On a Day Celebrating the Sun, Plenty of It at the Western Wall

JERUSALEM, April 8 -- The light was brilliant and the sky was without a cloud. The stones of the Old City sparkled.

The astronomy behind Birkat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun marked by Jews on Wednesday, might not stand up to modern scrutiny, but to the tens of thousands gathered at the Western Wall, the celebration was a seminal event. If ever there were a morning fit to praise, it was this one.

"It's inspiring -- the sense of unity and creation," said 28-year-old teacher Sefi Pearlman, as light from the sun poured over the wall and warmed a capacity crowd.

According to Jewish tradition, the sun completes a "large cycle" every 28 years, bringing it to the same spot on the same day at the same time as it was when God created it. The mood at the wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, was one of jubilance about the raw power of nature -- whether it has been around for the 5,769 years marked by the Jewish calendar or the 15 billion years that scientists estimate as the age of the universe.

The crowd, full of men in orthodox dress but with plenty of others as well, read prayers from the Torah or from special cards printed for the occasion. Some passed around cardboard glasses with polarized plastic lenses so they could look more directly at the sun. Available for about a dollar at stores, they had the key phrase of the day printed on the frame.

"Blessed art Thou our Lord, king of the universe, making the act of creation," the crowd said as the sun crested the wall, a structure that according to Jewish tradition is built near the foundation of the Earth.

By any measure, the sun blessing is a special event for Jews, said Rabbi Ronen Neuwirth of the Ohel Ari congregation in the central Israeli town of Raanana. "Everyone gets a chance to experience it only three or four times. We get together, sing and dance and offer a couple of Psalms for healing," he said. "Most of the blessings that we do repeat every year, every month, every week. This is very unique."

The fact that this cycle of the sun fell right at Passover gives it a special significance, Neuwirth said. That coincidence has only occurred a few times in history, and some Talmudic scholars have connected the alignment with key events in Jewish history, such as the exodus from Egypt, he said.

Newspapers, radio commentary and yeshiva lectures have brought the moment down to an even more basic level in recent days -- encouraging people to say the prayer, for example, because it will protect them from hunger, illness, even murder, until it is time for the next one.

Watching the sun breach a blue sky, Rabbi Philip D. Field nodded his head with the prayer and looked at what he called a "Hollywood ending" to the ceremony.

So what if the calendar math is fuzzy? "You can take the perspective that it's a nonevent," Field said. "But something is moving people."

The crowd spilled out onto walkways overlooking the Western Wall and onto the rooftops of nearby hotels and buildings. They jammed one at a time through security gates, wedged into stairway corners, and put up with pushy police officers.

A former school director from Philadelphia, Field was in California the last time this blessing came around, and "it wasn't the same."

Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.