its glow on a downtrodden nation, millions of Jews felt that clinging to the life style and traditions of their ancestors would impede their bright journey to a new world order. In the process, they bid farewell to the old to embrace the new; they said goodbye to the yore to embrace the “your.”

  Each of the two perspectives, the solar and the lunar, make for a good argument. The solar Jews explain to us how transient lunar Jews are. In their passion to remain relevant today, they forfeit the wisdom of yesteryear. In their ambition to grow tall, they detach from the roots that have given them their original sap.

  “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong,” Charles Wadsworth once said.

  The lunar Jews accuse solar Jews with monotony, repression, and dogma, stifling the new energy of today. In their hope to continue the chain of history by adding their identically matching link, they fail to leave room for creativity and self expression.

  Two Approaches to Business

  Often, the conflict between the lunar and solar personalities emerge in a company, a business, or an organization.

  The CEO, David, is adventurous, creative, courageous, and fearless of risks. He feels that during 2011 the company has to embrace a new model to bring it over the top, though it has not done things this way since its inception. Yet the senior Vice President adheres to a different code: Conservative approaches and investments, calculated growth strategies, continuing the models of yesterday which proved successful. 

  At a board meeting trying to reconcile between the two, strong words are hurled: The VP accuses the CEO, thirty years younger than him, in being volatile, impulsive, and impetuous. “This young know-it-all brat will take a successful company, earning its fixed annual revenue, and run it into the ground because of his irresponsible and youthful decisions.” The CEO does not remain silent (Rabbis! Use audience discretion): “Henry is an alter kacker,” he shouts. “He moves in the speed of a turtle. His consistency and regularity have led us to paralysis, stagnation, and deadness. With him at the helm, we will become irrelevant.”

  Two Spouses

  Often the same dichotomy flares up in a marriage:

  She is spontaneous, fun loving, bursting with ever-changing moods and emotions. Occasionally, her luminous personality shines like the full moon; equally frequent, however, are periods of sadness and inner struggle. She waxes and wanes. And sometimes she wants to disappear from the world for two days, just like the moon.

  He is solid, dependable, consistent, as regular as tomorrow's sunrise. When he has a flight, he packs two days before and shows up at the airport 3 and-a-half hours before his flight. He has been leaving the house at the same minute—8:19AM—for the past 36 years to catch the 8:30 train. At work he's efficient, productive and a stalwart upholder of company policy. He has not been late to an appointment since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even the Landing on the Moon did not excite him enough to stay up later than usual. After all he is a sun… He goes to bed, with one book on his night table, because he never picks up a second book before he finished reading the first. That, in his mind, is frivolous and irresponsible… (His wife, on the other hand, goes to bed with six books, so that when she gets bored of the first book—usually after three pages—she can pick up the second book.)

  As can be expected, theirs is not an easy marriage…

  Between Men and Women

  We can’t make generalizations. But the Kabbalah talks about masculinity vs. femininity in terms of solar vs. lunar energy. Men can often be more detached and hence not subjected to change and flux. Women are often more invested in life, more emotionally sensitive to their environment, and more vulnerable to internal change. In fact the feminine body follows the orbit of the moon—undergoing each month of a cycle of growth and decline. (1)  

  Someone once described the definition of a man in the following way:

  Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.

  A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.

  You can go to the bathroom without a support group.

  You can leave the motel bed unmade.

  You can kill your own food.

  You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.

  Wedding plans take care of themselves.

  If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still be your friend.

  Your underwear is $10 for a three-pack.

  Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.

  You don't have to clean your apartment if the meter reader is coming.

  You can quietly watch a game with your buddy for hours without ever thinking "He must be mad at me."

  You can drop by to see a friend without having to bring a little gift.

  If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you just might become lifelong friends.

  Your pals can be trusted never to trap you with "So, notice anything different?"

  You are not expected to know the names of more than five colors.

  You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.

  The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.

  One wallet and one pair of shoes, one color, all seasons.

  You can "do" your nails with a pocketknife.

  Chanukah gift shopping can be accomplished for 25 relatives, one day before, in 45 minutes.

  And so the conflict between the moon and the sun manifests itself in almost every arena in life: Solar parents and their lunar teen-agers; solar conservatives and loony—I mean lunar—liberals (crowd discretion!!); the rock and the wave; the traditionalist and the revolutionary; the organized technocrat, and spontaneous dancer.

  Who Prevails?

  Each of us tends to deal with this conflict differently. But the common denominator for most is that we tend to overemphasize one of the two approaches, so that we can form some sense of identity. Sometimes as a society we give one approach exclusive power when the other has dominated our attention for a long time. It becomes a pendulum swing from one extreme to another: Embracing art and creativity until we’ve totally lost all sense of moral truth, and then giving total control to discipline and dogma until there is no distinguishable personality left in us.

  Judaism, in its profound understanding of human nature and the process of history, challenges us to embark on the road less traveled. And here I must invite you to become astronomers for the next eight minutes. (For those of you with ADD, like me, please stay focused. I promise you that if you remain attentive, you will get it!). And it has to do with the Jewish month we presently find ourselves in.

  [Rabbis! Do not be afraid to share the following ideas. But make sure you get it well, so you can deliver it in an animated and clear way. Know your crowd. Some crowds will appreciate this immensely. Of course you may want to cut out the details and deliver only the main point; but you should probably still give them some of the details. If you understand it, they will.]

  Two Calendars

  There are two types of calendars used by most of civilization today: the Western calendar and the Muslim calendar. The Western calendar follows the solar cycle, while the Muslim calendar follows the lunar cycle. The primary features of both calendars are the month and the year. Yet their duration can be calculated through either the sun or the moon.

  Let us go on a little journey through these two calendars (1).

  The sun completes its orbits around the earth (or as some scientists like to put it today, the earth completes its orbit around the son) every 365 days (2). That makes for a year. If you divide these 365 days into 12 sections, you get approximately 30 days in each section. This makes up the months.

  This is how the Western calendar works. The months are not defined by the completion of any particular orbit; they are a human creation, a product of the mind dividing the sun's orbit into 12 sections (3).

  The moon, on the other hand, completes its orbit around the earth (or the earth completes its orbit around the moon) every 29 1/2 days, 12 times as fast as the sun. That makes for a month. Now, when you multiply the lunar month—29 or 30 days (4)—12 times, you have a year.

  Such a year, comprised of 12 lunar months, adds up to 354 days (5), 11 days shorter than a solar year of 365 days. When a new lunar year begins (the beginning of the 13th month), the solar year has not yet finished its previous year and orbit.

  This is how the Muslim calendar works. As with the months in the Western calendar, the years in the Muslim calendar are not defined by an objective astronomical reality, but are a creation of the human mind multiplying the moon's orbit 12 times (6).

  This is why Ramadan—the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and intimate relations for the entire month from dawn until sunset—can fall out either in winter or summer or any other season. Sometimes Ramadan is in hot August (like this year, 2011), and sometimes in cold February. Why? Because the Muslim calendar, unlike the Western calendar, has nothing to do with the sun and its seasons. It completely revolves around the moon.

  The Problem

  As long as you don't mix the two calendars, you're fine. But this is where the Jews came in and generated some confusion. The Jewish calendar is unique in that it integrates these two very different cycles of time—the solar and the lunar—into a harmonious system.

  The very first mitzvah given to the Jewish people—even before their Exodus from Egypt—specified the formula by which to set the cycles of Jewish time, and it gave birth to the most complex calendar ever employed (7).

  The Torah specifies that Jewish months need to be established by the lunar orbit, not the solar orbit. We love the moon.

  But here is the dilemma: The Torah also instructs the Jewish people to celebrate their holidays (observed on certain days of the lunar month), during specific solar seasons. For example, the holiday of Passover, beginning on the 15th day of the lunar month of Nissan, must also be the time of spring as defined by the solar cycle (8).

  Now, if the lunar and solar year had enjoyed an identical number of days, this system would work perfectly: The lunar and solar months would travel together side by side. But since the lunar year is 354 days, and the solar year is 365 days, each passing year creates a discrepancy of 11 days between the two cycles. In the course of 10 years, the lunar year falls behind the solar year some 110 days! The result of this would be that Passover, celebrated in the lunar month of Nissan, would eventually be in the winter or fall.

  The Solution

  To confront this problem, the Jewish calendar introduced the "leap year." Every few years, a 13th month consisting of 30 days is added to the lunar year. This way the “lunar year” catches up to the “solar year.” This is done approximately every three years, when the discrepancy between the lunar and solar year reaches 33 days. The added month synchronizes them, more-or-less.  

  [Specifically, this is how it works. The Jewish calendar follows a 19-year cycle. Seven out of these 19 years - years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 - consist of 13, instead of 12, months.

  Let us take a journey through this 19-year cycle:

  During the first two years of the cycle, the lunar year falls behind the solar year 22 days. Therefore, by the third year of the cycle, when 36 lunar months (three lunar years) would have set it back almost 34 days in relation to the annual seasonal solar cycle, we add a 13th month to the lunar year. Now, we are only four days behind.

  Three years later, now some 38 days behind (almost 34 from three lunar years plus four days behind from before), we repeat the process. Now we are eight days behind.

  Two years later, the lunar year accumulates a deficit of 29 days, so we add once again a month of 30 days to the lunar year. This actually places the lunar year ahead of the solar year, and now the solar year needs to do the catching up!

  And so it goes: every two to three years, an extra month is added to the Jewish lunar year. At the conclusion of each 19-year cycle, the solar and lunar years will be perfectly aligned with each other. Which is why once in 19 years your English and Hebrew birthdays will finally be on the same day. Then we once again resume the cycle.]

  Now, this year in the Jewish calendar, 5711, is one of those leap years. And the Hebrew month in which we presently find ourselves, Adar 1, is exactly such a type of month—an additional 13th month added to our lunar year. For the additional month is always added to the month of Adar, ensuring that the following month, Nissan the month is Passover, is in spring, since the lunar year has now “caught” up to the solar year.

  So in summation, the Jewish people calculate their time according to both the moon and the sun. Our months are the moon's; our years are the sun’s. To ensure that our lunar months keep pace with the solar year, we are constantly attempting to have the moon overcome its 11-day void and catch up to the sun's year.

  Why the Headache?

  But why the need for such headaches? If the Torah wants us to synchronize our months and years with the solar seasons, let it establish a solar calendar to begin with! Why the need to follow a lunar system and then try to make up for its flaws, shortcomings and mishaps?

  The answer to this enigma is that in Judaism we measure and calculate our days the same way in which we measure and calculate our inner lives. We define time in the same way that we define our mission in life. And our mission in life is not to become either lunar or solar, but to integrate these two forces. Sure, the synthesis of two celestial beings which possess differing patterns is never easy; it always requires tuning, fine-tuning, checks and balances, adjustments, vigilance, humility, and the readiness to challenge ourselves. But any other way would be neglecting a vital component of our nature and of our objective in life.

  And that is why people who run from marriage are mistaking. Yes, to synchronize two personalities is not always a smooth journey, especially when one is a sun and the other—a moon.  Yet it is in this attempt to bring together two orbits in which we can fully realize our inner potential.

  For in the Jewish imagination, truth can never be captured via the moon or the son on their own. Both creativity and tradition are critical components of life. And it begins with the source of all: G-d is both never changing and yet forever creating. Stability and innovation are both expressions of G-d’s undefined reality. Uniformity—everything having a common and unifying thread—and multiplicity—everything being distinct and unique—both come from G-d.

  And the same is true concerning tradition vs. innovation: G-d gave man innovative ability, which we ought to utilize to its fullest, and yet, for our creativity to be productive and life affirming, G-d gave us a structure in which to operate. If I forfeit that structure in the name of liberty and self expression, it would be akin to water escaping the “boundaries” of the pot in order to come into direct contact with the fire beneath the pot. The results? No fire left.

  Let’s take the marital structure. Some may argue for completer lunar passion and romance, without solar stable commitment to one person. It may sound exciting, but the results are well known: It undermines rather than enhances the love and trust between a husband and wife, and the person often ends up with nothing.   

  The Clock

  A story: (9)

  For as long as anyone could remember, there was a clock mounted high up on the tallest building in the town. As people would go about their business throughout the day, they would periodically glance upwards, and then automatically check their own watches. Sometimes there would be an inconsistency, and then they would reset their watches to the correct time.

  But times change. A murmur of discontent was heard in an element of the population.

  "Why can't the clock be lower down, at eye level, more accessible?""The clock is so high—it's a pain in the neck (quite literally!) to always have to look up at it."

  "Why can't the clock be lower down, at eye level, more accessible?"

  "What if the clock is wrong? It's practically impossible to change it. Now, if it were installed on a lower building, it would be so much easier to fix when it will break."

  The locals were vocal, and the vocals were local. A town meeting was called; a decision was made. The clock was lowered.

  Then a funny thing started happening. When people noticed a discrepancy between the town clock and their watches, more often than not they would now adjust the time… on the town clock. "After all, I know that I have the right time…" Then someone else would come by and re-adjust the clock… Within a short period of time, the clock had been fiddled with so often, that when the clock said 12—you did know it if it was 12, or 1, or maybe 4. The consensus was that it was no longer relevant—and the clock was consigned to the trash heap.

  Friends, we love the moon. We must be fresh, creative, passionate, and explore and actualize all of our individual resources. But the leap year teaches us, that our inner moon—our inner lunacy—must, once every few years, be synchronized with our inner sun. We need a clock on top of the tower, to tell us the right time, to define what is right and what is wrong. If not, if we take down the clock and allow every individual to adjust it according to his or her whim, we are left with a generation left without any focus, direction and vision.

  Be a moon, by all means. But do not be afraid to take on a commitment, to become consistently involved in a cause. [You may want to give suggestion.] For it is only in the struggle to synthesize the sun and the moon, that the full capacity and majesty of the human being can be expressed.

  (This essay is based on the Rebbe’s talk during the month of Tishrei 5744 (1983), which was a leap year. See: The public letter of the Rebbe dated 6 Tishrei 5744; Sichas 6 and 13 Tishrei 5744. It is worthwhile to review the letter and the Sichos inside, as the Rebbe explored this theme in great detail and with many examples.)

  1) See Maamarei Admur Hazaken Einyanin, the maamar on Rosh Chodesh, where the Alter Rebbe states clearly, that the period of the woman mirrors the moon
  1*)For a full understanding of the subject below, see “Understanding the Jewish Calendar” (Feldheim Press).

  2) To be exact, the solar orbit is slightly less than 365.25 days.

  3) Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra puts it thus (Exodus 12:2): "The sun has no month."

  4) Since the moon completes its orbit, as mentioned, every 29.5 days, and we don't want to have a new month beginning in the middle of a day, six lunar months out of a year consist of 29 days, while six other lunar months are comprised of 30 days.

  5) The exact figure may be 353, 354 or 365 days.

  6) Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra puts it thus (Exodus 12:2): "The moon has no year."

  7) See Rambam Hilchos Kedush Hachodesh and references noted in commentaries.

  8) The start of spring, also known as the vernal equinox, is the point when the sun's center crosses the equator from South to North, March 21 on the Gregorian calendar.
  9) From http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/623897/jewish/The-Clock-on-the-Tower.htm
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