I've been reading the Targum book, Once in 28 Years, about The Blessing of the Sun, Birkat Hachamah.
It's an amazing mitzvah. Last night I caught something on television about it. The interviewer was asking how these complicated calculations could have been done over the millennium.
In the past I've written about the Jewish Calendar, how it alone of all the ancient and modern calendars, takes into account/calculation both the lunar and solar years. Birkat Hachama brings us into an additional dimension.
About my question in this post's title, where was I twenty-eight years ago? I was in Bayit Vegan, Jerusalem, pregnant with my fourth child and first son. I don't remember hearing anything about the mitzvah. Maybe I was just in a less Torani environment and of course, in those days, there weren't internet, email and home computers. As a busy working mother of young children, I didn't have the luxury of shiurim, Torah classes.
Now, before I'm going to write more about the mitzvah, I'll check out the book in more detail. It's a small book, easy to carry and enjoyable and informative to read.
And since G-d sends us all sorts of surprises and gifts, I shouldn't be all that amazed to discovered that the next Birkat Hachama will be on my grandmother's fifty-seventh Yartzeit, April 8, 2009, the 14th of Nissan, 5769. So my learning of this mitzvah should be in her memory, Chaya Raisia, whose parents' names are unknown to me and my mother. She was Ida Vishnefsky Finkelstein Shankman.
7 comments:
Oh, I remember the last birkas hachomah vividly. I remmber feeling bad that my little son would be too young to remember it! (I was VERY pregnant with the next.) We live very near Ponevez Yeshiva, so there was no overlooking the event as hundreds streamed towards the hill early that morning....
I was in the Gallil then 28 years ago. I still have my Artscroll book that was published then for the occassion.
ricki'smom, and Shy, Thanks for sharing
I can't believe that I seem to be the only person with no memory of it at all. And to think that I have a slew of childhood memories from under the age of three!
Shalom!
Twenty-eight years ago I was nine years old, in America and totally oblivious of bircath hahama.
It will be an honor and a privilege to be in Israel for this one. Thanks for reminding us. Time to go and buy a book!
Hills we've got plenty here!
Hadassa DeYoung, K'far Darom/Elon Moreh
Hadassa, you have a better excuse than I do about missing the last one. We were planning our move to Shiloh.
Now, Rabbanei YESHA should be planning big events here on the hills. Every yeshuv should have something.
Since my wife most definitely has the better memory than I about things that happened to us, I am surprised but I do most assuredly recall that with several friends from the Temple Mount activists, I was on the roof of the Machkama* at 6 AM or so, and we watched the sun rise above the hills to the east, the Mt. Scopes-Mt. Olives ridge, while also getting a great view of the Temple Mount esplanade lighting up.
* The Machkama is the buidling at the left of the Kotel Plaza, where the Border Police maintain a base and which is entered through Chain Street, just outside the gate there to the Temple Mount. Rav Goren established a synagogue there and I try to get there for Tisha B'Av mincha. Hereis my blog post with pics from 2007.
Fine, so you were there and involved, but I wasn't. My biggest memories from that time, besides deciding that we were moving to Shiloh, was how our building shook when the contractors building in the plot next to us blasted holes for the foundations.
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