Daily Talk
Today's chapter is almost entirely arithmetic. An hour cut into 1080 pieces, a month of twenty nine days and twelve hours and 793 of those pieces, a cycle of nineteen years that comes out very nearly even. And every calculation in it hangs from one instant on a Monday night that no human being was alive to see.
The Night the Counting Starts From
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About This Talk
Chapter 6 of Kiddush HaChodesh is where the calendar stops depending on eyes and starts depending on arithmetic, and the Rambam explains his choices rather than merely asserting them, dividing the hour into 1080 units because that number yields whole fractions in halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, eighths, ninths and tenths. From there come the constants: a mean lunar month of twenty nine days, twelve hours and 793 units, the weekly remainders that let you step month to month and year to year, and the carrying rules that discard whole weeks because the object is the weekday and not the total. It closes with the nineteen year machzor, its seven fixed leap years, its cycle remainder of 2-16-595, and an anchor nobody witnessed, the conjunction of the first year of creation on Monday night, five hours and 204 units after nightfall.