Rose City Iron Front

Portland City Council proclaims May to be Jewish American heritage month May also proclaimed to be Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month. Libraries recognize the latter but not the former, perhaps due to anti-Jewish bias, perhaps due merely to greater numbers of other Asians. But both of these proclamations are erroneous, as was the proclamation of April as Asian-American heritage month, for the reasons described below. Next year, please lobby your local, State, and Federal officials for a proclamation of Nisan as the Universal Asian heritage month, with particular significance for Jews, Arabs, Chinese, and South Asians. In 2025 the Spring moon of Nisan will endure from 30th March - 29th April.

RoseCityIronFront.org

Attention:

• Multnomah County Board of Commissioners 15 Nisan / 25 April 5:59 4/18/2024 15:52
• Washington County Board 16 Nisan / 24 April 1:46:55
• Clackamas County Board of Commissioners and Library District
• Governor of Oregon
• President of the United States
• Portland Public School District
• All who seek knowledge, wisdom, and understanding

The full moon is out on 22nd-23rd of April in 2024, and this night of 14th of Nisan on the Hebrew-Chaldean-Jewish lunisolar calendar, marks the night of the Passover and the beginning of the week long “Feast of Matzot/Unleavened Bread”, a memorial of the Exodus from Egypt. Not only does this holiday celebrates the beginning of the Israelite and Jewish national story, it has a secular and universal significance as humanity’s first monotheistic religious faith and its first anti-Imperial liberation saga, which is exemplary and instructive for us all. We call on public libraries to feature this in book displays. Libraries featured displays for Christmas, Ramadan, and Easter, and there is no good reason for libraries to ignore the Passover and Exodus story, as they currently are. Why else is April and not some other month proclaimed for Arab-American heritage?

The early pre-Islamic Arab calendar correctly considered Nisan to be either the 12th month Dhu_al-Hijja (the pilgramage festival) or the first month Muharram. Depending on whether or not they heard in timely fashion the proclamation of the Nasi’ (the Jewish exilarch or community president, who would announce a “postponement” of an interacalary month on leap years, according to the Metonic cycle. Meton of Athens had visited Babylonia during the Jews' Babylonian exile there, and the Babylonian calendar is essentially the same as that of the Hebrews.

The pre-Islamic near Eastern Hajj was an ecumenical and probably idolatrous spring festival, known in Babylonia as Akitu, the new year for their kings during the month of Nisan. Similar polytheism was probably practiced at the Ka'aba, and other cultic and urban centers. This Hajj occurred at round the same time as the Jewish “Hag” passover: the words are cognate, and in non-Islamic Arabic, “Hajj” can refer to a generic festival. And a “lunar spring break” at this time, like the moon and the seasons themselves, is inherently universal and could potentially be celebrated in a wide variety of otherwise incommensurable religions. The Muslim holiday of Ashura, recognizes the parting of the Red Sea, which Jews commemorate near the 21st (Asera v'echad) of Nisan, approximating the chronology as recorded in Exodus 12-15, and Muslims on the 10th of Muharram, which literally means “sacred month”. (Asera/Ashura means 10 in Hebrew and Arabic) This may have been an error in translation, or it may have been another learning from the Jews, deciding to imitate them after the fact as a partial rectification of native idolatry. I confess that I would have probably done something similar, and more research is needed.

Since isolated communities might miss the political announcement of an intercalary month, which is needed every third year, neighboring communities could easily be “off by one month” in their counting of the months. The Hebrew bible provides for such a common and conventional error, by giving Jews who missed the holiday a “second passover” on the full moon of the second month, the 14th of Iyar. Either month, therefore, has the potential to be “sacred” - “Muharram” - to the person or community celebrating it as such. The original Islamic first month - Muharram - might have been Iyar, or in some years might have been the leap month added after the Nisan, rather than an Adar II before it, in an act of learning from the Jews by having two sacred months in a row - the first Dhu-al-Hajj sacred to Babylonian or other gods at the then polytheistic Ka'aba, the second sacred to the one God, known as Allah. The possibilites for confusion in this system, and the reliance on timely information Jewish scholars, led the early muslim Ummah to abandon this after a few years of trying it, for the Islamic calendar now in use. More research is needed. But we suggest that Calendar reform might include humbling ourselves collectively to learn from the Jews and Chaldeans, whose calendar is the most beautifully aligned with natural philosophy. (If it seems humiliating to admit the Jews have been right about this, all along, then console yourself with the knowledge that Chinese and some Indian calendars also use this lunisolar system, and we shouldn't be to proud to learn and acknowledge).

Nisan is also an ancient Arab heritage month, therefore, as it was the time of the original Akitu, Passover, and Eastertide Hajj/festivals, and the month of the original “Ashura” observance of the Israelite crossing of the red sea, learned from the Jews and Asian Christians. Some of the christian were Quartodeciman christians who observed the feast of Matzah in solidarity with Jews and with Jesus's instructions at the last supper, and thus would break the Lenten fast during holy week before resurrection day (Anastasia). The Quartodecimans were conscientious objectors to the church's novel Lenten and Easter obligations, and were ex-communicated by the 313 CE Synod of Arles, for failing to comply. This decision confirmed by the 323 CE Council of Nicaea, cementing anti-Jewish doctrine into christian ritual. The early Muslim community chose to also deprecate the Hebrew-Chaldean and early Arabic calendar, as the Qu'ran explains, in order to suppress polytheism. But clearly also, like christianity had done, Islam sought to supercede and replace Jews rather than learn from them, while also (mis)appropriating Jewish texts, prophecies, and promises for itself, while often contradicting their plain meaning. This decision deprived them of an authentic Arab heritage, which would have provided a bastion against Roman and later European imperialism which under the banner of Christian crusades or Enlightenment rationalism, and enforced through the imposition of the solar-astral Gregorian calendar currently in use, under which the American government has in 2021 imperiously proclaimed April to be “Arab heritage month”.

But American governments have no obligation to confirm these erroneous and tragic decisions by ecumenical church councils and the Islamic Ummah, and have good reason to deprecate them in our secular holiday and heritage proclamations. We Recognize the first month of Spring, Nisan, as an Asian heritage month, and the chief month of the year in the Hebrew calendar, mentioned in Exodus 12, and the Babylonian calendar, and in many Indian calendars where it is called Vaisakha. We call on libararies, schools, and universities to present critical analysis from conscientious objectors and the alternate Quartodeciman and Jewish viewpoints in library book displays and public school curriculums.

But the library has neglected its public education mission in its calendar and book displays, having chosen to support the status quo of ignoring or deliberately suppress Jewish history and holiday observance: out of the the central libraries dozen feature book displays, not one of them acknowledges Passover or the feast of unleavened bread. Its also missing from the three other libraries I've visited in past days, nearly all of which had displays for Easter and Ramadan. But this ignorance has the result of impoverishing everyone, and re-inforcing anti-Jewish prejudices that are already latent and systemic. Therefore we call on the County Board, Governor of Oregon, and U.S. President to make a proclamation early in 2025 recognizing the feast of unleavened bread as a Jewish, Egyptian, and Quartodeciman christian heritage week. Furthermore, recognize Nisan as an ecumenical Asian heritage first month of the year, and include Jews, Chaldeans, and Arab traditions in its commemoration. Indeed, it is and always will be of universal significance, the church’s misguided Easter computus notwithstanding. The misguided Egyptian, Roman, and Islamic, and neo-Pythagorean number 12 mystic fundamentalism notwithstanding. America, Oregon, and Multnomah County's misinformed governmental proclamations, all notwithstanding.

But April has recently been declared Arab-American heritage months. May has been AANHPI heritage month since 1990 and Jewish-American heritage month since 2006. All of these should be absorbed into commemoration of Nisan in future years, since the Roman Gregorian calendar is a construct of Western imperialism, and is not actually a Jewish, Arab, or Asian heritage at all. Those communities should join us in deprecating it, and in making this proposal instead. Alternatively, AANHPI heritage month could begin with the Asian new year in Jan/Feb, which is usually the 11th Hebrew month of Shevat.

Nisan is known as Vaisakha in India, and is the first month of the Vikram Samvat calendar, Odia calendar, Maithili Calendar, Punjabi calendar, Assamese calendar (where it is called Bohag) and the Bengali calendar. These are luni-solar calendars. It is the third month of the Chinese calendar, although it is often the second month, because of differences in the schedule for intercalation on leap years, in which years the Chinese mid-autumn festival in that 8th month corresponds to the Jewish feast of tabernacles and universal feast of harvest ingathering, in the seventh month, which is known as Tishrei in the Chaldean-Babylonian calendar, where it's new moon is acknowledged as a secular or civil new year, or rosh ha shana. Contarary to popular belief, that is not the Jewish new year (which occurs on the new moon of Nisan) but rather the Jewish day of judgement, yom ha din, and feast of trumpets, yom teruah. Tishrei is therefore also an Asian heritage month, and we call on schools, libararies, and governments to recognize it as such. In 2024 it will occur between 3 October - 31 October, and in 2025 between 23 September - 21 October.

I call on your diversity, equity, and inclusion staff to learn about antiJudaism as a constitutive idea of and explanatory force within Egyptian and Graeco-roman empires, in Christianity, in Islam, and in Enlightenment thinking, and to these proposed steps of public education to begin to remediate it. Jew-hatred often targets other gentiles considered heretics, and it impoverishes everyone. See the book by Nirenberg, David ”Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition“ WW Norton (2013) By doing this the library will honor its own published Equity and inclusion values to “center the voices of the most impacted by racism and systems of oppression”, and to “recognize and honor their strength, wisdom and knowledge.” According to its website at multcolib.org, “The library’s mission is to empower diverse communities to learn and create” We call on the library system to fulfill its mission.

Thank you for your consideration,

Jared Essig ben Noah

Library patron,

Advocate, RoseCityIronFront.org

also: libraries should recognize passover and the asian heritage month of nisan