Posts
Parasha Bo: Exodus 10:01-13:16
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah,
"Time is On My Side…Yes it Is"
"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 fascinating parasha we read of the last three of the ten plagues and of our redemption from
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 and 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 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 traditionally believed to have been passed down by Moses himself.
By the time of the destruction of the second
Ironically, in his text, Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh 11:04, Maimonides 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 God gave the oral law (Mishna + Gemora = Talmud) to Moshe (Moses) on Sinai, 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, according to 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 an average of about 8 days later than did our ancestors in 359 C.E. when Hillel II's fixed calendar rules were published.
Should no new calendar reform take place, 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 a Jewish movement's biennial in November, 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, 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 synagogues?
There are many levels of slavery. Some of our own making and some that can be set upon us by 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 said: "If not now, when?" When will our "now" be?
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 to us by God. 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 cannot 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
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah,
To unsubscribe email SPIRITUALRENEWAL-unsubscribe-request@SHAMASH.ORG
For other options go to: http://listserv.SHAMASH.ORG/
A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps!
