Shabbat Bo 5 Shvat 5768, Jan 12, 2008

Efrat, Israel – The commandment given to the Jewish people by God must not be seen as a commandment which “just happens” to be first. Rather, it must have special significance, and have been chosen as the cardinal commandment. It must also reveal basic philosophic truths about who we are as a nation.

We read in Bo, this week’s portion: “This month shall be head month to you. It shall be the first month of the year.” (Exodus 12:2) The Midrash tells us it is necessary for G-d to actually guide Moses’ gaze toward the sky so that when the new moon looks like “this ...,” he should sanctify it.

There are many traces in our halachic ritual of an ancient practice where witnesses who first saw the new moon would rush to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, even desecrating the Sabbath if necessary, in order for the Religious Court to declare: “The month is sanctified, the month is sanctified.”

The first day of the month, Rosh Chodesh, is a minor festival. On the Sabbath before a new month, the moon’s re-appearance, to a fraction of a second, is announced after the public Torah reading, echoing the Sanhedrin’s public declaration. On Rosh Chodesh itself, during the Amida and the grace after Meals, we add a special prayer, Ya’ale Veyauo, and chant the Half-Hallel during the morning service. There is a special scriptural reading, just like any festival, and we add the additional Musaf prayer, a reminder of the extra sacrifice in the Temple. Women are freed from certain domestic tasks, and fasting and eulogizing are forbidden. During the first days of the new month, generally when the Sabbath lets out, Saturday evening, special prayers are recited and Jews even dance in a circle while gazing at the new moon in a ceremony called “sanctifying the moon.” Thus, we still need to understand why, out of so many possible commandments, the Torah chose this one to introduce the Jewish people to their future destiny, and why there is so much fascination with the moon.

There are many possible answers, but this week ours begins in Egypt, a land where the calendar followed the sun. The Maharal of Prague points out that when the Jews were given this first commandment, they were actually given more than just a law telling them to start counting months according to lunar cycles — it emphasized a new way of life that would stand in sharp contrast to Egypt.

The sun is symbolic of constancy and power — the very image of Egypt. Except for gray clouds (not too many in Egypt), every day the sun’s warmth and light reaches someone in the world — 365 days a year, we trust the sun to rise and set. There’s nothing new under the sun because the sun sees and oversees everything in an unchanging fashion. But under the moon, there is something new at least 12 times a year. It is forever changing, going through its phases, getting smaller and smaller, and then bigger and bigger. When it seems to have disappeared completely, there’s a sudden turnaround and rebirth. To the ancient imagination, the permutation of the moon in its 28 day journeys were a constant source of heavenly wonder and speculation.

The Holy Zohar compares the Jewish people to the moon because both the moon and the people of Israel go through phases, disappearing little by little until it seems that it’s the end; centuries-long exile climaxing in Europe’s death factories. Suddenly, a new moon is sighted and the messengers run to Jerusalem.

The repetition of a monthly cycle, this law of change, firmly established within the Jewish psyche the inevitability of renewal. Our sanctity as a nation is tied to this potential of renewal, and our history attests to the termination of a Jewish culture in one land and the almost simultaneous appearance of a new Jewish culture in a different land. Like the moon, our disappearance is never forever.

The first Torah commandment is given when it’s clear that Pharaoh himself cannot change. After nine terrifying plagues, one might expect him to have a change of heart, but the leader of Egypt cannot relent. Despite all that he has witnessed, he refuses to let the Jews go. The message of this first commandment is that in contrast to the blind Egyptians (darkness is the ninth plague) the Jews can, and do, change, emerging again and again out of the fangs of evil to enter the gates of redemption.

Rabbi Kook, Israel’s first chief Rabbi, often wrote of the old being made new, and the new becoming holy. I have a good friend, Yehuda, from Kibbutz Ein Tzurim. Years back, a parent of one of the kibbutznikim, a resident of Kfar Chassidim near Haifa, died and several of us from Ein Tzurim headed north. Before the funeral actually started, the head of the town’s yeshiva, a man dressed in the typical black hat and coat of a Rosh Yeshiva from the old world, stepped outside with several students, the clothes in sharp contrast to the light shirts and summer shorts of the kibbutznikim. I sensed that the Rosh Yeshiva looked disdainfully upon these men, though they wore kippot and were from a religious kibbutz. All of sudden his eyes fell on my friend Yehuda, and he cried out to him in Yiddish: “Yudke? Is that you?” It turned out that the two had been students together in a yeshivah in Petach Tikva. The Rosh Yeshiva then asked the kibbutznik why someone as brilliant as he had been, interrupted his talmudic studies and left yeshiva world. “I wouldn’t think that our Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Shach, would have you go.” “You’re right. Rav Shach wrote many letters to dissuade me.” Thundered the head of the yeshiva: “And those letters will be the prosecuting attorney when you stand before the heavenly throne.”

Ordinarily a reserved man, Yehuda stood his ground: “And the kibbutz I helped start, Ein-Tzurim, will be my defense attorney. And I think this attorney will win the case.” His old school mate was taken aback by the answer and said, almost admiringly, “You’ve stayed the same.” Yehuda wouldn’t let the issue drop. “It’s not true, Reb Elya. I didn’t remain the same, but you remained the same Elya. You are what you were 30 years ago, a 100 years ago. But I saw G-d’s hand in history. I saw changes in store for the Jewish people, the creation the State of Israel, and in accordance with those changes, I changed.”

Shabbat Shalom
Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone
Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel