Parashat Hachodesh: On Renewal

This week, in addition to the regular parsha, we read the last of the 4 special parshiyyot before Passover, Parashat HaHodesh, which deals with instructions given to the Israelites in Egypt concerning their preparations for departure and for the first Passover sacrifice. The parsha begins HaHodesh hazeh lachem rosh hodeshim--this month (i.e. the month of Nissan) is to be the first of months for you. This statement is traditionally understood as the very first mitzvah (commandment) given to the nation of Israel. It is the mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon each month and keeping a particularly Jewish calendar, a lunar calendar, with all its sacred holidays based on the determination of the new moons.

Why is the mitzvah of the lunar calendar the very first mitzvah given to the nation? The Hasidic author of Netivot Shalom points out that the moon is a symbol of eternal change and renewal. Just when the moon reaches its tiniest point, to the point of almost complete darkness, there is suddenly the tiniest glimpse of a new light, the start of a new moon that will eventually be whole and bright. So, too, each person is capable of such renewal, of such hithadshut, of moving out of the darkest of states into light.

Such renewal is not just a hope, but also a hiyuv, an obligation, a commandment. In the Haggadah we say, bekhol dor vador hayav adam lirot et atzmo ke’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim--in every generation a person is obligated to imagine that he himself has left Egypt. Every person is commanded to undergo that kind of radical spiritual transformation, to view himself as changing, becoming someone entirely new, moving out of darkness and into light.

Sometimes there is really not that much that has changed in us from one month to the next. But we are commanded to sanctify time, to go out and see the new moon and announce its arrival. We are commanded, in other words, to see, to note, to feel the novelty of time, of each new month as it comes, not to let time slip idly by, but to stop and take note of it, to relish it, to feel its preciousness, its sanctity, its uniqueness. Shehecheyanu vekiyamanu vehigiyanu lazeman hazeh--thank you God for sustaining us to reach this particular special moment in time.

In the morning prayers, we say that God is mehadesh bekhol yom tamid ma’aseh breishit, that He “renews each day the work of creation,” referring to the daily gift of new sun-light each morning. The sun is God’s job, a sign of His daily renewal of creation, but the moon is our territory. The midrash says that for two thousand odd years before the exodus from Egypt, God Himself would sanctify and announce each new moon, but that once the people of Israel came along, He passed this occupation on to them. Keeping track of the moon is the human version of God’s daily hithadshut, our attempt to participate in the constant renewal of the universe and of ourselves.