The beginning of the Torah reading from the second Torah scroll this Shabbat is “this month should be for you the head of the months”. This is the special ‘Parshat HaChodesh’, the Chapter of the New Moon, read before Rosh Chodesh Nisan. Chasidic teachings explain that this verse indicates that Rosh Chodesh Nisan is higher than the Rosh Chodesh of the other months of the year. This relates also to the eve of Rosh Chodesh. Generally, when Shabbat is the eve of Rosh Chodesh a special Haftorah is said, which includes the verse ‘you will be missing, so you will be remembered.’ ‘You will be missing’ expresses the spiritual goal of self-abnegation, bitul. Through attaining bitul, the person is remembered, and becomes spiritually more significant.
This is also the simple meaning of Rosh Chodesh, when the moon is not visible, and ‘is missing’. However through that comes the union of sun and moon, with the moon beginning to reflect the sun’s light, and therefore be visible as a thin crescent.
To understand this more clearly, let us consider a passage in the Zohar. The Torah uses the term ‘on the Heads of your Months’ and the Zohar asks: how many heads does the moon have? Surely, the sun is the only head of the moon (in the sense that the moon reflects the sun’s light). So why the plural term?
The Zohar goes on to explain that in the unity of the sun and the moon, and indeed in many kinds of unity - such as that between male and female – there are two aspects: the unity of the body, an external unity, and also a more intimate, inward, spiritual unity, the unity of the soul.
This relates to an idea found in the Midrash and amplified in Chassidic teachings that ‘when the Holy One chose His world, He fixed in it the New Moons, and New Years; but when He chose Jacob and his descendants, He fixed a Rosh Chodesh of Redemption’.
The idea that G-d ‘fixed.. the New Moons’ means the general idea of the unification of sun and moon which leads from the thin crescent visible at the beginning of the month to the full (whole) moon on the fifteenth day. Although this is very significant and spiritually meaningful, it is a wholeness which relates to the realm of the downchaining of worlds (even including the most ethereal world of Atzilut).
But when G-d chose Jacob and his descendants, and fixed the Rosh Chodesh (Nisan) of Redemption, this is something higher than the realm of the downchaining of worlds. It is therefore higher than the rest of Creation.
The full choosing of Jacob and his descendants the Jewish people took place at the Giving of the Torah. It is then that Rosh Chodesh Nisan achieved its permanent status of the Rosh Chodesh of Redemption. The Giving of the Torah was a watershed in existence. Chassidic teachings explain that before the Giving of the Torah, the upper spiritual realms could not connect with the lower physical dimension. But the Giving of the Torah joined these two realms, which meant it transcended a limitation which had hitherto been part of natural Creation.
The Giving of the Torah therefore parallels the Redemption of the Jews from Egypt. Both events transcend the downchaining of the worlds. For this reason the opening line of the Ten Commandments which G-d declared at the Giving of the Torah is ‘I am the L-rd your G-d who took you out of the Land of Egypt’ rather than, what might have been expected, ‘I am the L-rd your G-d who created the universe’.
When the Zohar told us about the two kinds of unification, the external and the internal, the unification of the body and of the soul, this applies to the realm of Creation, the downchaining of worlds. But the special bond between G-d and the Jewish people is on a higher plane. These very different two levels are like the lower Divine Name A-D-N-Y and the higher Name Y-H-V-H, the Tetragrammaton. Or the two levels of the Tetragrammaton: the lower and the higher. Or the Tetragrammaton after the Tzimtzum and the Tetrgrammaton before the Tzimtzum.
These two levels relate also to the four times one says Emet (true) after the morning Shema, corresponding to the four letters of the lower Tetragrammaton, and then again the four times one says Emet in the paragraph beginning ‘Ezrat’, corresponding to the four letters of the Higher Tetragrammaton.
Similarly, in our effort to achieve bitul, self-abnegation, the service of the eve of Rosh Chodesh, there are different levels. There is the level within reason, and the level beyond reason, beyond all limitations, beyond even the limitations of the sacred.
This is so in the case of the eve of every Rosh Chodesh. But also as regards the eve of Rosh Chodesh Nisan, which is on a much higher level, there are still differing dimensions. Thus it is said ‘even in the case of miracles, there is a hierarchy’.
Thus we learnt earlier about the lower and higher Tetragrammaton, but there is also the Tetragrammaton which is beyond letters... Thus too with self-sacrifice. There is the power of self-sacrifice which helps a person dedicatedly keep the Torah and Mitzvot, and then there is the level of pure self-sacrifice simply to be bonded with the Divine. Thus there is the bitul which comes from devoted Torah study, which leads to the special strength of a Torah scholar – ‘who are Royalty? The Sages’ and the higher bitul in which the person seemingly has no existence at all...
Thus we can understand what is meant by ‘This month is for you the Head of the Month’.., that there is the special spiritual quality of every Rosh Chodesh (and every eve of Rosh Chodesh), with both the external and internal unity, the unity of the body and of the soul, and then there is the much more exalted aspect of Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the Month of Redemption.
For this brings a revelation of the Divine from far beyond the realm of Creation, the downchaining of worlds.
Through our actions and our service during the time of Exile, and especially in this generation, we will achieve that, just as in Nisan we were redeemed [from Egypt], so too in Nisan we will be redeemed [from our present Exile], with the true and complete Redemption by Moshiach Tzidkenu.
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