As a new lunar month begins, recalling the legacy of Muslim cooks in Calcutta’s Jewish homes
· Scroll
This week, the new lunar month announced both Ramzan and the month of Adar, the twelfth month in the Jewish lunar year. Two calendars turning on the same moon. That is not coincidence. It is shared inheritance – a rhythm of sacred time that predates borders and outlives empires.
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The ancient method of announcing a new moon required witnesses. Sacred time depended on human eyes.
In both traditions, the new month was never merely observed – it was declared. In the classical Jewish system, two witnesses who had seen the first sliver of the moon testified before a court, and the month was fixed by a legal utterance: mekudash, sanctified. The word is not poetic. It is juridical. It is the same language that consecrates a Jewish marriage.
In Islam, the month turns on ruʾyat al-hilāl, the sighting of the crescent, reported and confirmed through communal authority and then announced publicly. The moon is the same. The mechanism is the same. Sacred time becomes real because human beings look up, testify, and speak.
This essay begins with shared astronomy, but continues with shared gastronomy – with what happens in the ritual pot when sacred time approaches.
It is also about names that travelled with the Jewish community from Baghdad to Calcutta – from...