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PARASHA BO
EXODUS 10:01-13:16
DR. ARTHUR SEGAL
''The Mitzvah of Keeping Time''
''People say 'Time is money,' but I say 'Money is Time,' for every luxury
costs so many precious hours of your life," so says Rabbi Israel Meir
Kagan in his book Chofetz Chaim (Pursuing Life).
In this week's fascinating Parasha we read of the last three of the ten
plagues and of our redemption from Egypt. Also included are the mitzvoth
concerning the celebration of Passover and the events that took place on
that glorious night so long ago that we remember each day and each
Shabbat in our prayers.
The first commandment, however, in the book of Exodus, which is also
the first commandment given to us as a freed nation (and the fourth one
of the 613 listed in the Torah) is the mitzvah of the sanctification of
the new moon. It also involves setting our lunar calendar in motion as
well as its continued modification (Ex 12:02).
Traditionally, the Jewish concept of the Rosh Chodesh is very meaningful.
Its meaning to our religious life in setting our holidays in motion was
well known to our oppressors. One thousand years after Sinai when the
Syrian Greeks persecuted us, this mitzvah, as well as the mitzvoth of
circumcision and Shabbat were the three that were denied to us--under
penalty of death.
Our lunar calendar is so important to us traditionally that only a lesser
Sanhedrin Bait Din (Jewish court) could declare a new month and in
order to do so at least two witnesses had to observe the new moon.
Without a calendar the holidays could not be observed . Other mitzvoth,
as well as those that promoted the sacrificial cult of the priestly class,
could not be performed. Religious chaos would follow.
Our calendar is based on the Moon but regulated by the Sun. The time
between each new moon is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3.5 seconds.
Since months must have complete days, Jewish months have either 29 or 30
days. We have 12 months, so our year is 354 days. Since our holidays are
seasonal and agriculturally based (Pesach is the spring holiday), we have
a leap month called Adar II seven times in every 19-year cycle. This way
Rosh Hashanah and Sukkoth are in the fall, sometimes early fall, and
sometimes late fall, but always in the harvest season of autumn. Passover
is always in the spring time as per the mitzvah in Deuteronomy 16:01.
So important was the accuracy of our calendar that only special rabbis
could serve on this calendar Sanhedrin (those with semichah [ordination],
that is believed traditionally to have been passed down by Moses
himself).
By the time of the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, during
Roman occupation, the level of scholarship had decreased due to the
Diaspora and confusion. In 358 CE Hillel II (the Second)
preset a lunar calendar for the future, which was based on calculations
that one can read today in the Talmud. Because of Hillel II, a monthly Bait Din,
as well as the court needed to intercalate the leap month of Adar II,
would no longer be needed.
Ironically, Maimonides in his text Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh 11:04 says
that the arithmetic of the Hebrew calendar does not require any major
mathematical skills, and the method is one in which an average school
child can master in three or four days. Many rules must be followed. For
example, Rosh Hashanah can only be on a Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, or
Thursday. This is to prevent Yom Kippur from falling ten days later on
the day before (Friday) or after (Sunday) Shabbat. And this rule keeps
Hoshanna Rabbah from being on Shabbat. This keeps the first night of
Sukkoth at a full moon in the middle of its month.
Traditionally we are taught that the oral law (Mishna + Gemora = Talmud)
was given to Moshe (Moses) on Sinai by God, and these rules for setting
up the calendar were included. These rules were passed on to future generations
via oral transmission until the Mishna was written circa 200 C.E. and the
Talmud circa 500 C.E. Hillel II assured us that if we follow the rules
of leap years with Adar II in 19-year cycles all would be well, as this
is the Word of God to Moses on Sinai.
However, it is a myth to look upon the Hebrew calendar as some kind of
celestial clock capable of keeping the Jewish holidays in their season,
says Remy Landau in his ''Hebrew Calendar: Science and Myths.'' The
accuracy of the Hebrew calendar is fixed by the value of the mean
lunation period coupled to the 19-year cycle of 235 lunar months. That
leads to an average Hebrew year length of 365.2468 days. The mean
tropical solar year is 365.2422 days. Hence, the average Hebrew year is
slower than the average solar year by about one day in every 216 years.
That means that today we celebrate the holidays, on average, about 8 days
later than did our ancestors in 359 CE when Hillel II's fixed calendar
rules were published.
Should no NEW calendar reform take place, then over
the next few millennia all of our holidays will have drifted out of their
appropriate seasons and Pesach--our spring holiday--would be observed
in the winter!
(Perhaps at the some Jewish movement's
biennial in 11/2999, a committee will be appointed for this task. Then we
modern Jews will have a spring Passover and some of our brethren, who won't change
the "word of God," will be celebrating a winter Pesach.)
The beauty of our traditions and the brilliance of our ancestors gets
lost if we assign mathematical wizardry to the word of God in oral law
to Moses at Sinai. If indeed this is the word of God, His order would be
off base as the universal clock ticks forward. The first thing we did as
a free nation, after years of having our days' activities set for us by
our Egyptian task masters, was to take back control of our time.
Taking control of our daily time today is just as important as it was
3,300 years ago. Perhaps that is a good definition of freedom: being able
to set your own pace and define your time commitments. Are we slaves to
our jobs and our mortgages and our luxuries as the Chofetz Chaim alludes
to in my opening quote? Do we wish to make slaves of our rabbis by
suggesting that we, as lay leaders of our congregations, know better than
he or she does on how rabbinic time should be spent? Do we want our rabbis on
beepers, signing in and out of our temples?
There are many levels of slavery, some of our own making and some that we
can set upon others. Rabbi Ashi says in Talmud Bavli (Babylonian) Tractate Sanhedrin on Daf 29A,
''Though a plague lasts seven years, no one dies before his time.'' And
Rabbi Hillel I (the First) said, "If not now, when?" When will our "now"
be?
The "now" that is "now" the Chassidic rebbe said, this moment, never
existed before--from the time the Earth was created; and this moment will
never exist again. Formerly there was another "now," and later there will
be another "now," and every "now" has its own special import and
function.
We read in Parasha Bo of our freedom, and of time, in the form of our
calendar, being given by God to us. This is a gift of freedom, and this
gift is one that we squander regularly. Carpe Diem! Seize the day! Seize
your lives back from the shackles of impossible time restraints. We can
not be in two places at once. Family, Torah, friends, God--all need to be
placed before petty administrative tasks that society's bureaucrats
place into our laps routinely. Yes, we have to earn our daily bread and
pay the tax man. But when Shabbat comes, let us try to remember this
gift of rest and the gift of freedom of our time being ours to use
wisely.
Shabbat Shalom!
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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