In the Gregorian calendar, a “leap year” just means one extra day at the end of February. In the Jewish calendar, a “leap year” involves adding an entire extra month— the month of Adar Rishon, the first Adar, to be followed by a second Adar. The Jewish holiday of Purim, full of festivities and rituals of merry making, will be celebrated next month. What, then, is this first month of Adar all about?
The answer is alignment.
The additional month serves to bring our lunar calendar into alignment with the solar year. Without this extra month, Jewish holidays would migrate throughout the seasons.
Sometimes, we need to dedicate large spans of time not to doing anything new, but to ensure that we are aligned— with ourselves, with our values, and with each other. We take this first month of Adar as an opportunity to consider how we may have strayed from our priorities, how our focus can best be renewed.
What kind of ancestors do we want to become?
Our work at Ta’amod continues to engage these core questions and components. In this first month of Adar, we question how to bring our creativity into alignment with our clarity. Organizational alignment and personal alignment are indelibly linked.
Just as the month of Adar offers space to re-calibrate the calendar, we must take intentional space as individuals and as organizations to re-calibrate.
