The Jewish people received their first mitzvah as a nation – to designate the month of Nisan as the first of the months: “This month will be for you the beginning of the months, it will be for you the first of the months of the year” (Exodus 12:1). This mitzvah, which was given on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the New Month of Nisan, also involves the Jewish people’s initiation into the intricate calculations and profound secrets of the Jewish calendar, which God taught Moses. Along with a number of other instructions, this commandment was given to the Jewish people in preparation for their departure from Egypt.
This first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as they were leaving Egypt directly relates to their mastery over time, for this is the most significant distinction between a free person and a slave. A slave is not free to decide what to do with his or her time; only a free person possesses this option. Integrating this understanding is the first step in the long road to true freedom. What’s more, knowing how to use and relate to time is one of the main differences between not only a free-person and a slave, but also between a successful and an unsuccessful person, both materially and spiritually.
The word for Egypt in Hebrew is derived from the root word meaning “confinement” or “narrow space.” The historic exodus of the Jewish people from slavery to freedom symbolizes the archetypal journey undertaken by every individual from the dark slavery of constricted time and space to the infinite light of freedom and rectified consciousness. For the Jewish people, this transformation was fully manifest by their acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, fifty days after leaving Egypt.
An important feature of the laws governing the Jewish calendar is that time is counted primarily by the monthly lunar cycle, yet in close coordination with the yearly solar cycle as well, which insures that each holiday will fall in the same appointed season every year. Pesach, in fact, is referred to in the Tanach, the twenty-four books of the Bible, as Chag HaAviv, the Spring Holiday. Without exploring the finer details, suffice it to say that this integration of lunar and solar paradigms is one of the defining features of the Jewish calendar, as all other calendars function according to one celestial body or the other. And it is specifically the mitzvah of declaring the New Moon, paradigmatically initiated on Rosh Chodesh Nisan right before leaving Egypt, which empowers the Jewish people to become active participants in the definition of their experience of time. For the declaration of the new moon was not an automatic occurrence, but rather a monthly function performed by the Sanhedrin, the High Court, based upon the actual sighting of the new moon. In fact, this procedure survived until the 4th century CE when the Sanhedrin was disbanded, and a written calendar was adopted in response to the realities of the diaspora and the needs of Jews all over the world.
This monthly declaration of the New Moon, which determined when the holidays would take place, establishes a fundamental principle: we have the ability to control the flow of time – it is not an independent force in the universe that controls us. This point cannot be emphasized enough when trying to understand a Jew’s relation to time. God gave over into our hands the ability and responsibility to regulate time as a crucial first step in leaving Egypt. This is the essential message of the month of Nisan becoming the first of the months when it was given in preparation for leaving Egypt, and it still serves as a beacon every year for our spiritual renewal and self-empowerment through our relationship to time.
When reflecting further on the first mitzvah the Jewish people received as a nation in preparation for leaving Egypt, we notice that the Hebrew word for “month” (chodesh) shares the same root as the word for “new” (chadash). As noted, each month follows the cycle of the moon, from its inception at the beginning of the month to when it becomes full in the middle, and from its subsequent waning to when it is renewed once again. Consequently, the mystery of time is intrinsically bound up with the concepts of renewal and rejuvenation as symbolized by the moon’s cycles, and it all begins from Rosh Chodesh Nisan.
How do we make each month new despite the seemingly static circularity of the seasons and recurring holiday cycles? How can we make ourselves new despite the relentless onslaught of linear time and age? These and other related questions take on great existential import beyond the merely theoretical when seriously considered from the perspective of the Hebrew calendar.
Kabbalah and Chassidut put great emphasis on hitchadshut, the ability to renew one’s self and to experience time and life as new at every moment. In the Psalms, David writes of God’s telling him: “Today I have given birth to you” (Psalms 2:7). To experience every moment as truly new, to have the sense of being perpetually reborn, is a sign of true Messianic consciousness.
According to tradition, David, from whom Mashiach, the Messiah, descends, was not allotted any time in this world. The Midrash relates that Adam, who was given a preview of the future, saw this and “donated” seventy years of his life so that David could live. Thus, David viewed his entire life as a gift, and therefore he experienced each day as if “today I have given birth to you.” This constant awareness of the gift of life and God’s mercy was a cornerstone of David’s elevated consciousness and gives us a glimpse into the state of mind of one who reached such lofty heights in expressing his love and praise of God.
This capacity for perpetual renewal is truly one of the great secrets of attaining personal fulfillment and happiness. For without it, life can quickly wear people down, entangling them in tedious and boring habits, rote thoughts and even self-defeating actions. Failure to regularly renew one’s self dooms a person to an uninspired and frustrating life – evocatively referred to by the famous American author Henry David Thoreau as, “a life of quiet desperation.”
I had the privilege to spend Shabbat with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach on numerous occasions. I often saw him on Friday afternoons and due to his incredibly intense schedule, he frequently looked absolutely exhausted. I used to wonder how he could summon up the strength to lead yet another Shabbat for so many people. Yet, no matter his state of mind or energy level even five minutes prior, whenever he walked into synagogue on Friday night he would literally glow with light and vitality. It never ceased to amaze me how he was able to transform himself like that time after time.
On a national level as well, renewal is truly one of the great secrets of Jewish survival and adaptation. For what other people has had to begin again so many times during its long and tortured history? No matter the circumstances, the Jewish people has persevered and renewed itself countless times in countries and communities around the globe, generation after generation. This essential power of perpetual renewal exists within every Jewish soul and is one of the secrets of Jewish creativity and ingenuity throughout the ages. The miraculous ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of the ancient homeland in Israel today clearly bears witness to this truth.
Let’s take this idea one step further. Notwithstanding all that we have just said about the tremendous importance of renewal, the power to transcend our normative reality in order to attain new insights and reveal new spiritual energies is an even greater achievement. For purely circular renewal can imply a kind of static ‘reset’ mechanism, whereby one is able to return to a clean slate, only to traverse the same paths as before, with no real growth or expansion. This kind of closed circuit perspective mirrors a world that is stuck constantly repeating the same stories and cycles ad infinitum with no actual learning or updated responses ever becoming available for people to transcend their fixed realities or identities.
By breaking out of their bonds of emotional and psychological slavery, the Israelites were uniquely positioned to transcend the narrow straits of Egypt, symbolized by fixed linear time, as the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun and followed a purely solar calendar. Through the very process of their liberation, the Israelites were being prepared to leap “over the sun,” so to speak, in order to experience a more Divine view of time; one that transcended the purely solar count and repetitive march of the seasons, by integrating a lunar count as well, with its constantly fluctuating cycles of renewal.
This is what the verse in Ecclesiastes (1:9) implies when it states that there is “nothing new under the sun.” When life is lived under the weight of rote habits and fixed routines, then certainly one will perceive “nothing new under the sun”; however, when one views life through a more elevated and dynamic perspective on time and is inspired through the Divine power of renewal, one can always find something new “over the sun.” Interestingly, the Zohar comments that although there may not be anything new under the sun, the moon is always changing and renewing itself, thus implying that there is always something new under the moon!
Throughout human history, the Jewish people’s incredible and disproportionate contribution in every avenue of human advancement, despite its history of great persecution, testifies to the fact that every Jewish soul is connected to the world “over the sun” or “under the moon” in the profoundest way. Despite a long history of near-constant persecution and upheaval, the Jewish people have in fact been able to “begin again” countless times. Through multiple exiles, centuries of slavery, numerous expulsions, murderous crusades, cruel pogroms and the unfathomable holocaust, the Jewish people have never stopped renewing themselves in ways beyond historical precedent and logic. The ability to continually renew oneself and tune into a more Divine perspective of time is at the core not only of Jewish survival, but of the countless national and personal achievements of Jews throughout the ages and constitutes one of the essential cornerstones of becoming a master of time. Truly, the ideal time to tune into this renewable energy every year is on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, when new life and renewal are literally in the air as freedom begins to flow in our veins.
