May 30, 2017 at 8:18 p.m.
Manhattanhenge - sometimes referred to as the Manhattan Solstice - is an event during which the setting sun is aligned with the east-west streets of the main street grid of Manhattan in New York City. This occurs twice a year, on dates evenly spaced around the summer solstice. The first Manhattanhenge occurs at the end of May and the second mid-July.
May 30, 2017
In Shavuot we celebrate the reinvention of a holiday, the reinvention of Jewishness Jewish Journal - May 30, 2017
Shavuot is a Jewish holiday that marks the day the Torah was given at Mount Sinai. The gematria of the Hebrew word chalav is 40, corresponding to the 40 days and 40 nights that Moses spent on Mount Sinai before bringing down the Torah. gematria originated as an Assyro-Babylonian-Greek system of alphanumeric code/cipher later adopted into Jewish culture that assigns numerical value to a word/name/phrase in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to Nature, a person's age, the calendar year, or the like. Similar systems, some of which were derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria, have been used in other languages and cultures, i.e. Greek isopsephy, Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria. The best-known example of Hebrew gematria is the word Chai ("Alive"), which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the Mispar gadol table shown below) add up to 18. This has made 18 a "lucky number" among the Jewish people. Gifts of money / donations given in multiples of 18 are very popular. Read more
