When Holiness Becomes a Monstrosity
One of the most important calendar adjustments is known by the mnemonic:
“Lo ADU Rosh” (לא אד״ו ראש)
literally: Rosh Hashanah cannot fall on days 1, 4, or 6.
Meaning: the first day of Rosh Hashanah cannot fall on a Sunday (א), Wednesday (ד), or Friday (ו). If the New Moon calculation falls on a restricted day, Rosh Hashanah is simply postponed to the next day.
Preventing Impossible Conflicts
By ensuring Rosh Hashanah never begins on Wednesday or Friday, we guarantee that Yom Kippur—exactly nine days later— will never fall immediately adjacent to Shabbat, on a Friday or Sunday.
Why does that matter?
This rule isn’t just a technicality. Two consecutive days of maximal holiness and restriction would be unbearable, and lead to violation or extremism. Such a situation would either force people to break observance, or lead to rigid, inflexible sanctity that denies basic human necessities, such as preparing fresh food or burying the dead in dignity (Talmud Rosh Hashanah 20a).
This rule establishes a preventive boundary: The Sages understood that even kedushah (holiness) must be curbed and delimited when its accumulation threatens to become an unbearable burden on human beings.
If our tradition demanded a restraint on the sanctity of time, this principle applies with a hundredfold more urgency to the sanctity of land and people. For when a claim of holiness is used to justify oppression, violence, or ethnic cleansing, it transforms the sacred into a monstrosity.
As R. Meir Simcha HaCohen of Dvinsk teaches, nothing in our world is inherently sanctified. Only God is immanently holy. Everything else—objects, people, and land—is only made holy by our behavior; when we uphold God’s fundamental commands: compassion, justice, and the sanctity of human life.
