TIME AND THE SECRET OF GOD
As a nation, the Jewish people receive their first mitzvah in parashat Bo. This is the mitzvah to sanctify the new moon and to designate the month of Nissan as the first of the months: “This month will be for you the beginning of the months, it will be for you the first of the months of the year.”
This mitzvah also involves the Jewish people’s initiation into the intricate calculations and profound secrets of the Jewish calendar, which God taught Moses. Along with several other instructions, this commandment was given in preparation for the Exodus from Egypt.
The first mitzvah given to the Jewish people is meant to empower them to become masters of time rather than its slaves. This is the most significant distinction between a free person and a slave. A slave is not free to decide what to do with his or her time; only a free person possesses this option. Learning this lesson is the first step in the long road to true freedom. Ultimately, knowing how to use and relate to time is one of the main differences between a successful and an unsuccessful person, both materially and spiritually.
THE JEWISH CALENDAR
The Jewish calendar is fundamentally a lunar calendar, but it takes the solar cycle into account as well. An important feature of the laws governing the Jewish calendar is that it is not predetermined. You cannot print the calendar in advance for the entire year, because the declaration that a new month has begun depends on the sanctification of the new moon, a function performed by the Sanhedrin, the High Court, based on the testimony given by witnesses who had seen the thin crescent of the new moon.
In fact, this procedure survived until the 4th century CE when the Sanhedrin was disbanded and a precalculated calendar was adopted in response to the reality of life in exile and the needs of Jews all over the world.
The monthly declaration of the New Moon, which determines when the holidays will take place, establishes a fundamental principle: we have the ability to control the flow of time; time should not be treated as an independent force in the universe that controls us. This point cannot be emphasized enough when trying to understand a Jew’s relation to time. God gave over into our hands the ability and responsibility to regulate time as a crucial first step in leaving Egypt.
The word for Egypt in Hebrew is derived from the root word meaning “confinement” or “narrow space.” The historic Exodus of the Jewish people symbolizes the journey every individual should take from the dark slavery of constricted time and space to the light of freedom and elevated consciousness. For the Jewish people, this transformation was symbolized by their acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, fifty days after leaving Egypt.
CONSTANT RENEWAL
When reflecting further on the first mitzvah the Jewish people received as a nation in preparation for leaving Egypt, we notice that the Hebrew word for “month” is written the same as the word for “new”. They differ only in their pronunciation: chodesh versus chadash. Each month follows the cycle of the moon, from its inception at the beginning of the month to when it becomes full in the middle, and from its subsequent waning to when it is renewed once again. Consequently, the mystery of time is intrinsically bound up with the concepts of renewal and rejuvenation.
Kabbalah and Chasidut put great emphasis on hitchadshut, the ability to renew one’s self and to experience time and life as new at every moment. In Psalms, David writes that God tells him: “Today I have given birth to you.”
The experience of every moment as truly new, the sense of being reborn anew at every moment, is a sign of true Messianic consciousness. According to tradition, David, from whom Mashiach descends, was not allotted any time in this world. The Midrash relates that Adam, who was given a preview of the future, saw this and “donated” seventy years of his life so that David could live.
Thus, David viewed his entire life as a gift, and therefore he experienced each day as if “today I have given birth to you.” This constant awareness of God’s mercy and life-giving energy helps explain how David reached such lofty heights in praising God.
The capacity to renew one’s self is truly one of the great secrets of attaining personal fulfillment and happiness. Without it, life can quickly wear people down, entangling them in tedious and boring habits, rote thoughts, and actions.
On a national level, renewal is one of the great secrets of Jewish survival. What other people have had to begin again so many times during their long history of persecution? No matter what the circumstances, the Jewish people have persevered and renewed themselves countless times in communities around the globe, generation after generation. This essential power exists in every Jewish soul and is one of the foundations allowing for Jewish continuity. The miraculous ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of the ancient homeland in the Land of Israel today clearly bears witness to this truth.
Taking this one step further, by breaking out of the confines of emotional and psychological slavery we are positioned to transcend the narrow straights of Egypt, as symbolic of linear time, and leap “over the sun” to experience a more Divine view of time. Notwithstanding the tremendous importance of renewal, the power to transcend our normative reality and even attain new insights and reveal new spiritual energies is an even greater achievement. This is what the verse in Ecclesiastes implies when it states, there is “nothing new under the sun.” When life is lived under the weight of rote habits and fixed routines then one perceives “nothing new under the sun.” However, when one views life through a more elevated perspective on time and is inspired through the Divine power of renewal, one can always find something new “above the sun.” Interestingly, the Zohar comments that there may not be anything new under the sun, but the moon is always changing and renewing itself, thus implying that there is always something new under the moon!
THE SECRET OF GOD: TIME
The verse mentioned above, “This month will be for you the beginning of the months, it will be for you the first of the months of the year,” is the 1820th verse in the Torah. The number 1820 is the product of 70 times 26. 70 is the value of the Hebrew word for “secret” and 26 is the value of God’s essential four-letter Name, Havayah. These two words appear together in the phrase, “The secret of God is [revealed] to those who are in awe of Him”, suggesting that 1820 is the secret of God’s essential Name. Amazingly, God’s essential Name, Havayah appears exactly 1820 times in the Pentateuch. Thus, by consecrating the month of Nisan and intercalating the Jewish calendar, the Jewish people enter the very “secret of God” and the secret of time.
The “secret of God” alluded to in this verse relates to the way in which we link our experience of time to its Divine source. Every day in the Morning Service, we state the following: “He renews in His goodness every day perpetually the work of creation.” Kabbalah and Chasidut emphasize that creation is renewed not just every day but at every single moment. Modern science now confirms that subatomic particles continually burst in and out of existence, some for merely a billionth of a second. These particles, which mysteriously animate the foundations of physical reality, are the manifestation of God’s perpetual renewal of the work of Creation.
Jewish tradition teaches that for God, past, present, and future all occur simultaneously. Significantly, the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah also spell the Hebrew conjugations of “being” in past, present, and future tenses: “He was”, “He is”, and “He will be”.
