SUN CEREMONY – On Wednesday morning, April 8, 2009 (Jewish year 5769), Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro (center), spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom, led a small group at Marine Park in a unique ceremony that occurs only once every 28 years. The Jewish community celebrates the return of the sun to its original place in the heavens at the precise time and day of its creation. This blessing on the sun (in Hebrew “Birkat haHammah”) takes place in all years that are a multiple of twenty-eight plus one (there was no year zero) in the Jewish month of Nisan when the spring equinox falls in Saturn.