(HOST) Commentator Michael Cohen is a rabbi who devotes his time to peace and the environment, so thoughts about how we measure a year lead him to hope – for what the New Year may bring.
(COHEN) This time of year, I often think of Pete Seegers song based on Ecclesiastes, made popular by the Byrds: To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn), There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn), And a time for every purpose, under Heaven. I’m thinking of it today as I change the calendar and a new year begins. But what is a year? Simply put, it’s 365 days; or the time it takes the earth to complete one revolution around the sun.
But how do we measure that period? To put in it another way, what is the meter and rhythm, of our year? In the beginning of
the Book of Genesis we’re told that two great lights, the sun and the moon were placed in the sky to serve as signs to set time, days and years.
Most of the world operates by the Gregorian Calendar, established by Pope Gregory in 1582. It’s a solar based calendar – 365 days plus a leap day every fourth year. It replaced the Julian Calendar of Julius Caesar. There was initial opposition from the Protestant world but eventually it was widely adopted. Great Britain and the American colonies began using it in 1752.
To make the adjustment from the Julian Calendar, 11 days had to be added. September 2nd, 1752 was followed the next day by September 14th. George Washington was born on February 11th, 1732. But after the Gregorian Calendar was established his birthday was celebrated on February 22nd (until the Monday Holiday Bill, but that’s another story).
Next week on January 10th Muslims around the world will celebrate the Muslim New Year. The Muslim Calendar is a purely lunar calendar of 12 lunar months. Lunar months are either 29 or 30 days, so over 12 cycles you get 354 days.
Therefore a lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar calendar. This means that every three years your birthday moves "back" a month compared to the Gregorian calendar. Don’t like your birthday in the cold of winter? Wait 18 years and you’ll be able to celebrate it in the summer!
Since Jewish holidays need to fall in particular seasons, the Jewish calendar is both lunar and solar – or lunisolar. So are the Chinese, Buddhist, Hindu, Tibetan, and Korean calendars, combining both the moon and sun, or to put it better, the moon and the seasons. To accomplish that, a lunar month is added every few years. This is why the Jewish holidays seem to float about when compared to the Gregorian Calendar.
The present Jewish year is 5768, while the New Muslim Year will be 1429, and for most of the world today is 2008. Different years and different ways that we calculate those years, yet across all those differences we all somehow seem to know what day it is. Perhaps that’s where we can start to make the closing line of the song a reality for the New Year, "A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late."
Rabbi Michael Cohen is the Director of Special Projects for the Arava* Institute for Environmental Studies.