New Moon on … Tuesday?

Eid Mubarak!  Muslims have been marking the end of Ramadan over the past few days worldwide with Eid-al-Fitr, perhaps the biggest holiday within the calendar. It also is the beginning of the month of Shawwal.  Because the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar cycles, it’s an observance which actually begins at sundown. Similar to Jewish holidays — which also follow a lunar calendar.

Faiqa has a wonderful post about Eid-al-Fitr at her blog. She also discusses the ongoing issues with determining exactly when the calendar date should fall in different parts of the world.

But as we’ve discussed on the show, it’s quite interesting to see what Judaism and Islam have in common where it comes to our way of keeping time. Although we both have calendars based on the moon with twelve months apiece, the Jewish calendar throws in leap years to keep the lunar years consistent with the solar calendar. That’s why Passover and Hannukah fall around the same times every year, while Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr are several weeks earlier year after year. (The Jewish calendar has a 19 year cycle in which seven of those years include a whole extra month… but your head will likely explode if I explain all of this right now.)

The point of this is that Judaism is beginning a new month as well — the month of Elul.  It’s the last month of the Jewish calendar, and it has a bit of significance. First of all, the name is an acronym for the Hebrew Ani l’dodi v’dodi li — which means “I am for my beloved, and my beloved is for me.”  Sweet, no?  Also, it that it is the last month of the Jewish year, it’s a preparation month for the more solemn New Year (Rosh Hashanah) which comes in one month. And to get people into that state of mind, the shofar is sounded every day (aside from the Sabbath).

Okay. The real point of this is that Faiqa and Shiny are very busy right now. Celebrating. Observing. So we don’t have a new podcast for you this week. However, we do have some gifts — as per the tradition of Eid.

First: a girl with some amazing lungs blowing the shofar:

httpv://youtu.be/DS8NoPRVjm0

Second: An awesome Eid celebration / dance number coming from… Canada?

httpv://youtu.be/le18hZJ780U

And third:  Faiqa and Shiny have put together a reel of previously unreleased bonus footage from Hey! That’s My Hummus!  Some are extended topics we discussed off-air; some are snippets of us from behind the scenes, and some are just… well, embarrassing outtakes which ended up getting cut. Enjoy!  (Note: These twelve minutes are available on the website only and are not on iTunes.)

We’ll be back after Labor Day.

(photo credits:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/victius/4018086468/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethansphotosarecool/4194513323/)

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