Episode No. 140: Calendar Conundrums

What with last Thursday having been Leap Day, with the leap month of Adar II beginning on Saturday evening with Rosh Chodesh, and the Muslim month of Ramadan beginning on Monday, I thought it would be interesting to leap into a discussion of how the secular and Jewish calendars we use today came to be. Did you know, for example, that there was one year that was 445 days long? Do you know why there is a leap day in the secular calendar, a leap month in the Jewish calendar, or why Ramadan and the other 11 Islamic months regress every 32.5 solar years through the entire secular calendar?

Transcript

Episode No. 140: Calendar Conundrums

Welcome to Keep the Faith, my bi-weekly podcast exploring contemporary issues through the prism of Jewish law and tradition.

We hit the first half of a doubleheader of sorts a week ago Thursday, and we start the second half on Motzei Shabbat, meaning after sundown on Saturday when Shabbat ends. That’s because last Thursday was what many people call Leap Day, the 29th day of a month that normally only has 28 days. And because the Jewish day always lasts from sundown to sundown, we begin the second month of Adar, Adar Sheni as it’s known, meaning there are 13 months in a year that normally only has 12 months.

The word for both is intercalation, which generally means to insert or introduce something into an existing series or structure. In this case, it means inserting an extra day into the secular, or Gregorian, calendar, and an extra month into our own Jewish calendar to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. The last thing we’d want is for the summer months to fall out in the dead of winter.

Actually, I said that we’re in the midst of a doubleheader of sorts, but there’s another calendar anomaly about to happen: The ninth month of the Muslim calendar begins this Monday, March 11th. The month is called Ramadan. It’s a month-long period of introspection, spiritual growth, and self-restraint for Muslims marked by prayer, study of the Quran, and sunrise-to-sunset fasting.

Because the Islamic calendar is based solely on the phases of the moon, giving it a year that’s normally 354 days long, and there’s only one minor intercalation of an extra day 11 times out of every 30 years, the Islamic calendar regresses every 32.5 solar years through the entire secular calendar, which is based on a solar year of approximately 365.25 days. And so Ramadan floats from season to season. For example, in this century, Ramadan began on March 16th in 2001. In 2008, it began on September 1st. In 2012, it began on July 20th. And so on.

Given these three events coming so closely together, I thought it would be interesting to leap into a discussion of how the secular and Jewish calendars we use today came to be. And so that’s the topic for this week. If some of this makes your head spin, don’t worry. You can always replay this episode.

Let’s get to it.

We’ll begin with the Gregorian calendar. It’s the end product of centuries of astronomical observation, and agricultural and religious necessities. The seemingly arbitrary rules of 30 or 31 days in a month, the shorter month of February, and the periodic addition of a leap day all begin in the ancient world.

Ancient societies were agrarian societies, meaning that they depended on understanding the nature of the seasons in order to time the planting and harvesting of their crops.

Seasons, though, are one thing—and very long things, at that. The ancients also needed a way to divide time into smaller, more manageable units, so they looked to the moon for guidance. Its recurring and very visible phases were a natural way to do this. This is how our months came to be. A lunar month is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3⅓ seconds in length. Most ancient calendars were lunar calendars, but some were lunisolar, giving the sun a role in the ancient timekeeping systems because of the fractional nature of the lunar month.

One of the earliest known calendars is the lunar calendar used by the Sumerians and Egyptians, among others. The Babylonians introduced a more sophisticated version around the 2nd millennium Before the Common Era, or B.C.E.

The Roman calendar, though, was probably the most influential one in the ancient world.

Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, is credited with creating the oldest Roman calendar sometime around 738 B.C.E. It only had a year of 10 months, a total of just around 304 days, beginning with what we call March and ending with what we call December. Then there were the remaining 61 days of winter, which weren’t divided into months and were meant to be ignored, mostly because the Romans believed that their no-gods were on vacation, so to speak, during this time, and so there was no practical reason to worry about any interference from them.

King Numa Pompilius, who lived in the 7th century B.C.E., began reforming this calendar to give it some solar content. He did that by turning the 10-month year into 12 months, adding the months we know as January and February to the calendar, thereby extending the year to 365 days.

However, he needed to deal with a problem. The Romans were a superstitious lot and very wary of even numbers. To ensure that the total number of days in a year remained odd, he took one day away from each of the 30-day months, leaving them with 29 days each. Only one month ended in an even number, the month the Romans believed was unlucky in any case. It was the last month Numa Pompilius added and it was associated with purification rituals. That month was February. It had been 29 days at first, but he cut down to 28 days.

Six centuries later, February got that extra day back when Julius Caesar introduced his calendar in 46 B.C.E. and made February 29 days long once again—but only once every four years. That, of course, introduced the concept of leap years into the calendar to make up for the fractional part of the solar year. Pulling that off, though, required the first year to be “the longest year in history.” It had to be 445 days long in order to correct the errors created by Numa Pompilius’ calendar. From then on, it was 365 days long except in leap years.

The Julian calendar, as it’s known, now had months that were either 30 or 31 days long, with the exception of February. The transition from the old Roman calendar to the Julian calendar took time to be accepted. It wasn’t fully in use until the year 8 of the Common Era or C.E.

There was still a problem, though, but of a different sort. Caesar overestimated the solar year by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. By the 16th century, the calendar was about 10 days off, causing significant problems for Christians who depend on Christmas coming in December and Easter coming somewhere between March 22nd and April 25th. Determining when Easter begins involves complicated calculations to keep it as close as possible to Passover and to have it always fall out on a Sunday.

Enter Pope Gregory XIII, who initiated his calendar reform in 1582 C.E. This calendar is called the Gregorian calendar and is used by most people today.

Gregory made adjustments to the Julian calendar’s structure, including leap years. In the Gregorian version, leap years continued to occur every four years, but because that didn’t quite rectify the entire problem, years ending in two zeroes—1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, and so on—would not be leap years unless they could be divided by 400 (which is why the year 2000 was a leap year, for example). Because the Gregorian calendar came out of the Catholic church, it was adopted mainly by predominantly Catholic countries, but today it’s the standard calendar for most of the world.

Russia was the last to adopt the Gregorian calendar. It did so on February 14, 1918, according to the Julian calendar. That day became February 1, the Gregorian date.

Several Eastern Orthodox Churches (including those in Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, and others) still use the Julian calendar, but only for religious purposes. Some other very small groups of people also rely on that calendar, but again, only for religious purposes.

Jews and Muslims, of course, have nothing to do with either calendar, at least as far as religious needs are concerned. Neither we nor our Muslim cousins would use those secular calendars at all if we didn’t live in a world in which everyone else did.

Is your head spinning yet? If not, this next segment may set it spinning. It’s time to discuss our unique Jewish calendar.

The Jewish calendar is lunar-solar, which combines the moon's cycles with the solar year. And an extra month is added to it because, as noted, the solar year is slightly longer than 365 days. This intercalation occurs seven times over a 19-year cycle, thereby keeping the lunar calendar in sync with the longer solar year.

There really isn’t much choice because Passover, Pesach, must fall out in the spring because the Torah says so in Deuteronomy 16.1, “it was in the month of Aviv, at night, that the Lord your God freed you from Egypt.” Aviv means Spring, so it really wouldn’t do to have the Spring Month, Chodesh Ha-Aviv, fall out in the middle of winter or the dog days of summer.

The same goes for the other two pilgrimage festivals the Torah commands. Shavuot is the festival of the first fruits, so it must always fall out when those fruits begin to appear. Sukkot is known as the Festival of the Ingathering, so it must always fall out at harvest time in the fall.

The Torah also requires there to be only 12 months in a year, which is why the leap month beginning on Saturday night is known as the Second Adar, rather than giving it a special name. It’s somewhat of a legal fiction, in effect creating one long month of Adar divided into two parts.

The Torah refers to the months of the year by number but almost never by name. The Torah says Passover begins on the 15th day of the First Month, Shavuot on the sixth day of the Third Month, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot on their respective days in the Seventh Month. And the last month of the year is called the 12th month, as Nachmanides, the Ramban, calls it in commenting on Exodus 12:1, and as the Scroll of Esther calls it, as well. Because a year of 13 months is not possible from the Torah’s standpoint, which is all that matters, the calendar must reflect that as well as the seasonal requirements of the months of the year.

Some background is called for. Because our calendar is lunar-solar, we determine days by the sun and months by the moon. In the earliest biblical times, months were determined only by sighting the molad of a new moon, meaning the new moon’s birth—molad means birth; that’s still the case in the Islamic calendar. Now, Leviticus 23:37 states, “These are the set times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim.” This verse clearly requires that the “set times” (meaning the festivals) must be proclaimed somehow, and it follows that so must the months in general be proclaimed.

In the late Second Temple period in the First Century B.C.E., that was the task of the Sanhedrin, the official legal body where Jewish law was concerned. It established the average length of the moon’s orbit (29 days, 12 hours, and 44.0115 minutes), and, based on it, members of the Sanhedrin would go outside and look up to the sky in search of that barely visible crescent. This astronomical calculation was essential because if it were not known when to look for the molad, the new moon’s birth, there would be no reason for the process to begin at all.

Because the moon might not have been visible where the men of the Sanhedrin stood, reliable witnesses were called on to testify before the Sanhedrin that they, too, saw the “birth,” the molad, of the new moon. If their testimony was considered credible, a torch was lit and waved on the Mount of Olives.

The light of that torch would set off a “chain” of torch-lightings, thereby communicating to the people throughout the Land of Israel and nearby Diaspora communities that a new month had been announced. Messengers would be sent to relay the information to those communities too far from the Land of Israel.

Because these messengers couldn’t always reach a community on time, our Sages of Blessed Memory created what is known as Yom Tov Sheni Shel Galuyot, or the second festival day of the exile. That’s why in Orthodox and Conservative Diaspora communities, Passover is a seven-day observance that lasts for eight days, Shavuot is a one-day observance that lasts for two days, and the eight days of Sukkot last for nine days.

Today, of course, we know by a fraction of a second when the “molad” will occur over Jerusalem, which is why Reform communities don’t observe a Yom Tov Sheni Shel Galuyot. For example, the molad for Second Adar, for Adar Sheni, occurs this Sunday at 13 minutes and six chalakim, six parts, after 10:00 a.m. Jerusalem time. We divide an hour into 1,080 chalakim, or parts, each of which is 3⅓ seconds long. Six parts equal 19.98 seconds.

Obviously, the moon doesn’t get “reborn” every month. It does, however, come between the Earth and the sun once every orbit, at which time it’s initially invisible to us. As it begins its next orbit, a small crescent of light appears, and the moon becomes visible. As the Sanhedrin calculated it, the average length was the number used to determine when the molad was likely to occur.

As the Talmud, in fact, testifies in the Babylonian tractate Rosh Hashanah, this astronomical calculation was considered more reliable than eyewitness testimony.

Sometime in the Second Century, the sage Rabbi Meir reportedly argued for doing away with sightings altogether. That, at least, is what the Fourth Century Babylonian sage Abba ben Joseph bar Chama, better known as Rava, claimed in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Arachin. Rava, therefore, attests to the possibility that sightings were done away with entirely in the Second Century.

Certainly, by the second half of the Third Century C.E., calculations had more or less completely overtaken moon sightings in the Land of Israel, as the Jerusalem Talmud tractate Sukkah suggests.

As several other talmudic texts suggest, those astronomical calculations were also used early on to create some sort of a fixed calendar, which greatly benefited those Diaspora communities that wanted to create their own authoritative calendars. In the mid-Fourth Century C.E., the sage Hillel II fine-tuned that calendar. He relied primarily on complex calculations, not direct astronomical observations like sighting the new moon, and these allowed him to provide rules to determine the length of each month and the intercalation of leap years. With several alterations made to it over time, his calendar became the standard for all Jewish communities to follow.

In Judaism, of course, nothing is that simple. Our calendar is a bit muddled. Passover, Pesach, falls out on the 15th day of the first month, according to the Torah. Our calendar has it falling out on the 15th day of the seventh month, which is the day the Torah says is when Sukkot begins, not Pesach. The day we celebrate as Rosh Hashanah is also commanded by the Torah. That day has no name in the Torah, but it does tell us that we have a religious observance on that day—the first day of the seventh month, not the first month. Calling that day Rosh Hashanah is like celebrating the secular New Year’s Day on July  1st.

I’m not quite sure how we got there or who it was who came up with it, but I do have what I consider to be an educated guess as to why.

In the Babylonian calendar, the seventh month is known as Araḫ Tišritum, which means the month of beginning, and it began each year with a festival. The Babylonian year actually began in the month they called Nissanu and we call it Nisan. For the record, the names we gave to our months are all Hebraicized versions of the names the Babylonians gave to their months. That’s one of the influences that seeped into Judaism during the First Exile.

In any case, the Babylonian month of beginning, Araḫ Tišritum, was meant as the beginning of the second half of the year, not the actual start of the year, but it was when barley was planted. Because the planting season was always a time fraught with fears about whether the coming crops would be plentiful, it was also a period of introspection and prayers to the gods for a good agricultural year to come.

Because the 10th day of our seventh month is the day the Torah designated as Yom Kippur, which for us is a period of introspection and prayers to the One True God for a good year to come, somewhere along the line the Torah-commanded observance on the first day of that month was given a Jewish version of Araḫ Tišritum, the month of beginning. We called it Rosh Hashanah. We call that month Tishrei.

Of course, this set everything off, causing our Sages to explain how Nisan could be the first of the months of the year, as the Torah insists, yet the first of Tishrei is the start of the new year. They resolved that conundrum by designating Nisan as the first month of a regnal year, which is how kings counted the length of their reigns, and Tishrei would be the start of the calendar year.

Whatever month this is coming up on Saturday night, the bottom line is this: Through its intricate combining of lunar and solar cycles, the Jewish calendar not only measures the passage of time but also sanctifies it, infusing each moment with meaning and purpose. As we continue to uphold and cherish our calendar, we affirm our commitment to our identity's timeless values and traditions.

It is said that with the start of Adar, our joy increases. This year, our joy is doubly increased. Have a happy Second Adar, and get ready for its special observance. As the Scroll of Esther puts it, this observance occurs on the “14th day of the 12th month, that is Adar.”: That observance, of course, is Purim, which, according to our calendar, is the sixth month, but who’s counting?

This is Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer. I do hope you come back for my next podcast, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about this or my other podcasts. Go to www.shammai.org—w-w-w-dot-s-h-a-m-m-a-i-dot-o-r-g—and email, please.

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Shabbat Shalom, stay healthy, and keep wearing those N95 masks in crowds no matter who tells you otherwise. Pray for the State of Israel, for the return of the hostages who are still alive and for the return of the bodies of those hostages whom Hamas massacred. Pray, as well, for the success of Tzahal, the Israel Defense Forces.

And above all, stay safe.