10 — THE BULLETIN — Thursday, January 13.1994
By SHLOMO RISKIN
BO
EFRAT, Israel — ONCE EVERY FOUR WEEKS, usually between the seventh and eleventh day of the Hebrew month, the congregants do not rush home immediately after the Saturday night services but first gather under the open sky, making sure the moon's visibility is not obscured by the clouds, and then proceed to sanctify the moon.
To some the custom may sound strange, but in fact it is quite important.
About ten years ago, one of the major Hasidic rebbes in America, the Bobover Rebbe shlita, had hired a helicopter because that month — the crucial month of Nisan — he would not have been able to sanctify the moon unless he could somehow find a way to see through the clouds.
In the end, he found a way.
Somebody reading the story may have thought this was just some publicity stunt, or taking a custom out of all proportion.
But in reality, our sanctification of the new moon is one of the ways in which we still retain a hint of the importance of declaring the new month, which is the first commandment given to the Israelites (recorded in this week's Torah portion of Bo) as they are about to depart from Egypt. "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, it shall be thefirst month of the year to you. ''[Ex. 12:2].
The Mishnah in the first two chapters of the Tractate Rosh Hashana deals with the specifics of the commandment. Maimonides requires 19 chapters to discuss its laws.
Basically, before a new month can be declared — and only its official declaration by the great court (Sanhedrin) "The month is now sanctified, the month is now sanctified" will determine when the festivals of that month fall out — the
witnesses must testify before the expert judges in Jerusalem; indeed they are even expected to violate the Sabbath in order to get there as quickly as possible.
What is so important about this commandment that it receives the unique honor of being first and merits such a public involvement of the most respected religio-legal institution in Israel?
In fact, when Rashi asks his famous question why the Torah begins with the account of Creation when it should have begun with the first commandment given to Israel, the passage he suggests as a substitution for "/n the beginning*'is "This month shall be to you . . ." So in a sense, not only is this the first commandment, but it's also an alternative beginning to the entire Torah itself.
Ancient man worshipped the moon. Appearing and disappearing periodically like a moody watchman, it was inevitable for the moon to become the symbol of mystery and magic, and under its aloof gaze has flourished a myriad of strange cultic practices. Everything disturbing about man, his deepest secrets, fears and madnesses, were ascribed to this force in the sky.
With the advent of the plagues, the world was turned on its head. Every Egyptian's worst nightmare came true, from the nature deity Nile River (after all, Herodotus called Egypt the gift of the Nile) turning to blood and the moon totally disappearing from view, leaving Egypt in an utter and palpable pitch darkness.
But these abberations were not haphazard expressions of the nature-god gone awry, off on a track of lunacy; due to a lack of proper appeasements or propitations.
They came as a legitimate punishment from the G-d of ethical monotheism for immoral slavery and oppression. The message of the exodus is the freedom of Israel to establish a world of commitment and compassion, a society of love and justice, working towards the eventual goal of peace and redemption.
The first commandment begins, "This month shall be to you . . . "Couching the commandment this way — to you — instead of just saying this month shall be the first of the months, etc. it teaches us that humanity need not be con-
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claims to the Senate. It was Durenberger, a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who once claimed the U.S. was using an Israeli military man to spy against Israel during the 1982 war in Lebanon.
The U.S. continued lo deny this ever happened, of course, until June 5, 1993, when Israeli sources officially identified that spy as
Maj. Yosef Amit. (Amit has now been released from prison in Israel.)
Instead of admitting the existence of a double standard, however, Mr. diGenova manages to pound away by taking his sources and methods argument one step further, alleging that what Pollard passed on to the Israelis "may" have cost the lives of informants and ren-
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dered information useless that cost billions of dollars to gather. . . .
Nevertheless, I do agree with Mr. diGenova on one basic point: This case is unlike any other case of espionage in American history because — as the former U.S. Attorney has often suggested — what Jonathan Pollard did was potentially far worse than merely spy for an American ally.
His greatest crime may have been that he got too close to the truth.
Jan. 10,1994 Opinion
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trolled, enslaved by the vagaries of an unpredictable moon.
Just as the Israelites have become physically freed from Egyptian slavery, we must become spiritually freed from a superstitious dependency upon the magic of the moon.
The Torah is telling us: Take the month — i.e. the moon — and you take control:. . .it shall belong to you, and you shall not belong to it. You can control and subdue nature, your own erratic nature as well as the mysteries of nature all about us, through the logic and rationality of the ethical living directed by the Torah and explicated by the Sanhedrin and religio-legal experts. You are in control of your life, your time and your society — this moon is yours — if only you take proper advantage of G-d's teaching, Moses' Written Law and the Sanhedrin's Oral Law.
The symbolism of the Sanctification of the moon goes even one important step further. When the Bobover Rebbe's Jielicopter rose above the clouds, the prayers and psalms he recited that night when witnessing the waning moon included the following petition: "May it be your will O L-rd. . . to readjust the deficiency of the moon, so thai it may no longer be reduced in size, may the light of the moon again be like the light of the sun, as it was during the first seven days of creation, before its size was reduced..."
Do we really expect that one day the moon will be the size of the sun? Wouldn't that spell disaster for our planet as we know it?
In fact, the reference to deficiency in size sends us to the verse in Genesis where we find that on the fourth day G-d created, "... two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. . . [Gen. 1:16]
Quoting a midrash, Rashi explains that the moon and the sun are described as great lights because initially they were equal in size, but the moon appeared before G-d complaining that "two kings cannot rule with one crown." Since the moon smitten with jealousy towards the sun, wanted all the light for itself, G-d reduced its light while the sun's remained the same.
In effect, the metaphor that the Midrash finds in the two lights in the sky is at the heart of what keeps us from achieving redemption. Jealousy is probably the most destructive force in the world, the real root behind all evil.
Cain's jealousy of Abel brought about the first murder, Joseph's brother's enmity is the prototype for the causeless hatred (jealousy) responsible for the destruction of the Temple. If we ever solve the problem of jealousy, we are clearly on the way toward restoring ourselves to what we can hopefully become.
We sanctify the moon as • it moves towards growth, expressing our optimistic faith that jealousy can be overcome, human nature can be perfected, the world can be redeemed.
By combining these two ideas — the moon as symbol of redemption and the moon as the symbol of our determination of time — we conclude that the Jewish dream of redemption depends on us.
Just as we have a share in determining its "destiny" in so far as to how it affects our immediate lives — we supply the witnesses, we are the court, we hear the testimony, we declare the new month, we determine the calendar, we control our time — so too redemption should not be perceived as a natural phenomenon in the universe, determined solely by a higher force. We are full partners in the march towards our redemption.
The last mishna in Tr. Sotah [49a] describes what the world will look like when the messiah comes. Our Sages present a list of a society gone awry, with impudence abounding and youth reviling their elders. The description ends with the words "we have no one to rely on but our Father in heaven."
I once heard a wise Jew comment that this final comment is not the cure, but is rather the final tragedy: if we only depend on G-d, without acting ourselves, nothing will ever change. "Only he who attempts to purify himself — by taking charge of his time and his personality — is eventually helped from on High.
Shabbat Shalom.
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