Every Hebrew month follows the cycles of the moon quite precisely. Each new moon is Rosh Chodesh, a minor religious holiday, and most of the major holidays occur on the full moon. But the years follow the cycle of the sun also, albeit with somewhat less precision. We simply throw in an extra month every couple of years (we call this process intercalation), and this ensures that the Jewish year will never be more than a week or two out of phase with the earth’s revolution around the sun. So we feel both the sun and the moon in our lives.
