A teaching of the Rebbe on the parsha adapted for children
The first mitzvah commanded to the Children of Israel appears in parashah Bo. Just before the departure from Egypt and the deliverance, Israel was ordered to keep the sanctification of the month. For what reason did the Torah choose to order this right at the beginning? And what can we learn from it for our daily service to G-d?
On every Rosh Chodesh eve the moon is covered in such a way that it is completely hidden. Then come its birth, the moment when it begins to show up in the sky. That is exactly Rosh Chodesh, the darkest time of every days of the month, it is the eve of the birth of the moon, the time when the moon disappears, but it is also the time closest to the next birth. The Jewish people were for 210 years submerged in a terrible exile, so horrible that it erased from them all signs that identify the Jew, G-d forbid. On the eve of their departure from Egypt, in the last moment of exile’s darkness, the Torah ordered the sanctification of the month. We must remember in the most difficult times, that there really is no "dark time" and also that although the light of the moon is completely hidden, it is only a temporary hiding, shortly after a new light breaks in. If we remember that “tomorrow is Rosh Chodesh”, as it is in the Haftorah on the eve of Rosh Chodesh, even within the exile we can see the light and we will know with certainty that tomorrow it will reveal itself and shine.
Like the generation that came out of Egypt, we too will deserve to be the last generation of the galut and the first of the geulah. As then also today, on the eve of the departure of this dark galut, we must doubly remember that there is no reality in darkness, not even now; the light of the geulah exists, only that it is hidden from our sight. The only thing that darkness shows is: in an instant the birth of the moon will be renewed, the light of the geulah will be seen and shone even more. When one lives even during exile, with this meaningful understanding, it does not give validity and reality to the darkness, but sees it as evidence of the light, in doing so, transforming the darkness of the galut into the light of the true and complete geulah that will arise and occur immediately.
