I remember the pleasure of standing huddled on our teeny tiny porch off our kitchen when it was still dark outside. The night before, I remember being prepared by my parents as I had been by my teacher to get up early to recite “birkat ha-chama,” the blessing of the sun.
The blessing affirms the 28-year cycle of the sun returning to where it was when it was created — a coming home for the sun, if you will. Of course, we are all familiar with this type of blessing and this type of cycle — it’s just usually a monthly rhythm of nature, a blessing for the new moon commencing its waxing and waning.
Our porch was so tiny that by day it had to be our whole family’s little place hang out — with room for only one person at a time — to read, maybe to use as a gateway to the apartment building’s collective back yard where the grass was growing tall, or to see mounds of clean laundry above the washing machine.
By night, this room was converted into my younger brother’s bedroom. His bed was built by our family carpenter at the time, Yechezkel. Besides the ingenious tree house he built for us, somehow he and my mother came up with this genius idea of saving space and actually converting the porch into a bedroom without losing the porch space. Their idea? A pull out bed from the wall!
By day the bed was camouflaged as part of the white wall by a precisely measured and carved out niche. At night, like magic, it came down, right out of the wall, almost swallowing the whole room. It rested on the floor, perpendicular to the wall behind it. That’s how tiny this porch was.
Well, on this morning, suddenly this tiny porch didn’t seem tiny at all. It felt like a grand balcony teeming with people. When I think of this moment I remember sharing it with both my parents, my sister Mimi and my brother Mattis. However, apparently my father was over at Rabbi Noah Heisler’s at the precise moment of the blessing, so I guess he spent some time with us and our neighbors on the little porch before heading over to the rabbi’s at the moment of the sunrise.
Secretly, I wish I could be at the exact spot, with the exact people, plus new loved ones in my life since that time, for the occasion of this year’s “birkat ha-chama.”
I know it’s not possible. And in reality, I don’t actually want to knock on the apartment door of my old home, meet the people living there and stand on that tiny porch the way I remember it, in what today is a stranger’s home.
But this blessing certainly does reconnect me to that moment in time back in Jerusalem. A moment of a little girl, still a little sleepy in her pajamas, giddy with excitement at being up so early with the adults, and not really understanding or knowing what was going on, yet sensing something almost tangible on that porch. She looked up at the still dark sky seeing a flock of birds, hearing their staccato chirping as her parents stood over her, also looking up toward the heavens, saying something about the specialness of the moment, telling her to remember it, to savor it . . . and then going on to say something totally unimaginable to her ears. Something about, could it be, “in 28 years . . . ?”
So, what is 28 years?
Now I know. This is 28 years: “birkat ha-chama.” To me, this passage of time is part of the je ne sais quoi that is charming and fascinating about this moment. This benediction.
So many astronomical theories and rabbinic interpretations swirling through the air these past few weeks; some saying the rabbis were wondrously on target with the astronomy; others challenging the rabbis’ calculations. Plus, if the world was really created in the month of Tishrei, how can we mark this event in the month of Nisan?
Granted, these are all compelling and curious questions and discussions. But to me, all this isn’t really the important part. Rather, this blessing is a way to chart our life.
Like a time capsule, this blessing charts the course of our life, our experiences, almost condensed into this one moment, this one prayer at sunrise (this year, April 8, the eve of Passover). To remember exactly where you were, when and with whom, at hopefully three or four specific ritual points in your entire life, as sun turns on its course, as it did on the fourth day, the moment of its creation — maybe it is a hard blessing to recite. Or maybe, it is an affirmation of a full and good life lived.
To me, on some level, it is a blessing that I think will feel like a very intimate link with creation, with the beginning of all beginnings. Specifically, with the beginning of shining light as we know it.
The infrequency and rare opportunity of this blessing, coming once every 28 years, makes it feel that much more precious.
Indeed, it is a sacred sunrise. There is great potency in this moment of day break, in this moment of a sunrise. It shines on us the light of possibility. Of a new day.
The sun rising and the sun setting, of course, is a metaphor for our lives. And so, every 28 years, for just a moment, we pause and we reflect on this truth.
Whenever the sky cracks open and blinks and shivers with a flash of lightening, you see a falling star or the glorious colorful arc of the unexpected rainbow, you feel touched by something of an upper world. You are startled by its power and surprised by the little exchange, as it takes hold of you for an instant. And you are never prepared to say the blessing — it’s a wonderful kind of surprise from the universe, and there you are mouthing the words.
But now, for birkat ha-chama, it is the very same blessing we always say when we are touched by something in nature. This time I enter this significant sunrise, the culmination of a cycle, consciously, even though it is just a brief, fleeting prayer and moment, with so much build up and preparation — for me now with the awareness of a woman, no longer the perspective of a child. My, how 28 years have flown by.
Warmly wishing you and yours a beautiful and joyous Pesach holiday.
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