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strange holiday timing
Most years, Pesach and Easter fall within a few days of each other. This makes sense, because the Christian event is understood to have fallen during Pesach. But because Christianity does not follow the Jewish calendar for setting the holiday, and both computations are lunar, when the holidays aren't a few days apart they're about a month apart, with Easter being first. Fine; everyone knows that, pretty much.
The holiday of Purim falls approximately a month before Pesach.
Easter is constrained to fall on a Sunday, but Pesach can fall on "any" day. Well, there are some calendar oddities that actually rule out a couple days (Wednesday and Friday, IIRC), but mostly Pesach is unconstrained.
This year Pesach happens to fall on a Sunday and Easter is early.
What does this all add up to? That the celebration of Purim, a day on which feasting and drinking are commanded, falls on good Friday, a fast day.
I have heard that there are Christian denominations that observe some Jewish practices, like the seventh-day aventists who celebrate the sabbath on Saturday. I wonder if any of them celebrate minor holidays like Purim. If so, I wonder how they will resolve the contradiction this year. For that matter, I wonder how interfaith families address this. (A similar problem arises in the winter, when a Jewish fast day can fall on Christmas.)
The holiday of Purim falls approximately a month before Pesach.
Easter is constrained to fall on a Sunday, but Pesach can fall on "any" day. Well, there are some calendar oddities that actually rule out a couple days (Wednesday and Friday, IIRC), but mostly Pesach is unconstrained.
This year Pesach happens to fall on a Sunday and Easter is early.
What does this all add up to? That the celebration of Purim, a day on which feasting and drinking are commanded, falls on good Friday, a fast day.
I have heard that there are Christian denominations that observe some Jewish practices, like the seventh-day aventists who celebrate the sabbath on Saturday. I wonder if any of them celebrate minor holidays like Purim. If so, I wonder how they will resolve the contradiction this year. For that matter, I wonder how interfaith families address this. (A similar problem arises in the winter, when a Jewish fast day can fall on Christmas.)
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I don't know of any interfaith families that bother observing un-fun holidays like fast days.
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Still, what a strange coincidence! Two things that just don't go together. :-)
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calendar info
Each holiday has 3 days it can't be/start on; Pesach's are (*pauses to consult 200-year calendar*) Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The reason for this is that the way the Jewish calendar is set up now, the days of the week for all the holidays are interconnected. (My parents have a Haggadah which includes a note about how to figure out the day of the week for each holiday based on the days of Pesach, with the condition that it's the Purim before that Pesach but the rest of the holidays are the ones following that Pesach. This is because the adjustment factor for days of the week is in whether the Rosh Chodesh-es of Kislev and Tevet have one or two days, with 1-1, 1-2 (but not 2-1), and 2-2 as the possible combinations.)
The reason for these specific 3 not-allowed days is that Yom Kippur is not allowed to be on Friday or Sunday (don't want it right before or right after Shabbat because of Shabbat+fasting sequence), and Hoshana Rabba isn't allowed to be on Shabbat (because of one of its special ceremonies; the exact details have slipped my mind just now).
Re: calendar info
On Hoshana Rabbah we beat the willows from the lulav. I assume the Shabbat issue would be threshing or some such, though I suppose it could be carrying -- the same reason you don't do the ritual with the lulav on Shabbat even though you could work around the carrying problem by bringing it to shul ahead of time.
As an aside, my Reform congregation does wave the lulav on Shabbat, and we specifically do have them at shul to avoid carrying.
Re: calendar info
Re: calendar info
I raised carrying because this is the reason given for not blowing the shofar on Shabbat. Even though a congregation needs only one shofar (not one per worshipper, as with aravot), the rabbis forbid shofar on Shabbat lest someone carry it to shul. (We just leave one at shul and blow it on Shabbat when relevant.) So I thought that if there was a carrying issue with a single shofar, then surely (by rabbinic logic) there would be a problem with multiple aravot. But it's a secondary issue anyway because the act of using the aravot is itself melacha, unlike the act of blowing the shofar (which is fine, hence the need to look at secondary issues like carrying).
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Not that either would be particularly convenient for an inter-faith couple, but at least the former scenario would allow the fasting Christian to revel it up with the Jewish spouse on Thursday night, and then just sit quietly on Friday, nursing a hangover with water, and not really evincing all that great an interest in food anyways...
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Then again, I'm not exactly an "inter-faith family".
The last few years have been good in a way because I've been able to celebrate Pesach at festival.
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The last few years have been good in a way because I've been able to celebrate Pesach at festival.
That's been good? I find SCA events during Pesach to be a challenge -- probably can't eat anything I didn't bring myself, couldn't use the regular feast gear anyway, etc. Fortunately, it rarely comes up; Pesach is only 7 (or 8) days long, and we are constrained to be in another city for the seders and some extra time, so most years an event in the middle of all that would not be feasible.
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If you saw my pyes de pares article in Medieval History Magazine or on Cunnan you have a fair idea of what and how we eat, and of necessity most of it is unleavened. Yeast raised pastries don't really work as "coffins" to preserve the insides -- we do festival without any modern accoutrements including refrigeration, so coffins & pies are a fairly important part of our regime. So most of the food is OK for pesach of necessity.
I imagine that if you were really doing pesach in the 15th C while in a travelling camp, what we do is pretty much how you'd do it.
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That makes sense. In fact, I now recall that Judaism even has a similar principle: if a fast (other than Yom Kippur) falls on Shabbat, you move the fast to Sunday instead. Yom Kippur trumps even Shabbat (this happened this year), but otherwise you do not fast on Shabbat.
(I know of one fast that moves earlier instead of later: on the day before Pesach, first-born fast. If Pesach is on Sunday (that is, first seder Saturday night), that would mean fasting on Shabbat -- but you don't fast on Shabbat and this fast must occur before Pesach, so it moves to Friday.)
movable fasts
Re: movable fasts
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There are two calendar-based solutions that come to mind, the first being to redefine Easter to be "the day after the sabbath that falls during passover", the second being to use the Julian calendar and celebrate Easter a week later.
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I would think that the Julian approach would only work if you did it for everything (like the Orthodox churches do). You can't pick and choose your calendar system based on when it's more convenient to have your holidays land. :-)
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For some, it's just a matter of learning a set of rules, usually from childhood, and doing it. Your family's observance of Thanksgiving may well have as many precise details, so this isn't unique to a particular religion.
For others, learning all of these details and the turns of logic that lead to them is an enjoyable end in itself. This, too, has analogues in the secular world; think about all the things that some people will put immense amounts of effort into that don't matter to anyone else.
A twise on this second case: some say that this learning is service to God, and so an obligation even if you don't enjoy it. While I accept that, I also don't know any adult who does it but doesn't enjoy it. :-)
Rituals without religion
If it serves the earth, I'll try. I do cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, and yes there must be mashed potatoes and peas with onions and cranberry sauce. The trad. cranberry sauce dish took a header last year, but some things aren't the important part.
I guess my service is to "What Is". I feel bound but forgiven.
Re: Rituals without religion
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Though, even without fasting [1], don't pretty much all Christian denominations view good Friday as sort of like a day or mourning? It's the day on which their god died, after all. That might be incompatable with Purim even if there's no bar on eating or drinking.
[1] This presumably varies by denomination, but the definition of fasting I learned involved no meat, smaller meals, and no snacks. It's not the definition Jews use, which is no food or drink at all.
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Still, I would guess that it's not like they'd dance in the street or get drunk or something... oh wait, no, that's us.
Man, this kind of convergence must really have caused some major problems in the Old World!
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