Shabbat HaChodesh 2022

This Shabbat has a special name, Shabbat HaChodesh, on which we read a maftir from Parshat Bo which contains the first commandment given to the Jewish people as a nation just before they leave Egypt: “Hachodesh hazeh lachem,” “This month (of Nisan) shall be to you the first of months.”   

The first Rashi on the Torah quotes the Midrash: “Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah (which is the Law book of Israel) should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2) “This month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment given to Israel. What is the reason, then, that it commences with the account of the Creation? Because of the thought expressed in the text (Psalms 111:6) “He declared to His people the strength of His works, in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations.” For should the peoples of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers, because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan”, Israel may reply to them, “All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased. When He willed He gave it to them, and when He willed He took it from them and gave it to us.”” 

This idea of Rashi’s that the Torah should have begun from our maftir, is perplexing for many reasons.  First, perhaps the Torah is meant to be more than a national lawbook. Second, isn’t it important to know that God created the world?  Third, what about the stories of our roots and all we learn in Birashit from our ancestors?

Many answers are given to explain this Rashi, but I would like to suggest another approach.  That Rashi is drawing our attention to a bigger philosophical tension, between space and time.  In Rashi’s question he suggests that the Torah start from the idea of time, that time can be sanctified, that not all time is the same, that humans have the ability to make some time special and holy.   In his answer he gives a reason to justify why the Torah begins where it does, from holy space.  That the Torah wanted to set the stage for holy space, that the Children of Israel might one day have the Holy land.

Should the Torah start with holy space, as it does, or which holy time, as Rabbi Yitzchak in the medrash suggests?  Which is more important?  Space here is sanctified by God but time will be sanctified, in our maftir, by the Jewish people.  Space is more concrete, easy to measure, whereas time really is measured, not directly, but as a function of space-the movement of clock hands or the jitter of an atom.   Time is more amorphous and yet perhaps more valuable as it is so limited for humans.   

To go to Israel, to stand at the wall in holy space is inspiring, on the other hand, Shabbat, holy time, is something the Jewish people have been able to take with them throughout the diaspora.   Holy time, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, is much less intuitive.   In fact he  wrote that many religions had holy space but holy time was uniquely Jewish. 

This Shabbat HaChodesh, give some thought to the holy spaces and the holy times in your life, and how to make the most of them.