By some strange miracle, I happen to know today's date by the gregorian calendar. That doesn't usually happen, but I was thinking on my drive today that May 14th must have passed, and then I discovered that today, actually, is May 14.
Why does that matter? you ask. Well, it doesn't, and that is another wonderful thing about Israel. May 14th is the gregorian date upon which David Ben Gurion read the Israeli Declaration of Independence, even as the british blankety-blanks were still claiming to be the mandatory rulers of Eretz Yisrael. The ceremony was held before the brits left, because they were leaving on Shabbat, and obviously we weren't going to be mehalel Shabbat - who cares if the brits were stil here- it's OUR country, after all!!
The cool thing is, that in our secular state, not only will Hillul Shabbat be avoided in all sorts of interesting ways, but also, the only date that matters is the date on the Hebrew calendar. No one cares that it is May 14th - Israelis, no matter what their idea of religious observance is, celebrate on the 5th of Iyar. Unless that will cause Hillul Shabbat, in which case, we make adjustments to avoid Hillul Shabbat.
Why dont; I need to know the gregorian date? Because in Israel, I write the Jewish date on my cheques. Letters from any government body have the Jewish date on them. The cutoff birthdate for a schoolyear is the end of Kislev. When the child development centre calls to book an appointment for my child, I can ask teh Hebrew date, and they wont; think I am crazy, they simply check their calendar - ANY Israeli calendar - adn tell me. When we took the children to Beit Halomotai many aeons ago, the children's ages for admission prices went by the Hebrew date.
At 6:00 this morning, my "secular Israeli" radio played Shema Yisrael before the news. Then they announced the date - but I didn't even hear them say the gregorian date. I heard them say the important things, "Today is the 22nd of Iyar, 37 days which are 5 weeks and 2 days to the Omer."
No comments:
Post a Comment