(OPINION) For the first time in US history, a total lunar eclipse will take place on election day, beginning and ending before the polling stations open. The next time a total lunar eclipse will happen on election day will be in 372 years on Tuesday, November 8, 2394.
The eclipse will begin at 5:16 a.m. EST and ends at 6:41 a.m., for a total duration of about 85 minutes. According to constitutional stipulations, elections are held on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November” and must fall on even-numbered years. That means election days always fall on November 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8.
There was a lunar eclipse on election day, Tuesday, November 3, 1846, but it wasn’t total. Instead, it was a rather shallow penumbral lunar eclipse, in which the full moon completely missed the Earth’s inner, dark shadow, and passed through the Earth’s outer, faint penumbral shadow.
A lunar eclipse takes place when the earth is between the sun and the moon, and the moon passes through the earth’s shadow. In this case, the earth’s shadow will block out 97% of the moon’s surface. This eclipse will be a “blood moon”, the result of atmospheric conditions that give the moon a reddish tint rather than black when it moves into the shadow.
The red color comes from some of the sunlight passing through Earth’s atmosphere where it gets bent and colors like blue or green are filtered out, leaving behind longer wavelengths like the color red.
The Epoch Times, a conservative news site, ascribed political significance to the lunar hue. “Thus the factors have aligned—both cosmic and constitutional—to manifest a red moon hours before what many predict could be a red wave, they wrote.
This will be the second lunar eclipse this year, the first one taking place on May 16, 2022. There won’t be another total lunar eclipse until March 14, 2025. This full moon also marks the moon’s arrival at its apogee, the point along the lunar elliptical orbit where it’s furthest from Earth. It will thus appear its smallest, seen from the vantage point of the Earth.
Rabbi Mordechai Genuth discussed the meaning of eclipses in Jewish tradition, explaining that under normal circumstances, lunar eclipses are considered a bad omen for Israel.
This is based on a section in the Talmud (Sukkot 29a) that specifies that lunar eclipses are a bad omen for Israel since Israel is spiritually represented by the moon. If the lunar eclipse takes place in the east side of the heavens, then it is a bad omen for all the nations in the east, and similarly, if it occurs in the western hemisphere of the sky, it is a bad sign for all the nations in the west.
“In the time of the Talmud, only Israel set the calendar according to the moon,” Rabbi Genuth said. “Setting the calendar according to the sun was the practice of the idolaters, like Rome which named the solar months and days after pagan gods.
Today, the Muslims set their calendar according to the moon, even more than the Jews, in a manner that leads their calendar to be imbalanced. So a lunar eclipse is closely connected to the Muslims and, in this case, is a warning for the Arabs.”
“The eclipse will pass over the United States,” Rabbi Genuth said. “The President is connecting his fate with that of the Arabs, choosing them over Israel. He is choosing war, the wars that originate in Ishmael, the wars that are presaged by the upcoming blood moon.”
Rabbi Genuth made one disclaimer; at the end of the section of the Talmud describing the omens contained within eclipses, the Talmud states: “When Israel does the will of the place (God), they have nothing to fear from all of this,” citing the Prophet Jeremiah as a source. (READ MORE)
