Did anybody see the moon hanging low on Sunday night?
There was a beautiful, large crescent in the sky right around 7 PM.This is the new moon of the month of Shvat which started last Thursday. It is the month when spring begins — ok, at least in Israel. It is the month when the sap begins to flow. It is — and this is the most exciting part for those of use with a Happy Light — it is the month where, day by day, there is a little more light. There’s almost light in the sky till 5 PM now, have you noticed?
As Jews, we measure time in months as well as years. Our holiday cycle used to depend on witnesses coming to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to swear that they had seen the new moon. At least two witnesses were needed to confirm the new month. Once it had been approved by the rabbinic court, word would go out that the month had begun — beacons of fire were lit on mountaintops across the Middle East all the way to Babylon where there was still a diasporic community.
Imagine the beauty of seeing these bonfires light up the hills and mountains across hundreds of miles. Eventually, the Samaritans, the enemies of the rabbis, started to light false fires to confuse the Jewish communities, so the information came instead by horseback. Of course, that took time, and no one in Babylon was sure of the actual day, so the communities outside of Israel started to observe two days of holiday just to hedge their bets on when the month had begun. Hillel eventually “fixed” the calendar, but the two day holiday stuck.
This week, we read Parshat Bo. Moshe tries to get Pharoah to relent and let the People of Israel leave, but Pharaoh’s hard heart refuses to budge. Locusts come, then a thick darkness, and then finally the death of the first born.
In Chapter 12, verse 2, we get the very first commandment to the Israelites in the Torah. You might not believe that it took this long, but there it is. After all these chapters and verses, we finally have the very first commandment from God via Moses. And what is it? Does anyone know?
It is to establish the first month, now called Nisan.
“Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim, rishon hu lachem, l’chodshei hashanah.”
Let this month be for you the beginning of months. The beginning one, let it be for you of the months of the year.
The first mitzvah isn’t a sacrifice or ritual. It isn’t an ethical or moral teaching. All of those will come at Sinai. It is the establishment of time. This is when we took control of the calendar, it was not being imposed on us by harsh and terrible taskmasters. A slave does not control his or her own time. You are told what to do and when to do it. A free person controls time. If you are free, time serves you.
In our morning Yotzer prayer we read, “Mechadesh b’tuvo b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh b’reishit.” “With His goodness He renews every day perpetually the works of creation.” What does this mean? In the words of Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, the contract on the world as we know it is very short. Every second and every fraction of a millisecond the world is being renewed by God. Think of it. We are in a constant state of renewal.
The rabbis teach us that not only does the verse state, “Hachodesh hazeh lachem,” “This shall be the month for you” — but with a few vowel changes we can read it as, “HaChiddush hazeh lachem” — it shall be a renewal for you. If God is constantly renewing, then we can also renew ourselves. Are you the same person you were ten years ago? Five? Last year? Last week?
We are never stuck. We are never trapped. Some choose to remain frozen in place, but that is a choice, not an imperative, not an expectation. We all have the capacity to change and grow and evolve, young and old, every one of us.
We were granted this concept of renewal so we can say, “Who I was a moment ago isn’t me now.” Every moment we can redefine ourselves again and yet again. It can be as simple as learning a new song, a dance move, a piece of information, small things can change us just as large things: marriage, childbirth, loss. We are protean beings, always capable of change, movement, evolution.
Even now, as you listen to this sermon, you are changing.
The Gedalia Shor, the first American Torah gadol who lived from 1910-1979, brings another twist on the word “chodesh” or “month.” He shifts the vowels to read “chadash” — “new”.
This is key. We are never done changing and growing. Nothing is forever, we don’t have to stay who we were. Whether moving to a new place, meeting a new partner, or just discovering a new restaurant or a great book, we are always capable of changing and growing.
We can mechadesh — renew and recreate ourselves at any age and at any stage in life. We can be better parents, better friends. We can be a better listener, a better partner. You are not fixed. The ability to control freshness and renewal was give “lachem” — to you.
I’ve had difficult conversations with people close to me where at the end they say, “Well, that’s just how I am.” I have to confess, in frustrating moments, I’ve even said that line myself. I’m only human. “That’s just how I am.” And it is a struggle sometimes to remember that no, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can always listen, learn, and grow. Or we can help teach and explain so others may as well.
This lack of movement, of change, is how we may feel sometimes, frozen in the cold and gloom especially. Sometimes we’re in a metaphorical winter. The Catholic saint John of the Cross coined the term “the dark night of the soul” to mean not only a crisis of faith but a difficult period in one’s life, trapped in place with no idea what to do next. A deer in headlights can choose to stand immobile or leap to safety.
Some changes are hard to make. Believe me, I know. They are big, and they can be scary. There are dark months and years where it seems that nothing will change—that nothing can change—least of all ourselves, and all the “new year, new you” stories in the media don’t make a difference.
But Shvat, which began last week, and Nisan, the season of liberation which is to come, teach us that under the snow, under the ice and the cold and the dark, things are still growing. Things are always growing. There is movement. There are bulbs like snowdrops starting to reach towards the sun ever so slowly. We can reach out as well.
In the coldest seasons of our life, when we may feel frozen in ice, there is always the new and the holy within us ready to break free.
Nurture it. Embrace it. And let it.