Parashat Bo: On the Old and the New

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the old and the new in Judaism this week.

In this week’s parsha, you have the first commandment given to the Israelite nation as a whole, hachodesh hazeh lakhem, the commandment to declare the new moon each month. The word for month, chodesh, comes from the word for new, chadash. But what is really new about the moon or about our lives each month? More or less, things in nature and in our lives proceed and cycle along as before, and yet we are commanded once a month to stop and declare them “new,” to see the sliver of the “new” moon as a rebirth.

The parsha also discusses the commandments concerning the Passover sacrifice, and here, too, there is a strange erasure of old and new. in the midst of the commands concerning the first Israelite Passover in Egypt – the paschal lamb and the blood on the doorposts – the Torah stops to talk about future Passovers for generations to come, the 7-day festival, the eating of matzah, the annual Passover sacrifice. It is as if, even before the Israelites in Egypt celebrated that first-ever Passover in Egypt – a new event – the celebration had already taken on the weight of tradition, the weight of something old and venerated, to be passed on forever. What was new had the feeling of something old.

Then there is the strange last line of the prayer (originally a Lamentations verse) we say upon returning the Torah to its ark: chadesh yameinu kikedem. “Renew our days as of old.” New or old? Which is it? The idea here seems to be that the ultimate redemption, which will be a kind of national rebirth or renewal, will look a lot like the old days, making a complete circle between past and future.

I’m not sure how to tie these pieces together. One thing that emerges from all of them is a sense that old and new are subjective matters, not issues of the historical past and future, but a kind of other zone above history, a place in which old and new do not contradict one another, but co-exist. What is old is new, as in the moon, and what is new is old, as in that first Passover. The ultimate goal is to be in the place we pray for when we say, “Renew our days as of old,” a place where old and new meet and feed off one another, where our attachment to tradition is the springboard for our energy and creativity in the world, and where the new projects we engage in have the weighty and sure-footed feel of antiquity behind them.

I think we actually have an instinctive understanding of the deep connection between the new and the old. When we hear an idea that feels right or true to us, we know it is right because it feels both familiar – as if we knew it all along somewhere deep inside us – and yet exciting and new. It thrills us with its brilliance and novelty and at the same time, connects to something deep inside us that is ancient and eternal. The Torah exists in this sphere, this place that is beyond the distinction between the old and the new, and in some way, maybe the Torah’s goal is to help us exist in this sphere as well.

Note: I invite other thoughts on this issue. I realize I have just begun to skim the surface and would appreciate input.