The first mitzvah, or commandment, we are given as a whole people is the commandment to recognize Rosh Chodesh (literally meaning the head of the month — rosh is head, chodesh is month), or recognizing the new moon. A thousand years after this first commandment was given, during the Chanukah story, Rosh Chodesh was one of the practices banned in addition to keeping Shabbat (the Sabbath) and performing Brit Milah (circumcision).
But why? That Rosh Chodesh is on the same level of two practices that are so sacred — Brit Milah and Shabbat — makes clear its significance.
Ok so why do both G-d and the villains of the Chanukah story (the Seleucids, the Syrian-Greeks) care so much about us knowing when we’ve started a new month?
On the basic level, taking away Rosh Chodesh takes away our ability to keep time and having a calendar. Not having a calendar means we don’t have any of our chagim, our holidays and festivals. So without Rosh Chodesh, we also lose the ability to observe a whole lot of other mitzvot (commandments).
But on a deeper level, Rosh Chodesh represents renewal. The word for month, Chodesh, is connected to the word for renewal, repair, newness — chadesh. Just as the moon wanes and dissolves into a sliver only to build itself back up to fullness, so do we. Just as the moon is in a constant state of movement, moving through stages, so are we. Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch comments that if we were to base our time on something fixed and immovable, we would get the idea that we, too are fixed and immovable. The Torah teaches us that we are, in fact, NOT.
But making changes are hard so I’ll give a small example. According to psychologists, it takes 21 days to break a habit. The Hebrew months are 29.5 days, so there’s no direct parallel here, but it’s close enough. Is there a small habit you’d like to work on? Nail biting, singing in public, leaving your dishes in the sink to “soak,” procrastinating your work, telling people you want to get coffee with them even if you don’t really want to…. there are lots of things we as humans do that are subjectively deemed “bad.” But a reminder: no habit that you can be thinking of has any inherent moral value. You’re not bad if you sing in Walgreens, you’re just annoying. Kidding.
With Rosh Chodesh, we don’t celebrate the victorious moment (such as winning the fight between you and your subjectively “bad” habit). We celebrate the beginning of the lunar cycle — the resh-shaped (ר) sliver of the moon, not the gorgeous glowy orb that is a full moon (around the 15th of the month). We celebrate the quiet beginnings, the objectively non-exciting part of the cycle.
Did you ever use Khan Academy in school? Khan Academy single handedly helped me to pass every math or stats class I ever took. The story of Khan Academy is cool — it was started by Sal Kahn (who I just found out is from Metairie, Louisiana????), an endlessly patient super genius who made tons and tons of amazing instructional educational videos online. I used to get Sal’s newsletter (I call him Sal because I really feel like we’re friends after all the #quality time we’ve spent together), and one of his pieces, called “Why I’ll Never Tell My Son He’s Smart” has stuck with me to this day. Here’s an excerpt...
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Khan Academy article mentioned
Ed Sheeran being a bad singer in his childhood
Ed Sheeran being an amazing singer in his new release "Afterglow"
opening theme: reCreation by airtone (c) copyright 2019 Licensed
