At 2:45 a.m. on a Monday in March, I was standing ankle-deep in the hyperconcentrated salt water that filled the bottom of Badwater Basin in Death Valley, waiting for the clouds to clear, hoping and believing that the expert calculations of scientists, astronomy experts, and photography instructors would all work out.

Early March is the beginning of Milky Way season. I was part of an astrophotography workshop, ready to dive back into a hobby that has been a source of awe and joy for me. Among a group of 10 students and two instructors, we were planning for about a 20-minute window between the moment the Milky Way, its dense, galactic core visible, would rise above the mountains, and the moment when the moon would rise behind it, overpowering the starlight and making the core invisible even to our cameras.

It can take hours of planning, combing through star apps, moon charts, topographic maps, and cross-checking the details to set up a shot like this. In this case, the plan had been designed by experienced teachers, allowing those of us newer to the art to benefit from their expertise. Our instructors made sure that we knew that in this limited time, we would be able to capture an image of only one part of the Milky Way, certainly not the full arch sweeping across the sky.

For me, this hobby has been a spiritual practice as well as an artistic and scientific one. In the Jewish tradition, the movements of the sky are not only a source of awe and beauty, but also the measurement by which sacred time is defined.

Toward the end of Parashat Emor, read this year May 1(Iyyar 15), the text of Leviticus takes us through the sacred times of the year, most prominently the major festivals measured by the cycles of the moon, each tied to both Jewish history and human agriculture. In the biblical and rabbinic Jewish traditions, the new month is declared only when witnesses see the new moon and report it to the court in Jerusalem.

In the midst of the Mishnah’s carefully detailed account of witnessing the new moon, a dispute erupts between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua.

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In Rosh Hashanah 2:8-9, we learn that Rabban Gamliel, the ruling rabbinic authority, accepted the testimony of two witnesses whose words were confusing, establishing Av as a 29 day month (the lunar month is technically 29.53 days long, so some calendar months will have 29 days and others will have 30).

Several rabbis, including Rabbi Yehoshua, expressed skepticism about their testimony and argued that the month should be 30 days long instead. This would affect the timing of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, having real implications for the community.

Rabban Gamliel ordered Rabbi Yehoshua to appear before him carrying his staff and wallet on the day that he (Rabbi Yehoshua) would have calculated to be Yom Kippur, publicly affirming that Rabban Gamliel’s calendar was correct. Rabbi Yehoshua is devastated, stuck between his personal sense of religious integrity and a direct order from the ruling religious authority.

Rabbi Akiva finally offers him a way out. He suggests the text of Parshat Emor as his solution:

“I can learn from a verse that everything that Rabban Gamliel did is valid. As it is stated: ‘These are the appointed seasons of the Lord, sacred convocations, which you shall proclaim in their season’ (Leviticus 23:4). This verse can mean that whether you have proclaimed them at their proper time or not at their proper time, I have only these festivals as established by the Jewish people.”

On this basis, Rabbi Yehoshua brings himself to Rabban Gamliel as ordered.

I usually find myself squarely on Rabbi Yehoshua’s side in this conflict. After all, he has quite a bit of logic on his side. These particular witnesses described what they thought they had seen in confusing and illogical ways. What is more, by this point in history, the Jewish community has figured out how to mathematically predict when the new moon will arrive. (By the way, that math is hard. The moon and the sun operate on surprisingly incompatible timelines!)

The ritual of observing and testifying about the moon is largely a formality. Interestingly, the text is not clear whether Rabbi Yehoshua is disregarding their testimony because it does not align with the math, or Rabban Gamliel is accepting their poorly worded testimony because the math tells him the day must be the new month anyway.

I actually don’t think that it matters much. More important to me than the math, Rabban Gamliel is very simply being a bully. Rather than engaging Rabbi Yehoshua in debate, sharing his reasoning or even allowing Rabbi Yehoshua to disagree in private as long as he does not create a schism, Rabban Gamliel is demanding a public and embarrassing display of obedience. This is a pattern of behavior that has no place in leadership and ultimately causes Rabban Gamliel to be deposed from his position.

While I can find no excuse for Rabban Gamliel’s behavior, this year I am finding myself much more curious about Rabbi Akiva’s words. Rabbi Akiva imagines God conveying to us through the Torah that “whether you have proclaimed them at their proper time or whether you have declared them not at their proper time, I have only these festivals as established by the representatives of the Jewish people.”

Sacred times exist when human beings participate actively in the process of engaging with and sanctifying those times. In the rabbinic imagination, we participate in the sanctification of time by observing the sky, waiting eagerly for the moon, and can be foiled when the sky is cloudy.

Later, the Jewish community moved to a fully calculated calendar, relying on the (complex!) math of observing the moon over the span of years, creating formulas and records to describe its cycle, applying that math, sometimes quite fallibly, to the upcoming year. Over the centuries, our observations and our mathematics were refined to more and more accurately account for what the natural world is doing.

Both the observational approach and the scientific one must allow for the surprise of the unexpected. For both Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua, there can be only one “correct” way to determine the new month, and that process contains room for neither error nor surprise. They each come to the process knowing exactly what to expect — either on which day the new moon should appear or what the witnesses should have seen. And when the witnesses’ observations do not align with the expected, they find themselves in conflict and crisis.

Rabbi Akiva’s words ground us in a new approach: By perceiving the universe and sanctifying time, we are not simply enacting the expected course of events. We can instead maintain the capacity to be surprised, to know that our expectations cannot fully contain the complexity of the entire universe.

Careful observation should always reveal something new and make room for wonder. The best math and science is conducted with the humility that it will someday be refined or rewritten as we learn more. Unexpected results are not obstacles to learning, they are the very substance of learning and of growth.

By the way, that 20-minute window that every chart offered as time to image just one small part of the immense Milky Way? Not one of us had accounted for the height of the mountains around us. The moon remained invisible for a good 30 minutes longer than we expected. In that time, I had enough moments to craft my first full Milky Way arch panorama of the year.

I sincerely hope that this year of sacred time finds us open to wonder and productive surprise, and that we have the capacity to respond to the unexpected with the curiosity that allows us to grow.

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