Tuesday, May 06, 2014
Blood Moon Tetrads-The Jewish
Perspective
By Ken Spiro
There has been a great deal of excitement and expectation surrounding
an astronomical phenomenon called the Blood Moon Tetrad, which will take place
between April 2014 and September 2015. The Blood Moon Tetrad occurs when there
are four total lunar eclipses, back-to-back, in a short period of time, with no
partial eclipses in between.
Tetrads are a fairly rare phenomenon. During the 16th,
17th and 18th centuries there weren’t any at all, while
during other centuries there have been
multiple tetrads within a relatively short time span. What is particularly intriguing about this
tetrad is the timing:
April 15, 2014-first night of Passover
October 8, 2014-first night of Succoth
April 4, 2015—first night of Passover
September 28, 2015-first night of Succoth
To have a tetrad fall out at the beginning of the major
Jewish festivals is a far rarer phenomenon.
The last two times it occurred was in 1949-50, at the end of Israel’s
War of Independence, and 1967-68, before and after the Six Day War and the
reunification of Jerusalem. Given the
events that surrounded the last two tetrads –it’s no wonder that there is so
much interest and speculation, especially among Evangelical Christians, as to
the significance of the current tetrad.
So what is the Jewish perspective on the all of this?
The first place to begin is of course the Bible. In Genesis
1:14-16 it states: God said, “Let there be luminaries in the firmament of
the heaven to separate between day and night; and they shall serve as signs,
and for festivals and for days and years…”And it was so. And God made the two
great luminaries, the great luminary to dominate the day and the lesser
luminary to dominate the night; and the stars.
From the Jewish perspective, besides providing light to the
world, the other function of the celestial bodies is to serve as a cosmic clock
that informs us when a new month begins (a Jewish month is one orbit of the
moon around the earth:29.5 days) and when the holidays fall during the yearly
cycle. Since the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle, the moon (and
anything that happens to it) is associated with the Jewish people. The majority of the world uses a solar calendar;
therefore, the sun is associated with the Gentiles.
On a deeper level, the idea that these heavenly bodies exert
a spiritual influence on the world (astrology) can also be found in Jewish
sources. The great 18th
century scholar, Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto wrote:
It was for this purpose that the stars and their planets
were created. Through their cycles, all
phenomena rooted in the spiritual realm are transmitted and reflected to their
physical counterparts. (The Way of God-Part II, chap 7.)
Simply put, what happens on the earth is somehow influenced
by the heavens. The question is to what
extent?
Another interesting idea that exists in Jewish thought is
that while stars do exert some sort of influence on the destiny of the
individual and human affairs in general, the Jewish nation is above this influence. The Talmud (Tractate Nedarim 32a) states “Ain
mazal b’Yisroel” – “There is no luck/constellation* in Israel”, and given
the supernatural and unique nature of Jewish history, one could certainly make
a good case for this statement.
Given these two conflicting ideas, there are no 100% clear
opinions as to the significance of eclipses in Jewish philosophy. However, based
on Jewish thought, historical events associated with past eclipses, and even
prophetic statements in the Bible, one could definitely make the case that
solar and lunar eclipses are somehow associated with major events in Jewish and
world history.
One of the clearest and possibly scariest indications of
what eclipses might symbolize is found in the Book of Joel Chapter 3: 4, where
the prophet describes the events leading up to the Messiah’s arrival with the
words: “…the sun will be turned to
darkness and the moon to blood [red] before the coming of the great and awesome
day of the Lord.”
From the Jewish perspective it may well be the Blood Moon
Tetrad is a powerful sign of major events to come. As much as we may speculate
on the meaning of events in the heavens, we just have to look here on earth at
the headlines… turmoil in the Middle East, Iran going nuclear, Russian
re-emergence on the world’s stage, global economic instability, etc., to
realize that major changes on planet earth may be just over the horizon. May
God give us the strength to survive these travails and may we all merit seeing
the happy ending of the story.
*In Hebrew the word mazal means luck but is also the
word for constellation or sign of the zodiac
# posted by The View from Jerusalem @ 5/06/2014 
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