Moon sickle

Long after dark, when the moonsickle was near setting, two wagons full of old acquaintances from around the little water-front drug store, a few workers at the warehouses and some vets of old Company G like Clyde Winston gathered to charivari the new couple before the wedding tour up to Niagara Falls that the newspaper told about.

It was a beautiful contrast to see her beside her mistress, like a glittering star in attendance upon the pale and almost vanishing moonsickle.

I felt tranquilized while looking at it, as I do when the rosy clouds are fading into gray twilight, and the pale moon-sickle descends slowly behind the dim woods.

The Jewish month was a lunar month having no less than twenty-nine and no more than thirty days. The first day of the month was determined from the new moon. Of course, the new moon is not visible, but one or two days after the new moon, a faintly glowing moon sickle appears.

But the woman of leaves and flowers, clad in the shimmering cloak of forest-green, with the silver moonsickle brooch at her shoulder, was no longer with them.

So Simeon ben Gamaliel did not fear that a Jew would worship an image of the sun or a moon-sickle on a common object like a water pot, but saw danger in a golden or silver moon-sickle which might be worn as a talisman, as he is quoted in self-explanation in the Gemara.