parsha of the week

With Rosh Chodesh, begin again

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This Shabbat will be Rosh Chodesh, and we will read Parshat HaChodesh in addition to Tazria — an uncommon opportunity to take out three Torahs.

Both Parshat HaChodesh and this Rosh Chodesh are celebrations of the same date in time and history — the first Rosh Chodesh given to the Jewish people in Egypt, at the dawn of the month we now call Nissan, the beginning of the Jewish calendar.

Owing to the confluence of every Rosh Chodesh with the New Moon, there is a relationship between the words “chodesh” (month) and “chiddush” (renewal or new idea).

Rabbeinu Bachya says about the sanctifying of the month and the renewed moon:   “One who stands and blesses the moon is giving testimony about the renewal [chiddush] of the world, which is a fundamental concept of faith. He recognizes the existence of G-d, Who renews the moon each month.”

But perhaps the most profound idea of chiddush can come from the Mechilta, who notes the similarities between months and years in how the moon determines the length of each. In the lunar calendar, a month is a little over 29 and a half days, which makes each month in the Jewish calendar 29 or 30 days. The year is usually 12 months, but owing to the need to keep Pesach in the spring, we sometimes add a month, making a leap year, at the end of the year, which we experience as a second Adar.

And so the Mechilta says, “Just as a month gets the added day at the end of the month, so does a year have its addition at the end.”

Perhaps with a small leap, we can take the message of the Mechilta to its next logical step.

Every Shabbat we quote Tehillim 90: “The days of our lives are seventy years, and with increase, eighty years … It passes quickly and we fly away.” Two verses later, we ask of G-d, “Teach the number of our days, so that we shall acquire a heart of wisdom.”

Is it possible, based on this passage, that in line with “the extra of the month is at the end of the month, and the extra added to a year is at the end of the year,” that the extra added to a life is at the so-called end — meaning the latter part — of the average life?

We live in a marvelous time. Average life expectancy has gone from about 48 or 50 in 1900 to 65 or 70 in the 1960s, to over 80 in the 2010s, always a little longer for women than for men. Many people even make it to their 90s. According to Tehillim, it can be argued that anything more than 70 years is a gift. Perhaps we can call it a renewal — a chiddush.

R Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his inimitable style, makes this point. “Your perception of the renewal of the moon should inspire you to undertake a similar renewal,” he writes. “The sanctification of the new moon is an institution for the moral and spiritual rejuvenation of Israel, to which Israel must always strive anew at regular periods, and which it will achieve through its re-encounter with G-d.”

As the Sages put it, “this month is for you” is to serve as an example for you, to have a constant renewal. Reenergizing when the excitement of any activity or recommitment ends, we find something new. We begin again.

When Daf Yomi finishes a tractate, they make a siyum and go onto the next one.

When we finish reading a parasha Shabbat morning, by Mincha time we’re reading the next one.

We finish reading a Book of the Torah, we begin the next one right away.

On Simchat Torah, when we finish the Torah, we have another Torah in the wings, ready to begin with Bereishit.

When we read from multiple Torahs, we don’t remove the one we’re using until the next one is already on the table.

Before the month ends, we bless the month that will be coming.

And when we have our renewal of life at 70, especially if the question hasn’t been asked yet, each person must wonder, “How am I making the most of my additional years?” In simple terms, it becomes a matter of perspective.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was 39, he said “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do G-d’s will.” He was assassinated the next day.

Dov Gruner, one of the more famous Irgun fighters, who was executed by the British court in Palestine in 1947 at the age of 34, penned a similar thought in a letter he sent to Menachem Begin from prison, awaiting his execution. “Of course I want to live. Who does not? But if I am sorry that I am about to ‘finish’ it is mainly because I did not manage to do enough.”

Perhaps we, no matter what age we are, can combine these two profound statements, of people who, in our own eyes, accomplished so much in so little time, and ask ourselves, “Are we doing enough in our efforts to do G-d’s will?”

Our parsha begins discussing birth, which is one kind of “renewal.” It continues discussing the “renewal” that one who gets tzara’at must go through to rejoin society. Hopefully we can all be blessed with constant renewal in our lives, and may we always make the choice to be ever-growing and ever-renewing in our relationship with G-d.