AVROHOM YAAKOV
When we look at the year ahead, do we map out public holidays, long weekends, and memorial days, or do we focus on when Yom Tov falls, or when is the next religious fast is?
Our approach to the calendar tells us much about our Jewish paradigm.
PART WAY through the Maggid section of the Haggadah where we recount the events and miracles of the Exodus, the Haggadah asks an odd question:
“We would have thought that we would celebrate Pesach from Rosh Chodesh – the start of the month of Nissan?”
The Haggadah then explains why this is not so.
However the question begs – why would we contemplate celebrating from the start of the month when the Jews had yet to leave Egypt and where still technically enslaved?
The concept of the New Moon in Judaism points to the setting of the calendar. For centuries, the Jewish lunar calendar was determined by witnesses who would testify in Beis Din that they witnessed the New Moon and the start of the month was proclaimed. Thus was established the calendar.
R’ Ben Zion Nesher notes that the concept of the local calendar provided a strong cultural imperative. The calendar – national holidays, celebrations, commemorations influence the lives of the local population.
No doubt, our ancestors in Egypt were therefore heavily influenced by the local Egyptian calendar.
It was when Hashem commanded Moshe and Aharon about the concept of sanctifying the New Moon that the Jews finally started on the road to independence where they set their own calendar and thus started to own their culture.
THOSE OF US living in Western countries are keenly aware that overlaying our Jewish calendar is the secular calendar. The lesson of Pesach is that we give precedence to our calendar as that defines us.
