Sun blessing, Passover coincide
Eleven-year-old Menachem Kalmanson enthusiastically pumped his fist in the air, chanting words in Hebrew as a small crowd recited the words back.
As the group broke into song, Menachem’s father, Rabbi Yosef Kalmanson, hooked arms with the man next to him and danced.
The group celebrated a rare Jewish ritual Wednesday morning, Birkat Hachamah, or “Blessing of the Sun,” a celebration of the sun that occurs just once every 28 years.
According to Talmudic tradition it is the time when the sun occupies the exact location in the sky on the exact day of the week as it did 5,769 years ago, the day of Creation.
“It is an amazing event,” said Uzi Bahar, a Jew from Loveland who joined in the ritual outside of the Jewish Discovery Center on Cedar Village Drive. “I had goosebumps.”
The ritual began at 9:30 a.m., across the street from the center, near an open field. Rabbi Kalmanson, executive director of the center, welcomed the group of about 20 adults and 10 children to the occasion, who occasionally shivered in the 40 degree weather. 
“An agnostic astronomer once said to a musician, ‘I have swept the sky with my telescope and found no God,’” Kalmanson said. “’That’s funny,’ the musician said. ‘I took my violin apart and examined it with a microscope and found no music.’”
The crowd smiled.
Then, each briefly looked at the sun and the group recited a compilation of Chabad customs related to the special event, heads lowered.
Around the country and the world, observant Jews performed a similar ceremony.
Kalmanson encouraged his group to be like the sun, which provides the earth with warmth and energy.
“Today we rededicate ourselves to be light … to be givers to others,” Kalmanson said.
The blessing does not generally happen during Passover, Kalmanson said, because the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle and the blessing is determined by the solar cycle.
“It’s very rare that it happens at such a close proximity to Passover,” Kalmanson said.
The Jewish Discovery Center, a part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, has been open in Mason for roughly two years, organizing events for Jewish residents in Warren County and northeastern Hamilton County.
