Friday, September 26, 2008

Hawaii Is Not Fairfax

I work on a project with a number of folks from Hawaii, including my office mate. We both like having a variety of calendars up on the walls, mostly for the rotating artwork, and there are usually a few Hawaiian calendars in the mix. I've always been amused that the Hawaiian calendars are well-intentioned enough to remember the Jewish holidays in their annotations, but not diligent enough to put them on the right days. Today I glanced up and noticed that one of the Hawaiian calendars shows Rosh Hashanah beginning on Monday, Sept 29, but then it shows Yom Kippur on the very next day. Oy! Are we to compress ten days of repentance into 24 hours? I checked a different Hawaiian calendar, and that one showed Yom Kippur on Oct 6, which is closer, but still two days off. I wonder if maybe they don't realize that the Jewish holidays fall on different days each year in the western calendar, and perhaps they've just been copying the same dates from year to year. If there are any Jewish people in Hawaii, perhaps they just take a laid back attitude about exactly when they celebrate. If you're harvesting pineapple year round, I suppose the timing of Succoth (a harvest festival) would seem rather arbitrary. Some of the Hawaiian calendars have tide tables on them, so you know when the surf is up. I haven't checked, but I'd bet that's accurate. If there are any Jewish surfers in Hawaii, they'd definitely want to know when the surf is up.

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