Commentary: Conflict over Continuity; the Lesson of the Hebrew Calendar

Two strategies for Jewish survival are struggling for dominance in the Jewish community: withdrawal vs. integration.

Withdrawal promises less assimilation at the cost of moving to the margins of society. But this policy risks high (fatal?) levels of irrelevance and passing up many rewards and pleasures of modern culture.

Integration promises the rewards of affluence and being in the center of the action in American society but risks high (fatal?) levels of assimilation. Which policy should we choose?

In a little-noticed gesture-the insertion of a `duplicate’ month of Adar (Adar Sheni) after the Adar which begins on January 31,1995-the Hebrew calendar offers us the classical rabbis’ advice on this matter.

Rejecting both extremes, the rabbis suggest that integration is the preferred way – but distinctive models, memories and ritual practices are needed to integrate successfully.

Let me explain: the Hebrew calendar is primarily lunar. The new month (rosh chodesh) begins with the “reappearance” of the moon every 29 days, 12 hours, and 44.05 minutes.

Major holidays occur at special points (Passove and Sukkot at the half-mon, on the fifteenth day after, etc.). Since the 10th century, Jews have counted the lunar years based on a supposed creation model. (This year is by convention-not fact- 5755 since creation.)

By contrast, the general calendar is a solar calendar. Its years are dated to a supposed Christian model. (This year is by convention-not fact- 1995 since the birth of Jesus.)

The calendar is a distinctive cultural element. Living by someone else’s calendar is the road to assimilation. As part of Stalin’s war on Jewish culture in Russia, for example, Jews were prevented from printing and circulating Hebrew calendars.

To achieve maximum separation, the Jewish calendar should be kept totally separate from the general calendar.

Yet the rabbis in the Talmud, who formalized the Hebrew calendar, created a system whereby it is synchronized with the general (solar) calendar.

The drew authority from the Torah’s instruction that the holiday of Passover is to occur in the spring (“Remember this day that you went out of Egypt, the house of bondage in the month of Aviv (spring)” – Exodus 13:3-4).

Since the lunar year is 354 days long and the solar year is 365 days, Hebrew holidays would occur 11 days earlier in the solar cycle every year.

Unadjusted, Passover would move into the winter time and continue to wander through the year.

To coordinate the two calendars, the rabbis instructed us to insert an extra lunar month regularly into the Hebrew calendar. The rabbis established this lunar-solar calendar in opposition to the Dead Sea Sect, which followed a solar model, and against those who would follow a pure lunar scheme.

Had the rabbis adopted a pure solar or lunar calendar, Jews would have been more integrated and more assimilated-or more separated and insulated-in every culture they inhabited.

A solar calendar would have integrated Jew in Christian and Western culture and segregated them much more in Muslim countries. A pure lunar calendar would have encouraged Jewish integration- and assimilation-in Muslim culture (which follows an unadjusted lunar calendar), but Jews would have been more out of step with Christian civilization.

By confirming a lunar-solar calendar, the rabbis offered a model for the best strategy to live a vital Jewish life without assimilating or becoming irrelevant.

They rejected the way of maximum withdrawal and the way of maximum integration. A Jewry, segregated from the general culture, is less likely to assimilate casually-but under such conditions, Jewish religion and culture become marginalized.

When Jews are totally separated from general society, Jewish holy days and inner life become ghettoized. This raises the danger that Judaism will only guide private life and will be lived separated from work and societal maintenance that are the central life activities.

Then Judaism may become a religious side show with little visibility; Jew will play no significant role in the general society and have little say on its great issues.

Such a Judaism can easily become antiquarian and quaint, a private hobby for the few. This is wrong. As Rabbi Soloveitchik put it: “[ideally] the halachah [= Judaism] is not hermetically enclosed within the confines of cult sanctuaries, but penetrates into every nook and cranny of life” (Halakhic Man, p.94).

The alternative policy is to be deeply involved in the general society. Since “the Jewish people see their own life as bound up with the fate of existence as a whole” (Halakhic Man, p. 107), the goal must be the “actualization of its [Judaism’s] principles in the `real world'” (Ibid., p.94).

Engagement in the general culture is appropriate and necessary. But to prevent the danger that total integration will lead to assimilation, the rabbis strengthened Jewry with defining ethical values and practices, with holy days and rituals that enable Jews to be distinctive and participatory at the same time.

The traditionalist Orthodox point to surging assimilation and charge that Jews who have joined wholeheartedly in modern culture- from Modern Orthodox to the secular- have sold out for a mess of pottage (i.e., affluence and comfort).

Traditionalists claim that they alone are committed enough to give up the pleasures of modernity and spiritually tough enough to cut loose from the Jews who are hopelessly tainted by modernity. They ask to be supported to survive on behalf of all Jews.

The calendar suggests that the effort would better be spent on arming Jews with observances and values to guide them and distinguish them inside modern culture.

Not either/or but both/and is the preferred Jewish way. Universalism and particularism, heaven and earth, ethics and ritual – is the authentic Jewish way.

Since American Jewish acculturation has spilled over into assimilation, a Jewish renaissance is needed to achieve the right balance.

The more integrated Jews need to deepen their learning and practice so they can participate and stand out within American culture. When Purim and Passover finally arrive this year (13 months after the last ones!), let your practice confirm the continuing Jewish capacity to be a “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:3) – to the world!