Ein mazal l’Yisrael, our Talmud teaches—there is no constellation for Israel. Firmly rooted within Zoroastrian culture and its connection to astrology, the rabbis wanted to make a point that our belief system is not dependent on the stars and the planets, but rather on the Divine Creator of heaven and earth. This oft-quoted statement aside, though, the Talmud itself is full of allusions to and predictions based on the planets. Today is no exception.

Today, we here in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the calendar year. This astronomical phenomenon has been marked by cultures across the globe since prehistory, and there is almost no culture—from Christianity to the ancient Aztecs, from the Greeks to Shakespeare, and even our own Jewish tradition—that does not mark this day in some way or another.

While there is no constellation for Israel, the days surrounding the Summer Solstice are known as the Tekufat Tammuz, the cycle of Tammuz—or et ha-katzir, harvest time. Because of the vagaries of the Jewish calendar and its unique melding of the lunar and solar calendars, the Tekufat Tammuz may fall between 14 and 18 days after the Summer Solstice itself, but it is nonetheless connected.

It is around this time of year that we read in our Torah of a transition of power, or at least a sharing of leadership. Moses, exhausted by the burden of leadership of the Israelites, asks God for help—and God says:

‘’Gather for me seventy of Israel’s elders of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will draw upon the spirit that is on you and put it on them; they shall share the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it alone.” (Numbers 11:16-17)

Our midrash likens this transition to the sharing of a flame, which does not diminish as it passes from one source to the next. Based on this teaching, Rabbi Jill Hammer suggests that this might be at the heart of marking the Tekufat Tammuz, that we take time around this day to “share our own brightness as we share the light of the sun.”

On this day, she writes:

We store up the sun’s heat within us for the future, and we store up the wisdom and love we receive from others so that we may draw on it and share it in time to come.

As the sun reaches its peak of strength, may we take in its light, and may we strengthen the light within us.

—Rabbi Sari Laufer