{"id":16,"date":"2009-03-14T21:24:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T21:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/2009\/03\/here-comes-the-sun.html"},"modified":"2009-03-14T21:24:46","modified_gmt":"2009-03-14T21:24:46","slug":"here-comes-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2009\/03\/here-comes-the-sun.html","title":{"rendered":"Here comes the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width:300px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-190\" src=\"https:\/\/homeshuling.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/sun.png?w=300\" alt=\"don't look directly at it\" width=\"300\" height=\"266\" \/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">don&#039;t look directly at this picture<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>All of my favorite Jewish rituals involve observing and\/or connecting more closely with the natural world. Waiting for the sun to set to light candles, eating and <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">sleeping<\/span>\u00a0lying outside for a little while in the sukkah, throwing bread into a river on Rosh Hashanah&#8230;.all of these practices seem vaguely pagan and enormously appealing to me, a once-upon-a-time Outward Bound instructor.(It&#8217;s amazing how certain parts of my life now seem almost comically implausible. C&#8217;mon kids, let&#8217;s run 3 miles before breakfast, feast on grape-nuts and powdered milk, boil all our drinking water, break camp, throw on our 60 pound backpacks and hike all day, mostly off-trail. For <em>fun<\/em>.)<br \/>\nPerhaps the mother of all pantheistic-ish Jewish traditions is coming in a few weeks. Birkat Hachamah, or the Blessing of the Sun, is recited once every 28 years. According to the Rabbis, but probably not astronomers, April 8, 2009 is the day the sun will return to the exact position that it occupied on the fourth day of creation, when God made the sun, the moon and the stars (according to Genesis, but again, those &#8220;scientific&#8221; astronomers would probably dissent.)<br \/>\nIt doesn&#8217;t matter that I don&#8217;t believe that God created the world in six days. I can&#8217;t wait to gather together at the crack of dawn with a bunch of Jews and shout blessings at the sun. In future weeks I&#8217;ll also be blogging about the solar-fest I&#8217;m organizing at my school in honor of the occasion. In the meantime, if you want to learn more, look <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chabad.org\/library\/article_cdo\/aid\/817861\/jewish\/Birkat-Hachamah.htm\" target=\"_blank\">here,<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shalomctr.org\/node\/1402\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shalomctr.org\/node\/1400\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nAt the last celebration of Birkat Hachamah, Arthur Waskow and his groovy chevre gathered at the Jefferson Memorial and signed a scroll which they planned to read at the next occurrence, 28 years later. Here&#8217;s what they hoped we would have accomplished by now:<br \/>\n<em>In this day that begins the 206th cycle of the sun since the Beginning,?<br \/>\nWe pledge ourselves to make a new beginning:<br \/>\nTo hand on to the next generation an earth that is washed in sunlight,?not poisoned by waste;<br \/>\nTo see in the sun&#8217;s light the light of Torah;<br \/>\nTo feel in the sun&#8217;s warmth the warmth of the human community;<br \/>\nTo use through the sun&#8217;s energy the strength of the One Who Creates.<br \/>\nBlessed be the Doer of Deeds of Beginning.<\/em><br \/>\nIf only&#8230;&#8230;<br \/>\nShavua Tov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 don&#039;t look directly at this picture All of my favorite Jewish rituals involve observing and\/or connecting more closely with the natural world. Waiting for the sun to set to light candles, eating and sleeping\u00a0lying outside for a little while in the sukkah, throwing bread into a river on Rosh Hashanah&#8230;.all of these practices seem&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Here comes the sun - Homeshuling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2009\/03\/here-comes-the-sun.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Here comes the sun - Homeshuling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 don&#039;t look directly at this picture All of my favorite Jewish rituals involve observing and\/or connecting more closely with the natural world. Waiting for the sun to set to light candles, eating and sleeping\u00a0lying outside for a little while in the sukkah, throwing bread into a river on Rosh Hashanah&#8230;.all of these practices seem&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2009\/03\/here-comes-the-sun.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Homeshuling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-14T21:24:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/homeshuling.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/sun.png?w=300\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Homeshuling\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Here comes the sun - Homeshuling","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2009\/03\/here-comes-the-sun.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Here comes the sun - Homeshuling","og_description":"\u00a0 don&#039;t look directly at this picture All of my favorite Jewish rituals involve observing and\/or connecting more closely with the natural world. 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I teach, write, and try to create a vibrant Jewish home for my family while spending very little time in synagogue. I guess you could say we're home-shuling.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/author\/ameltzer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}