This 2025 calendar setup of Tuesday-Wednesday midweek Jewish holidays is a tough one for working folks, as well as for observant college students who will be missing a ton of work.

But as we learned in our “Three Day YomTov” story, the Rebbe finds positivity, meaning, and opportunity in every calendar setup, and a Tuesday-Wednesday Rosh Hashanah is no different!

Rabbi Levi Slonim, a Chabad on Campus colleague at Binghamton University pointed out to me that Rebbe emphasized that this year’s (5786/2025) Rosh Hashanah’s first day on Tuesday (beginning Monday night) is significant in that it recalls the double mention of “and it was good” in the Creation story on Tuesday.

I didn’t know Rebbe taught this regarding a Rosh Hashanah first day on Tuesday (which btw won’t occur again for 20 years until 2045) but in my youth there were many Rebbe rallies for children, seemed to be often on Tuesday, Rebbe always made mention of 2X “it was good” on Tuesdays.

In general, Rebbe often made connections & tie-ins to the way the calendar fell out, making timelessness timely is a big theme. Many others would see calendar coinciding as coincidental, but not the Rebbe who often sought & saw meaning in it. But the “double-good” of Tuesdays was one of the Rebbe calendar connections that really stuck out. And I remember it a lot from the children’s rallies in the 1980’s.

My memory serves that those Rebbe’s children’s rallies were often on Tuesdays, because I can still hear the Rebbe’s voice emphasizing that Tuesday specialness. It seemed to be routine for those rallies. I asked my yeshiva classmates, one of whom (Rabbi Jacobson from Toronto) did some digging (incredible research!) and found 103 children’s rallies from 1977 to 1992 (aside for Lag B’Omer and camp visits etc), and 42 of them were on Tuesdays! According to his research: 16 on Sunday, 17 on Monday, 18 on Wed, 8 on Thursday, 2 on Friday bit 42 (!!) on Tuesdays. It seems Rebbe did have a preference for these rallies on Tuesdays.

One reason this may have been especially beloved to the Rebbe may be from the famous letter of the Alter Rebbe who described his release from Czarist prison on Yud Tes Kislev, while he was reciting Tehillim for the third day of the week, the day of doubled-good…

But what’s the message of double-good?

First of all, there’s a Yiddish expression: “even if good is good, better is better!” When good is that good, we’d appreciate a second helping! Especially the type of good the Rebbe often emphasized “evident & revealed good!”

But it’s not just more of the same, there is a special quality to the doubled-good: The Rebbe quotes his predecessors (the Tzemach Tzedek & Rashab, based on a Talmud quote) that the doubled-good of Creation refers to “good towards heaven, and good towards people”, both spiritual & physical good, heavenly & earthly.

So this Rosh Hashanah, beginning the new Jewish Year 5786 on a Tuesday, has an added ability to bridge heaven & earth, eliciting blessings for a year that will be overflowing with an abundance of goodness that is both spiritual & physical, heavenly & earthy at the same time!