Adar
Gary Sexton Photography
Did you know the Jewish calendar has a Leap Year, too? We are now in the Jewish leap year of 5779, currently in the month of Adar 2. Adar is the happiest month of the Jewish calendar—according to the Talmud, “When Adar comes in, we increase our joy!” But what does it mean for a month to be happy? And why the “2”?
Perhaps you’ve heard of “Jewish time,” a reference to the Jewish calendar of holidays, seasonal rituals, and even the state of mind that certain months or holidays bring forth. So what moods characterize the Jewish calendar? We begin with the Jewish New Year, with reflection and repentance. During the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, we shift toward thoughts of abundance. The depth of winter asks us to publically showcase light during Hanukkah. We then transition into spring with the joy-infused holiday of Purim, which is followed by Passover, representing a state of freedom and redemption. The summer Jewish holidays call for a time of intense sadness and memory, rounding out the cycle that leads back into the Jewish New Year. In this context, Jewish time plays a major role in the creation of and framework for contemporary Jewish culture.
Unlike the Gregorian calendar, which is based on solar cycles, or the lunar calendar, which follows the moon’s celestial pathways, the Jewish year combines the two. The twelve Jewish months follow the lunar calendar, but that leaves us with a Jewish year of only 355 days. If we accepted a 355-day year, the holidays—so closely defined by their seasons—would shift significantly. Passover would move to winter, Hanukkah to fall, the Harvest festival of Sukkot would arrive in summer, and so on. The Jewish leap year—the addition of a thirteenth month that occurs six times every nineteen years—is designed to fix the holidays in their proper time. This is done by repeating the month of Adar, which falls between February and March in the Gregorian calendar.
So what’s so special about the month of Adar? Well, to begin with Adar contains Purim and most recently the opening of our critically acclaimed exhibition Show Me As I Want to Be Seen.
Both Purim and Show Me as I Want to Be Seen celebrate the story of Esther. Purim is a holiday that embraces ambiguity. Revelers dress in costume, share lavish meals, exchange gifts—but also give to the poor—and most unusually, drink enough to blur the lines between good and evil, distorting the separation between the sacred and the profane. This blurring, or ambiguity, emphasizes the complexity inherent in the world. We are reminded to avoid demonization and glorification. We are reminded of the falsehood inherent in labels and to erase categorization.
Show Me as I Want to Be Seen takes the story of Esther’s declaration of her Jewish identity as a metaphor for coming out, a parallel with the artists’ creative acts declaring their own identities. Much like the holiday of Purim, in which distinctions are blurred and we costume ourselves, the artists in the exhibition defy categorization, showcasing empowered representations of selves that are self-determined, unfixed, and sometimes intentionally illegible.
That these ideas of blurring, ambiguity, and inherent complexity are combined with Adar, a month specifically associated with joyousness, is a powerful reminder to approach complexity with joy. This concept is further compounded in Jewish time by the fact that Adar is selected to come not once, but twice—an undeniable doubling down on the importance of the need to accept ambiguity gracefully.
So during Adar, we encourage you approach complexity with joy and use it to see the world not as good or bad, us or them, but rather as a place where we listen to each other, appreciate our interconnectedness, defy definitions, and relinquish judgement.
Happy Adar!
Fraidy Aber is the Constance Wolf Director of Education And Civic Engagement at The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) in San Francisco, where she manages a team who collectively produce a vibrant suite of offerings realizing the Museum's mission to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in exploring Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. Fraidy co-led the development of the Zim Zoom Family Room and the Textile Lab, teaches a graduate level course titled "Museums and Social Justice" for University San Francisco, and created JET (Jewish Education and Technology) Teacher Institute.
Show Me as I Want to Be Seen is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum and curated by Natasha Matteson, Assistant Curator.
Support for this exhibition is generously provided by Suzanne and Elliott Felson; Maribelle and Stephen Leavitt; Gaia Fund; Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund; Dorothy R. Saxe; Susan and Michael Steinberg; Bavar Family Foundation; Nellie and Max Levchin; Phyllis Moldaw; Roselyne Chroman Swig; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Judith and Robert Aptekar; Dana Corvin and Harris Weinberg; Rosanne and Al Levitt; Joyce B. Linker; Douglas D. Mandell, Alexandra Moses; Eta and Sass Somekh; Ruth Stein; Toole Family Charitable Foundation; Marilyn and Murry Waldman; Kendra and Tom Kasten; Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery; Barbara Ravizza and John Osterweis; David Saxe; and Fred Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.