 Rosh Hashana A weekly feature of Torah Tidbits to help clarify practical and conceptual aspects of the Jewish Calendar, thereby better fulfilling the mitzva of HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem... LO ADU ROSH. Rosh HaShana cannot - in our fixed calendar - fall on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday. That leaves four days of the week that Rosh HaShana can fall. They are (with their frequency of occurence) - Monday (27.4%), Tuesday (11.5%), Thursday (32.1%), and Shabbat (28.9%). Notice that The frequencies of Monday, Thursday,and Shabbat are roughly similar. Tuesday's frequency, on the other hand, is less than half that of any of the other days. Not only is Rosh HaShana on Shabbat this year, but the same thing is scheduled for four of the next 5 years. Rosh HaShana will be Shabbat in 5760, 5761, 5763, 5764. (It will be a Tuesday in 5762.) The Shabbat-Shabbat-Tuesday-Shabbat-Shabbat sequence last occurred 71 years ago. And 176 years before that. The next one is scheduled for 176 years from now and 71 years after that. (Notice that 71+176=247.) Does the "pattern" hold? No it doesn't. There is an almost-but-not-quite 247 cycle (that would be 13 19-year cycles). If the cycle were exact - meaning if the Molad of Tishrei every 247 years were at the same time, then the cycle - any cycle - would repeat forever. But the Molad of Tishrei is about 50 minutes earlier every 247 years. So what will look like patterns, only hold for relatively short ranges. More on this, next week... maybe. (It is a fun math thing to work this out, but some readers of TT are prone to math-headaches, and seem to miss the fun part.) What does it mean? I don't know. But with the ban on Shabbat-Shofar and Shabbat-Lulav, having a rare situation of 4 of the next 5 years that Rosh HaShana and Sukkot will both be on Shabbat, seems kind of interesting. RH is Shabbat plenty of times. But having a cluster of 4 out of 5 years makes you wonder. On another note: Did you know that the first and last weekly Torah portion read in the year 5759 was Vayeilech. Only Vayeilech can be read twice in the same year. And Vayeilech is the only sedra that is not read at all in some years. (Actually, at least the first few parts of Vayeilech will be read in all years. But not the whole sedra, sometimes. [The Rosh Hashana Homepage]
|
