In this
week’s Torah portion, Bo, the first directive is given by God to the entire
collective of the Jewish people: to observe the first Jewish month. “This month shall mark for you the beginning
of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” This moment, the first time God instructs the
Jewish people collectively, marks the official beginning of Jewish time. Not
that our ancestors weren't observing time before. But this moment initiates the beginning of
our ancestors marking time according to their own collective narrative, their
own collective history and story. At
this point, for our ancestors, time begins again.
Usually,
we wouldn't read parshat Bo until early to mid-February, but the oddities of
this Jewish calendar year have presented us with a powerful opportunity to read
parshat Bo the same week as we observe the secular new year, the same week that
we begin counting secular time again in the annual solar cycle. So I got to thinking: if Chanukkah could help
inform the way we experienced Thanksgiving this year – there was that whole Thanksgivukkah
thing a while back - then perhaps
parshat Bo might have something to inform our experience of the secular new year
as well.
There
is an interesting difference in approach to time between our western, secular
culture and Judaism, and that difference is really easy to see when we compare the
words for month and year in English and Hebrew.
In English, the word month originated from a word that meant moon and year
originated from a word that meant season. We can easily understand how the
words evolved, and their roots make sense.
They are, after all, concepts of time and their etymologies source to
the same time concepts. But these words
in Hebrew prove quite different. In
Hebrew, the word for month is chodesh. The root of chodesh isn't tied to the moon or seasons or even to time. Its root literally means “new.” And the
Hebrew word for year, shannah, is
connected to the root for “change.” It
is extremely instructive that the Jewish lens on these basic units of time moves
us out of the surface definitions of these words and takes us into the deeper
concepts of renewal and evolution.
We, as
humans, of course, resonate with this connection of time and change or renewal –
just think about those New Year’s resolutions so many of us make, implied in
each the hope and yearning we have to make changes in our lives, to make new
and renew our lives, our actions, our choices as a way of marking the beginning
of a new year.
The
trick, of course, is that New Year’s resolutions aren't always so easy to
keep. It’s why the first week in January
is always so crowded at the gym, but by the time you reach February, that big
wave of newly resolved and well-intended people has petered down to just a
little ripple. Our human desire to wipe
the slate clean and start fresh, although commendable, proves notably difficult
in actuality to accomplish.
This is
where that first directive of marking the first month or chodesh comes to offer us a powerful insight.
Let’s
think back to the point at which God instructs our ancestors to mark the first
month of all the months of the year? It
is not delivered when the people cross the sea once they are free, when they
have left the constrictive oppression of Egypt and the new era of living free has
actually begun, but rather, while they are still slaves, still dwelling in
their mud shacks in the land of Goshen.
They will be freed – it will happen at the end of the portion, but when
they receive this designation to mark the first of the months, it is a moment
when they are still living amidst oppression, a moment while they are
essentially still living in their past. And
it is in that place of the past, before the apex moment arrives, that our
ancestors are told to start over.
To put
it in our secular New Year equivalent, it would be to start going to the gym on
Dec 17th, instead of waiting to start until Jan 1. When should we change our behavior, when
should we begin again? Jewish tradition
teaches that we don’t have to wait until the “right time” or when we feel
everything is perfectly aligned. We
begin again in the midst of the chaos – in the murky middle. We begin the practice and cultivation of
change while still actively familiar with the situations and behaviors from
which we are trying to move away.
Because to believe that an arbitrary marker of time will somehow wipe
away the place from where we've come, the struggles and setbacks of the past, well
that, as we know, is the stuff of good marketing campaigns, but certainly not
of reality.
We are
told to start counting Jewish time at a liminal moment poised between the great
journey from slavery to freedom, from exile to return, from constriction to
release. And that is not just the journey our ancestors took, it’s the journey
of each of our souls, every year, every month, every day.
Ultimately,
Judaism doesn't really care all that much about our secular new year’s resolution. If we make one, great. But if we find we don’t keep it, we don’t
need to wait around until the next year to try again. The opportunity to change and renew doesn't just come around one time a year, or even one month a year, but rather, any
day, any moment, all the time. After all, Jewish tradition teaches that God
renews the work of creation every day.
There’s
another funny Jewish confluence with the secular year this week. The beginning
of the month of Shvat – think Tu b'Shvat – was yesterday, January 2. Shvat is
the month when we are told that in Israel the sap begins to rise in the trees,
stimulating new growth internally, new growth that will soon yield deeper
roots, new sprouts and blossoms. May
this day, this month, this year, be a year of deepening roots and new growth
for us all. And if not Shvat, then Adar, and if not Adar…well,
you get the picture.
Shabbat
Shalom.
