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"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy - to sanctify It." Exodus
20:8
How are we to fulfill the commandment of "remembering the Shabbat day?" Perhaps this commandment is fulfilled
by the way in which we count the days of the week. The gentile world refers to the days of the week by names derived from
celestial bodies: "Sunday" is, of course, the "day of the sun"; "Monday" honors the moon; "Saturday" is named after the planet
Saturn. If we want to calculate how many days there are between Monday and Saturday, we must count them on our fingers. However,
from "yom sheni" (the "second day" – Monday) until Shabbat we know right away that there are five days remaining.
This is the Torah's intention. On every day of the week a person should remember how many days are left
to prepare for Shabbat. Shabbat is the only day that is not counted towards something else, and therefore has its own name.
The benefit of this system is the convenience of knowing "where we are" in the week.
Counting The Days
There are three advantages to the Biblical system of counting the days of the week:
1. It avoids the taint of idolatry that is inherent in a system that's named after the sun, the moon and
the stars, thereby memorializing ancient paganism.
2. It makes it easier to calculate the space between different days of the same week.
3. Most importantly – we are constantly reminded of Shabbat, and how many days remain until Shabbat
comes. We thereby fulfill the fourth Commandments: "Remember this day, when you came out of Egypt." Exodus
13:3
In the same way that we count the days of the week, we also count the months of the year. Here we encounter
similar problems, perhaps even more severe ones, but surprisingly enough, the situation is reversed.
The names of these months commemorate anti-Semitic Caesars as Julius and Augustus – who should not
be honored – as well as clearly idolatrous allusions (March = Mars, the Greek god of war).
The accepted Jewish names for the months do not appear to be much better: Mars, the Greek god of war, is
just as bad as Tammuz – the Babylonian god of fertility. (Ezekiel 8:14) We may assume that other names of months in
the Hebrew calendar are similarly associated with idolatry.
Counting The Months
"This month shall be for you the beginning of the months; it is the first [month] for
you of the months of the year?" Exodus 12:2
Is this not a commandment from the Torah to count the months starting from Nissan, in order to remind us
of the month in which Yahveh brought Israel out of slavery to freedom?!
Rashi said: "This should be the first in the order of counting the months; such that Iyar is the second
month, and Sivan the third." Indeed, this reflects the dating system used throughout the Torah. The months are noted by number,
rather than by name. Why, then, do we not continue this practice?
The Ramban explains that since the return of the Babylonian exiles to Israel, the Babylonian-Persian names
have been preserved in order to fulfill the prophecy of Jeremiah, "Therefore behold: days are coming,
promises Yahveh, when they shall say no more 'As Yahveh lives, who brought up Israel from the land of Egypt' but rather 'As
Yahveh lives, Who brought up and led the seed of the House of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands to
which I have driven them, and they shall dwell on their own land." Jeremiah 23:7-8
Nowhere does the Torah suggest that we are to use the Egyptian names of months in order to commemorate the
Exodus. On the contrary, the Exodus and liberation should be expressed in a complete abandonment of Egyptian culture and idolatrous
beliefs. Similarly, we may ask: Doesn't the use of Babylonian names testify that we have adopted something of the exile
for ourselves, bringing it with us to our land, with no desire to liberate ourselves from it!?
The benefit of counting the months by number rather than by name:
What could be a difficult question (how many months are there between March and October) becomes much easier
to deal with (how many months are there between the third month and the tenth month).
Can you quickly answer how many months there are between Sivan and Shevat? Now try to calculate how many
months there are between the third month and the eleventh. Surely this is a much quicker system!
There are obvious advantages to counting the months as the Torah does, rather than relying
on the "Persian" system upon which the Hebrew calendar is based:
1. The numbers free us of any connection with foreign idolatry.
2. The numerical dating system is far more convenient for everyday use.
3. The Torah's system of counting reminds us of the exodus from Egypt, and counts all the months accordingly.
Counting The Years
In the Chinese calendar the years receive names, (the year of the monkey, the year of the dragon, etc.)
Giving names to the years reflects a lack of a sense of history and a lack of need to plan for the long term. It is extremely
difficult to calculate how much time has passed from the "year of the dragon" until the "year of the monkey" – especially
if that period consists of several decades or even centuries.
We customarily count years since the Creation of the world. The most reliable source for counting since
Creation is from the Middle Ages, around the time of the Rambam. The system for counting years in Tanach is generally based
on the years of a king's rule: "In the fifty-second year of Azarya, King of Judah." (II Kings 15:27) etc. This system
is convenient for counting short periods but is not practical for calculating longer periods. How is a person to calculate
how much time passed between the thirty-third year of Jo'ash and the twenty-seventh year of Azarya? But the "royal" dating
system remains.
An alternative system of counting is found in the Tanach in the noting of the year of construction of the
Temple:
"And it was, in the 480th year since the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt,
in the fourth year, in this month, the second month of King Solomon's reign over Israel, that he built a house for Yahveh."
I Kings 6:1
This count is also based on royalty, the Kingship of Yahveh. His Kingship started with the declaration at
the end of the Song of the Moses: "Yahveh will reign for ever and ever." Exodus 15:18
It would seem logical that the years should be counted from that point, but there’s yet another system
of counting years, known as "minyan shetarot" – dated back to the kingdom of Seleucid I, who inherited part of the kingdom
of Alexander the Great, including Israel. The first year of Seleucid I's reign was 3448 years after the Creation. (312 A.D.)
Why did the Rabbis decide to adopt this system, thereby honoring a gentile king so many years after he and
his kingdom disappeared?
The Exodus from Egypt, they determined, took place in the year 2448 after Creation, as calculated on the
basis of the years listed in Genesis. Up to the birth of Isaac - 2048 years, together with another 400 years of slavery -
Seleucid I ascended the throne exactly one thousand years after the Exodus. The counting based on "minyan shetarot" is therefore
meant as a system of counting back to the Exodus, based on the commandment to remember the Exodus from
Egypt and Yahveh's Kingship.
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