Photo by George Rizer/Globe Staff
H/T to Tv for linking us to this story on the first night of Passover:
BROOKLINE -- Saying prayers and singing songs, some 100 Boston-area Jews gathered on a hilltop today as part of a traditional celebration that occurs just once every 28 years.
Known as the ''Blessing of the Sun'' -- or "Birkat Hachamah" in Hebrew -- participants braved the chilly pre-dawn cold that blanketed the hilltop in Larz Anderson Park in Brookline to catch the sun as it rose above Boston's skyline.
The gathering was led by Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B'nai Torah in West Roxbury and Rabbi Victor Reinstein of the Nehar Shalom temple in Jamaica Plain. They said that in the Jewish tradition today is the day when the sun rises as it did on the fourth day of Creation, which was when God created the sun and the stars.
The sun is aligned in this location at sunrise just once every 28 years, according to the tradition and the Jewish calendar.
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- John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
(Read the complete report here which includes some lines from one of my favorite poets and a reference to the song below)
This was beautiful to watch. Some of my Jewish cousins live near Boston, I wonder if they were there?
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