Thursday, April 9, 2009

Birkat Ha-Chammah (sp?)--birthday of the sun

Yesterday morning at 6:30 AM in Laguna Beach, my congregation met to celebrate a holiday I knew nothing about. It is called Birkat Ha-Chammah, blessing of the sun, and it is celebrated every 28 years. The holiday commemorates the day that the sun was supposed to have been created. According to Genesis (and no, I don't literally believe this account; nor does anyone in my community), the sun was created on the 4th day of creation, a Weds., if you say that Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday the last, which Jews do. So every time this holiday is celebrated, it is on a Weds. It's every 28 years because the idea is to accumulate a week of years before you celebrate it again (7x4=28)... those guys and their numerology!
The holiday has been traced quite specifically to a particular person at the end of the 15th century, who declared that from this time forward, every 28 years, the holiday should be celebrated. I do not remember the person's name, but I think it was in Spain, just before the Jews were expelled. So perhaps the times called for every kind of desperate measure and innovative form of worship they could create.
I can tell you that this was a terrific experience. The congregation, or at least about 70-100 of us, gathered together by the ocean to watch the sun come up and learn about this "new" holiday--new to us, anyhow. We celebrated the occasion with a carefully chosen set of poems by poets like E.E. Cummings, David Ignatow, and others, and sang songs by the Beatles ("Here Comes the Sun," during which the sun graced us with its actual appearance!) and Cat Stevens' "Blackbird" in addition to the regular prayers and songs included in a service. The time flew by, and we were all entranced by the idea of the holiday and the sounds, smells, and sights of the ocean around us. It made up for the idea that this was going to be a long day, when many of us would be preparing seders for the evening to come and even those of us who would be merely guests (like myself) had many hours of wakefulness and hunger ahead. At the end of the service, we signed our names to forms that were placed in a time capsule to be opened 28 years hence and shared our breakfasts with each other. I brought a big container of fruit salad that included gigantic marionberries, the size of a giant's thumb, which were as sweet as they appeared (something that happens very seldom). Great way to start the morning!

2 comments:

Lou said...

What a wonderful, awe-inspiring celebration. This time of Passover is turning out to be much better than you thought! I hope the Seder was very good, too.

Robbi N. said...

Passover has definitely perked me up!