Blessing of The Sun (Birkat HaChammah)
Hag Sameakh - Happy Pesach/Passover to all.
Below is a reprint of an email I sent our Member's Listserve a short while ago about the once-every-28-years observance of Birkat HaChammah having occurred today in several sectors of the Jewish world. For any who might be interested, it seems to me a good encapsulation of our standards, mindset, and world-view. At the very least, it shares how this rabbi engages with custom, Scripture, and science. For whatever value you might find in it - enjoy.
Dear Beth El,
Shalom. This Wednesday morning (April 8th), the 'Orthodox' (Oral Law submitted) Jewish world will be observing the tradition of "Birkat HaChammah" - the Blessing of the Heat (Sun)." The actual Hebrew word for sun is "shemesh." "Chammah" comes from the root-word "cham" meaning warm or hot.
This blessing (with special concomitant readings), is done only once every 28 years ... because it is when the Orthodox (and "Young-Earth" Creationists) believe the sun is in the same position it was when it was created on the fourth literal day of a literal six-earth day creation around six thousand years ago.
I do not plan to observe personally, nor to encourage observance, for the following reasons:
1. There is no apparent merit to the idea – Scripturally or scientifically.
(a) by all data we have at our command since the era of Galileo, the sun does not go every 28 years anywhere near where it was when the sun was created or formed - and literal reading of the Scriptures does not demand we believe it does. Our solar system sits in an arm of a huge spiral galaxy with a rotational period of somewhere between 50 to 220 million years. Every 28 years, the sun is mere trickles along that path and nowhere near the location of the sun when it ignited - most likely around 5 billion years ago, if our spectral analyses of the sun's chemical composition are reasonably accurate (and they appear to be). And, as you have heard me say many times, the use of the word "yom" (day) in the Hebrew text of Genesis 2:4 stating a single "day" as a description of the time in which the the earth and the heavens were "made" and created," makes exegetically clear that the word yom as used in Genesis chapter 1 is not - and certainly is not mandatorily - a reference to a 24-earth hour earth day - but to a period of time of indeterminate length; and this understanding is from a "literal" reading - not a non-literal one.
(b) As to the sun's "relative" position - purely as a "local" matter in our solar system - its position every 28 years being "the same as when it was created" is an idea without evidentiary foundation in light of what we do know - and without any present means of proof to advance it in preference over what we know. When the sun ignited, the earth was not even fully formed yet - and our solar system was a mass of swirling debris not having settled down through gravitational compression into the discrete forms of planets and moons it now has. Those processes took billions of years - not a few earth-days (by our means of time calculation: what they were in terms of relativity's influence on time dilation, or from G-d's "point of view" we have no way of knowing).
2. Support of, and participation with, a superstition would make me appear superstitious - or worse.
3. Doing superstitious or ill-founding things just because everyone else in a stream of our faith is doing them runs counter to some of Beth El's central premises:
(a) Isaiah 8:20 - the Scriptures themselves are our standard, and we "do not follow a crowd to do evil (or folly)." And we vet ideas for merit before accepting them. (1John 4:1)
(b) Reason and faith are not enemies. (Isa. 1:18)
(c) Our Jewish people have as much to learn from what we do NOT do, as what we do. (Mk. 2:24)
So - this rabbi - for whatever it is worth - will NOT be doing Birkat HaChammah on Wednesday - and will be most glad for any opportunity to explain to any Orthodox adherent why I am not.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." Could we expect "the wise and the honest" to link arms with us if we celebrated with "The Flat Earth" society every year? We certainly respect people's rights to observe as they wish: but allowing them their right does not mean we must approve their premises - or participate.
Shalom - and again - Hag Sameakh - a sweet Pesach to all.
8 April 2009