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.
