ברכות נט, ב
תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: הָרוֹאֶה חַמָּה בִּתְקוּפָתָהּ, לְבָנָה בִּגְבוּרָתָהּ, וְכוֹכָבִים בִּמְסִילּוֹתָם, וּמַזָּלוֹת כְּסִדְרָן, אוֹמֵר: ״בָּרוּךְ … עוֹשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית״. וְאֵימַת הָוֵי? אָמַר אַבָּיֵי: כׇּל עֶשְׂרִין וּתְמָנְיָא שְׁנִין, וְהָדַר מַחְזוֹר וְנָפְלָה תְּקוּפַת נִיסָן, בְּשַׁבְּתַאי בְּאוּרְתָּא דִּתְלָת נַגְהֵי אַרְבַּע
The Sages taught: One who sees the sun in the beginning of its cycle, the moon in its might, the planets in their orbit, or the signs of the zodiac aligned in their order recites: Blessed…Author of creation. The Gemara asks: And when is it that the sun is at the beginning of its cycle? Abaye said: Every twenty-eight years when the cycle is complete and returns to its genesis, and the Nisan, vernal, equinox, when the spring days and nights are of equal length, falls within the constellation of Saturn on the night of the third and eve of the fourth day of the week, as then their arrangement returns to be as it was when the constellations were first placed in the heavens.
This passage is the source for the rarest blessing in Judaism, known as Birkat HaChammah, the Blessing over the Sun. It can only be said on a Wednesday morning once every 28 years. The last opportunity you had was on Wednesday April 8 2009. Do you remember where you were then? (I was on a flight and I wasn’t the only passenger on the plane who looked out of the window and recited the blessing.) The ceremony was reported in The New York Times and commemorated with a special exhibition at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. But why can this event only be said on a Wednesday every 28 years? Abaye didn’t explain that. But we will.
The calculation of Birkat Hachammah
Abaye’s explanation of when this rare blessing occurs is based on a calculation cited by Shmuel. He claimed that the length of the solar year is exactly 365 days and six hours. And the word exactly is very critical, so remember it. Because the solar year had this regular length, the timing of the seasons would vary predictably, as described in a passage in Eruvin (56a.)
ערובין נו, א
אמר שמואל אין תקופת ניסן נופלת אלא בארבעה רבעי היום או בתחלת היום או בתחלת הלילה או בחצי היום או בחצי הלילה
ואין תקופת תמוז נופלת אלא או באחת ומחצה או בשבע ומחצה בין ביום ובין בלילה ואין תקופת תשרי נופלת אלא או בשלש שעות או בתשע שעות בין ביום ובין בלילה ואין תקופת טבת נופלת אלא או בארבע ומחצה או בעשר ומחצה בין ביום ובין בלילה
ואין בין תקופה לתקופה אלא תשעים ואחד יום ושבע שעות ומחצה ואין תקופה מושכת מחברתה אלא חצי שעה
Shmuel stated: Spring can only occur at the start of one of the four quarters of the day: either at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the night, or in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night.
The summer season can only begin at one and a half or seven and a half hours, which may be in the daytime or at night. Autumn can only begin at the third or ninth hour of the day or at night, and winter can only begin at the fourth and a half hour or the tenth and a half hour, which may be during the day or at night.
And the exact length of every season is ninety-one days seven and a half hours.
Let us untangle all this. The Bible clearly describes the Sun as having been created on the fourth of the seven days of creation (Gen. 1:16–19). In Jewish law, the day legally begins not at midnight, as it does in our Western calendar, but at sundown. So the fourth day, counting from Sunday, begins at sundown on Tuesday evening. According to the rabbis of the Talmud, the Sun was created at the very start of the fourth day of creation, at a time we would recognize today as 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening (assuming that the length of daylight is exactly 12 hours). This time is also assumed by these rabbis to be the vernal equinox, the time we call the start of spring.
To understand Shmuel’s explanation about the times for the start of the seasons, take a look at the table below. Remember that Shmuel’s solar year is exactly 365 days and 6 hours long. Since each of the four seasons occupies exactly one quarter of a year, each season is 91 days and 7.5 hours. Because the Sun was created at 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening (the start of the fourth day, which was spring in that first year of creation), the next season, summer, would begin exactly 91 complete days and 7.5 hours later. Since 91 complete days brings us back to 6 p.m. (but not a Tuesday), the start of summer may be calculated by adding 7.5 hours to the time of the start of spring, which is 1:30 a.m., or 7.5 hours into the night. The first fall season began 7.5 hours later than the first summer, or at 9 a.m., and the first winter began at 4: 30 p.m., or 10.5 hours into the day, assuming that daytime began at 6 a.m. This is outlined in the table and is in keeping with Shmuel’s statements about the start of the seasons.
| Year | Spring | Summer | Fall | Winter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 hours into the night (6 p.m.) |
71⁄2 hours into the night (1:30 a.m.) |
3 hours into the day (9 a.m.) |
101⁄2 hours into the day (4:30 p.m.) |
| 2 | 6 hours into the night (midnight) |
11⁄2 hours into the day (7:30 a.m.) |
9 hours into the day (3 p.m.) |
41⁄2 hours into the night (10:30 p.m.) |
| 3 | 0 hours into the day (6 a.m.) |
71⁄2 hours into the day (1:30 p.m.) |
3 hours into the night (9 p.m.) |
101⁄2 hours into the night (4:30 a.m.) |
| 4 | 6 hours into the day (midday) |
11⁄2 hours into the night (7:30 p.m.) |
9 hours into the night (3 a.m.) |
41⁄2 hours into the day (10:30 a.m.) |
| 5 | Cycle repeats as for Year 1 | |||
According to Shmuel, the start of every fourth spring always occurs at 6 p.m. but does not fall on the same night of the week. It is not difficult to calculate on which night spring will begin every four years if the spring of year one began on a Tuesday. Four whole years later contain sixteen seasons, which each last 91 days and 7.5 hours. Thus, sixteen seasons contain (16 × 91 days + 16 × 7.5 hours) or 1,456 days and 120 hours. Now 120 hours are exactly 5 days, so four years contain 1,461 days, or 208 weeks and 5 days. Because every complete week added to the Tuesday evening start brings us back again to Tuesday evening, we need only add 5 days to the day of the week on which the season began to determine the day of the week on which it will begin four years later. If in the first year, spring began on a Tuesday night, in the fifth year, it will begin on a Sunday night; in the ninth year, it will begin on a Friday night, and so on. In fact, spring will not start at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday until a full twenty-eight years have passed, as we can see from the table below.
| Year | 1 | 5 | 9 | 13 | 17 | 21 | 25 | 29 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evening on which Spring begins: | Tuesday | Sunday | Friday | Wednesday | Monday | Saturday | Thursday | Tuesday |
And so, according to Shmuel’s calendar, in the first year of every twenty-eight-year cycle, at precisely 6 P.M. on a Tuesday, the Sun returns to the exact position on the very same day of the week in which God had placed it at the very start of creation. This is why Abaye—who accepted Shmuel’s solar scheme—codified the blessing of the Sun to be recited at this interval, and the cycle came to be known as the Mahzor Hagadol—the great cycle. Even though the Sun returns to the same position every four years, this return only coincides with a Tuesday evening once every twenty-eight years. Although the Talmud seems to suggest that the blessing be recited on Tuesday evening, when Maimonides codified this ritual, he wrote that it should be performed “on the morning of the fourth day of the week,” which is what happens to this day.
But it’s a Fiction
However, the system of Shmuel that was adopted by Abaye is purely a religious construct, and although it claims to have an astronomical equivalent, there is no solar phenomenon that happens once every twenty-eight years. Let me repeat it so you are completely clear: there is no solar phenomenon that happens once every twenty-eight years.
Shmuel’s length of the solar year (which is of course not the time for the Sun to orbit the Earth, but rather for the Earth to complete one revolution around the Sun) is actually longer than the correct period of orbit, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds. The length of the solar year as calculated by Shmuel is too long by over eleven minutes. And there is one more problem. Shmuel claimed that the seasons each last 91 days and 7.5 hours. But the seasons are not of equal length. This inequality occurs because the speed of the Earth is not constant. As a result, the length of the seasons varies and in the northern hemisphere, winter lasts about eighty-nine days and summer about ninety-three days. Furthermore, the length of daylight varies from place to place and changes over the course of the year. This means that daytime is not always exactly twelve hours, as it was assumed by Shmuel to be for the purposes of his calculations. To further complicate matters, Jewish law adopted another measure of the length of a solar year that is closer to (but still slightly longer than) the true length of the solar year. It is not surprising that one scholar of Judaism referred to the blessing of the Sun as “perhaps the most unusual periodic Jewish ritual currently practiced.” It is not only the rarest blessing; it is the only one we make over an event that is not actually happening.
Birkat Hachammah in Early Modern Jewish History
Despite its rarity and the fact that there is no true solar event occurring at the time of the ritual, the blessing of the Sun has become a much loved event and seems to have become increasingly important to Jews over the last few hundred years. One of the earliest descriptions of the ritual is provided by a student of Rabbi Jacob Moellin (known by the acronym Maharil). Here is the student’s description of preparations for the blessing of the Sun in the spring of 1421:
At that time Maharil told the town beadles to announce in the synagogue on the previous evening (i.e., Tuesday evening) that the next day—Wednesday—everyone should be careful to say the blessing at sunrise “Blessed are you Lord our God, king of the universe, who makes works of creation”...for at the start of every [twenty-eight year] cycle, the Sun returns to the exact spot in which it was placed at the creation of the world. . . .
Isaac Schorr, the rabbi of the town of Gewitsch now in the Czech Republic, described what happened when the weather refused to cooperate for the ritual blessing to be recited in 1757:
The people of the community were eager to serve and to bless by invoking God’s name; they were happy and rejoiced to do the will of their maker, for they cherished a mitzvah at its proper time… Their hopes were disappointed, however, and were turned into despair, for on that day, and the time of the onset of the equinox, the sky was overcast with clouds, and the sun could not be seen at all.
More recently, a solution to the vagaries of the weather was suggested by some rather enthusiastic followers of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, leader of the Satmar Hasidim. They questioned whether a light plane could be hired to carry them above the clouds should the day be overcast, allowing then to perform the ritual blessing above the clouds. Although Rabbi Teitelbaum ruled that this flight was not required, the ritual is clearly one that has become an important, if rare, part of Jewish practice.
The Rabbi who was arrested at Birkat Hachammah
In April 1897 The New York Times reported on the arrest of one rabbi (and the flight of another) as they led a large group that had gathered to recite Birkat Hachammah. The whole things was a bit of a misunderstanding, or as The Times put it, “ The attempt of a foreign citizen [the Rabbi] to explain to an American Irishman [the police officer] an astronomical situation and a tradition of the Talmud was a dismal failure.” Here is the original. Read it through; it is absolutely delightful.
The New York Times, April 8, 1897.
The Widespread Celebration of Birkat Hachammah
It was not only the Orthodox Jewish Community that celebrated the last Birkat Hachammah. Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews also widely participated. For example Temple Beth Israel, a reform synagogue in York, Pennsylvania, encouraged children to attend this “once in a generation, multi-generational event” by joining a service at dawn on the lawn of the temple, followed by a “Dutch-treat breakfast” at a local diner. Other synagogues called on their members to use the event as a way to increase environmental awareness. One suggestion from the Reconstructionist movement was to undertake to “reduce my household’s carbon emissions by 10% by next Passover.” And the comedian Stephen Colbert lampooned the event on his popular cable television show, when he “freed his Jews.”
The next opportunity to say this blessing over the sun will be on Wednesday, 8 April 2037, (23 Nisan 5797). Let us all hope to be there.
