I'm preparing food for my friend's mother's funeral tomorrow. She was a Messianic Jew and she passed into new life on Tuesday evening. My friend said that his mother had been mostly unconscious for the previous two days but as the time of her passing grew near she opened her eyes, smiled and reached upwards towards the heavens before peacefully crossing over.
Tuesday night was also happened to be Birkat Hachamah, the Jewish celebration of the creation of the sun. The Talmud, a text of Jewish civil and religious laws, explains that when the sun returns to the same position it occupied at the time of its conception, a blessing is made. The Jewish calendar states that the sun returns to this position the fourth day of the week at 6 p.m. on Tuesday once every 28 years.
That was the night of her passage.
The primary source of the blessing comes from five lines in the Talmud. "The Rabbis taught one who sees the sun as the beginning of its cycle, the moon in its mightiness, the planets in their orbits or the signs of the zodiac in their order should say, Bless it are you who makes the work of creation," according to the Talmud, Brachas 59B.
The purpose of the celebration is to realize that we are not our own – and that even though our lives wax and wane, like the sun and moon, we belong to God.
I thought it a fitting tribute.
Have a blessed and fun Easter weekend. Dye a few eggs. Eat a little candy. Share a meal with someone you love. Hang on to life and hope.
Ali's Easter basket. Gotta add a little bit of chocolate!
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