Cheshvan is…Tuesday. It’s just any day. Nothing remarkable, nothing special. Except that it’s a day when we wake up to the sun and can marvel at God’s creation. A day when we have to make choices about who we are and who we hope to be in the world. And a critical time when we wonder, did the High Holy Days have an impact on us? After having been written into and sealed in the book of life, emerging from the day of Judgment to life, emerging with a clean slate…are we new people? There is nothing special there to goad us to righteousness. No soul-shaking reminders to stay on the path we swore to walk on during Yom Kippur. Cheshvan is the normal, everyday, real world, and Cheshvan asks us: truly, what are your commitments? No gimmicks, honestly, who do you want to be? With the pomp and circumstance of the Days of Awe in the rearview mirror, who are you?Do you remember being a kid at the very beginning of the school year? I have this vivid memory of sitting at my little cluster in 4th grade. And the first major task of the year, now that we were big, responsible 9- and 10-year-olds, was to organize our planners. Mine had a blue cover and green pages, with spacious columns and wide lines to help me organize my homework, plan out my schedule, and write in due dates for major assignments. But, whatever you do, do not lose your planner!
This planner, this calendar, starts totally empty, and then, it’s a race to fill it in.
Isn't that the way with our calendars? They come empty and we spend our time trying to cram as many things into each little box as we can. With meetings, coffee dates, appointments, practices, playdates, to-do lists, and reminders. It is as if our calendars were some type of reality show competition. By the end of the week, add it all up. Whomever had the most meetings is the winner!
Not so with our Jewish calendar. If you buy a luach, a Hebrew calendar, it comes already filled in. The boxes are filled with holidays, festivals, fast days, the stages of the moon, counting the days between Passover and Shavuot, counting the days of the high holy day season, sunrise and sunset, times for morning, afternoon, and evening prayers... Our Jewish calendar comes with all of the days already full. And we spend all week waiting for one day. For Shabbat. A day with no appointments, no meetings. A day for Torah, for song, for family, and for peace. Our secular calendars are a race to fill up the week. Our Jewish calendars are a race to the day that is empty, open, and complete.
And we need that day of rest! Our calendars, whether we filled them up or if they came ore-filled, our American and Jewish calendars, are so jam packed. When I was in rabbinical school there was a website that made the rounds on Facebook: “IsItAJewishHolidayToday.Com.” “Yes.” Or “No.” Simple as that. Very little HTML expertise required. Quite the useful resource, especially during this part of the year when it seems like we are in a constant state of festival.
Our calendar is a luni-solar calendar. 12 months, each following the cycle of the moon. New moon? New month. And because that does not measure out to 365 days, the exact equivalents on the Gregorian calendar fluctuate. It’s why we say that Passover or the High Holy Days are “early” or “late” each year, and it’s why 7 out of every 19 years we have a leap month. And, no matter the year, our months are filled with holidays.
Kislev has Chanukkah
Tevet has a fast day commemorating a stage in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem
Shvat has…Tu B’shvat, the holiday of the trees
Adar has Purim
Nisan has Passover
Iyyar has Yom Ha’atzmaut and Lag Ba’omer
Sivan has Shavuot commemorating revelation of Torah at Sinai
Tammuz has another fast related to destruction
Av has Tisha B’Av, the 9th of Av mourning the destruction of the Temple and the various catastrophes that befell the Jewish people
Elul is our month of preparation for the High Holidays
And Tishrei, the month we are in right now, is quite the full month. It has Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah.
But…what about Cheshvan? The lonely month of Cheshvan is the only month in our calendar without the honor of a holiday.
The rabbis of old called this month MarCheshvan, which means bitter Cheshvan, for its distinction as the only holiday-less month. The rabbis and cantors of now are known to anxiously await Cheshvan, for its distinction as the marked end of the High Holy Day season. But nonetheless, we note that something unique, something different is happening at that moment in time.
Eleven of our twelve months have at least one distinct moment of celebration, of commemoration, of coming together for special and sacred purpose, and Cheshvan is…it’s just Cheshvan.
And it turns out, that Rosh Hodesh Cheshvan, the first day of the month of Cheshvan is next week. And in our tradition, we announce the beginning of a new month the Shabbat beforehand. And we bless the month. And we share our hopes and dreams for the month to come. And we wonder…what is there to bless and celebrate in a month with no special blessings or celebrations?
Despite our traditions reluctance to hold up and glorify Cheshvan, I actually believe that it is kind of beautiful. And not just as a clerical deep breath after the High Holy Days.
We spend Elul preparing. We spend Tishrei cracking open our hearts and souls. And Cheshvan, the month without a single celebration, is when we go back to normal. It’s as if the calendar says, “Nu? You just went through this intense experience…how will you let it affect you?”
Cheshvan is…Tuesday. It’s just any day. Nothing remarkable, nothing special. Except that it’s a day when we wake up to the sun and can marvel at God’s creation. A day when we have to make choices about who we are and who we hope to be in the world. And a critical time when we wonder, did the High Holy Days have an impact on us? After having been written into and sealed in the book of life, emerging from the day of Judgment to life, emerging with a clean slate…are we new people? There is nothing special there to goad us to righteousness. No soul-shaking reminders to stay on the path we swore to walk on during Yom Kippur. Cheshvan is the normal, everyday, real world, and Cheshvan asks us: truly, what are your commitments? No gimmicks, honestly, who do you want to be? With the pomp and circumstance of the Days of Awe in the rearview mirror, who are you?
Cheshvan is stunningly normal and ordinary, and that very fact is extraordinary.
It is our cosmic return to normalcy. And so we ask: what do we want normal to look like?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m young. Or maybe I’m naïve. But I feel like it’s been a long run of abnormal. We haven’t had normal in quite a while. It has been a really difficult few months. We have spent plenty of time on the bimah listing the various catastrophes, crises, debates, and disappointments of our world. And necessarily so. For the synagogue and for Judaism to remain relevant, it has to speak to the realities of our world. And I find myself desperate for some normalcy. In the midst of natural disasters and political turmoil, I am yearning for a little bit of Cheshvan.
And while our cosmic, Jewish calendar gives us this month, the rest of the world might not follow suit. So we look to our month as a metaphor, a chance to wonder about the normal we want to create. Something is going to set the path forward. And we, we who have emerged from the Day of Judgment, we have choices to make. Will normal be set by the flow of events that are beyond our control? We will abdicate normal to outside forces that we say we have no control over? Will we wait another month until the shock of the most recent disaster or attack has subsided and allow our malaise and exhaustion to reign until the next moment arises?
How can we be agents of a new normal? How can we, who spent a month steeped in the ideas Teshuva, Tefillah, and Tzedakah, return, prayer, and acts of sacred giving, move into Cheshvan buoyed by those same ideas? How can we allow the commitment to reflection and righteousness of Yom Kippur, to the gratitude of Sukkot, and to the joy of Simchat Torah to become the operative attitude of MarCheshvan. The holiday-less month of Cheshvan. Of any given Tuesday?
Please Rise.
When we greet Cheshvan, we wave goodbye to a busy, exhausting, and invigorating month of holidays. And we enter into a month where we commit to being the agents of a new normal.
מִי שֶׁעָשָׂה נִסִּים לַאֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ וְאִמּוֹתֵינוּ, וְגָאַל אוֹתָם מֵעַבְדוּת לְחֵרוּת, הוּא יִגְאַל אוֹתָֽנוּ בְּקָרוֹב, וִיקַבֵּץ נִדָּחֵינוּ מֵאַרְבַּע כַּנְפוֹת הָאָֽרֶץ, חֲבֵרִים כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְנֹאמַר אָמֵן.
May the One who performed miracles for our ancestors and redeemed them from servitude to freedom, continue to redeem us, and speedily unite our diverse community that spans the four corners of the earth. Let all Israel be committed to one another. Amen.
Our God and God of our ancestors,
may the new month bring us goodness and blessing.
May we have long life, peace, prosperity,
a life exalted by love of Torah and reverence for the divine;
a life in which the longings of our hearts are fulfilled for good.
רֹאשׁ חוֹדֶשׁ חֶשְׁוַן יִהְיֶה בְּיוֹם שִׁישִׁי.
The new month of Cheshvan will begin on Friday.
(Mishkan T'filah, p. 379)
(Mishkan T'filah, p. 379)
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