“The Sin we Have Sinned against the Hebrew Calendar” is a protest against the elevation of the general calendar over the Hebrew calendar in the Israeli school system and public life. In her opinion this development reflects an impoverishment of the spiritual integrity of modern Hebrew culture. Allusion, metaphors, plays on words particular to the Hebrew language and culture are lost.
Hebrew having developed before the use of Arabic numbers assigns quantitative value to letters of the Hebrew alphabet so that words represent numerical equivalents and many numbers have linguistic meaning. For example the number 18 is represented by the Hebrew letters “Het” and “Yod” which also form the word “Hai” or life. Thus many Jews use multiples of 18 when giving cash gifts or charitable contributions.
Govrin, cites the year 1914 represented in the Hebrew calendar by the letters “tirad” which also means to tremble violently and thus the biblical allusion of the year “the earth shook” reflects the fact that 1914 was the year that WWI broke out.
She traces the roots of this development to the use of that strange calenderic hybrid “Kaf-Tet” be’ November to indicate the date in 1947 of the UN decision to partition the Palestinian mandate setting the stage for the declaration of the State of Israel. She bemoans the fact that today even educated Israelis cannot identify a Hebrew date.
As she says “the letters of the Hebrew date create a word, and the word is real; a fact, an experience. It creates a reality. It is a reality…” Govrin calls for a return to the use of Hebrew letter dates in order to revivify Hebrew culture.
