JANUARY 6 • 2022 | 35

I

n the depths of slavery, a message 
comes to the people. A message from 
God about the future. A precursor to 
our freedom. The message takes the form 
of two key mitzvot given to the Jewish 
people long before we receive the Torah at 
Mount Sinai.
These mitzvot relate to the Jewish cal-
endar. The first is the mitzvah of Rosh 
Chodesh. God says to Moses and Aaron: 
“This renewal of the moon shall be the 
beginning of the months for you. It shall 
be the first of the months of the year for 
you” (Shemot 12:2).
God establishes the new 
moon as the beginning of 
the month. We know that 
the moon operates on a 
29- or 30-day cycle. Starting 
off small with most of it 
enshrouded in darkness, 
the moon grows “larger” 
as the days go by, until it becomes a full 
moon around about the middle of the 
month. From there, it begins to diminish 
in size again, before eventually disap-
pearing altogether. When it reappears for 
the first time, that is the new moon — 
Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new 
month.
Related to this mitzvah of Rosh 
Chodesh is another mitzvah more implicit 
in the verse: establishing the month of 
Nisan — the month of liberation from 
Egypt — as the beginning of the calendar, 
“the first month of your year.”

A TIMEFRAME FOR ALL TIME
What is the significance of these two 
mitzvot? On a very basic level, God was 
framing the time for the Jewish people. 
He says to Moses and Aaron, today is the 
beginning of the month; on the 10th of 
this month, each household will set aside 
a lamb; and on the 14th of the month, 
they will slaughter that lamb and dab its 
blood on the doorposts. God was giving 
them a frame of reference for what to 
do and when exactly to do it. We know 
how important this was because when 
the angel of death swept through the land 
of Egypt, he passed over all the houses 
that had blood on the doorpost, and that 
night — the 15th of Nisan — the Jewish 
people were liberated from Egypt, as we 
relate each year when we tell the story of 
Pesach.
But what happened to the Jewish people 
in that generation affects us to this day. 
Today, we celebrate each Pesach on the 15th 
of Nisan — the anniversary of the exodus 
from Egypt. God established the Jewish 
calendar at this point in our history, which 
framed events for all time.
Jewish history is about to begin. Of 
course, it began with Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob and our forefathers, but that was 
Jewish history in terms of individuals. What 
begins on the night of the 15th of Nisan is 
national Jewish history. We see God inter-
vening on the stage of history to liberate an 
entire people. And we need a calendar to 
mark the beginning of that history. Hence 

the mitzvah of the Jewish calendar, which 
begins in this week’s parshah.

WHY IS THIS MONTH DIFFERENT 
FROM ALL OTHER MONTHS?
Why was Nisan chosen as the first month? 
The Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, 
explains that this is the month of the great 
miracles that accompanied the Exodus 
from Egypt, and that designating Nisan as 
the first month is an acknowledgment of 
the seminal importance of these miracles in 
Jewish history. The Ramban points out that 
in classic Torah Hebrew there are no names 
for the months — they are only numbered 
in their relation to the first month, the 
month of our liberation. Similarly, there 
are no names in Hebrew for the days of the 
week, which are simply sequenced in their 
relation to Shabbos. We have Yom Rishon, 
“The First Day” (from Shabbos); Yom 
Sheini, “The Second Day” (from Shabbos), 
and so on. We count from Shabbos, and we 
count toward Shabbos. Shabbos is the focal 
point of the week.
Says the Ramban, the days of the week 
are numbered in accordance with the 
importance of Shabbos, and the months 
of the years are numbered in accordance 
with the importance of the liberation from 
Egypt. Of course, we do also have actual 
names for the Hebrew months. Besides 
Nisan, we have Shevat, Tevet, Cheshvan, 
etc. However, these names only emerged 
later, after the Babylonian exile, as a 
reminder of the great miracles that accom-

Chief Rabbi 
Warren 
Goldstein

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

The Beginning of Time

CHIEF RABBI WARREN GOLDSTEIN

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