New Year Greeting from Rabbi Stern

There's a trusty, invaluable website called hebcal.com. If you want to know when a holiday is observed, hebcal has the answer. If you want to look up your grandkid's Bat Mitzvah Torah portion, go to hebcal. In fact, if you want to know when Hanukkah falls in the year 2500 (why? who knows), just click on hebcal.

This Jewish fascination with time — with marking it, measuring it, navigating within it — is a key part of our worldview. We live in time. It’s no surprise that Einstein was a Jew. The exact minute of sundown matters if you're lighting Shabbat candles. If Passover begins on a Friday night, you have to calculate when you can start cooking — and when you must stop. For the Jewish people, every minute counts.

As the High Holy Days rapidly roll into view, I am increasingly aware of the ticking of the clock — the master clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory, which is actually an ensemble of dozens of atomic clocks, cesium and hydrogen masers averaged together to produce official time for the Department of Defense and every GPS on earth. And I'm keyed in to another clock, the one that runs on my own blood and heart. The ticking is nerve-wracking… and reassuring. We're still here. Let's see the new year in with songs and stories and prayer. Every minute counts