We are trained to look at the first time that the Torah expresses an idea, utilizes a word, or introduces a character, as being the Torah’s way of encapsulating and defining that person, idea or thing.
Our Parsha marks the beginning of the Torah’s mitzvos. Hitherto the content of the Torah has been exclusively stories and narratives. In our Parsha, the Torah transitions to interspersing mitzvos amid the storyline. Can we identify the essence of mitzvos by analyzing the first one given to our people?
Let’s take a look and see what we find.
“This month shall be for you the first of the months” (Exodus 12:2). The first commandment revolves around calendars. Our calendar is a hybrid of lunar months and solar years. We abide by a solar year (~365.25 days long) and thus the festivals always occur in the same season each year, but our months follow the lunar cycle (~29.5 days long).
The commandment to maintain the calendar is thus twofold: Because the lunar month is 29 and a half days long, the court must decide which day is Rosh Chodesh: Will the month skew longer and day 30 is the final day of the previous month, making day 31 Rosh Chodesh, or will the previous month end after 29 days, and day 30 marks the first day of the following month? That is the first component of this mitzvah.
The second aspect is to oversee the harmonization of the solar year with the lunar month by intercalating months. Given that a lunar month is 29.5 days long, a lunar year is 354 days, 11 days shy of the solar year. Left untouched, each year would see the same date fall out 11 days earlier in the season cycle, resulting in Passover falling out in the spring, and then in the winter, and then in the fall, and then in the summer. Without rebalancing, each 33 solar years would feature 34 Passovers. A 100 year old would look back wistfully at 103 Seder nights.
The first mitzvah requires that our calendar adjust for this by establishing adding an extra month (Adar II) every couple of years to compensate for the lost days.
If we had to think of a mitzvah to personify all mitzvos you would imagine there would be a lot of candidates vying for that job. I would imagine if we polled Jews they would give us many other mitzvos before the commandment to organize calendars. Why is the calendar the first one given to our nation, and how does it embody all the mitzvos?
Here is my speculation:
Determining the new moon requires a fair amount of astronomic calculation. The Talmud reveals to us the exact length of a lunar moon down to milliseconds. It breaks down an hour not into 60 minutes but into 1080 chalakim, meaning that each minute is 18 chalakim long, and it states that a lunar month is exactly 29 and 1/2 days and no less than 793 chalakim. Or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes and ~3.3 seconds.
With the most advanced scientific and astronomical tools and technology at our disposal today, that precise number holds up true – and it’s featured in the Talmud, a nearly 2,000-year-old work. All other ancient calendars were notoriously haphazard and imprecise, yet the calendar system that we have been using for millennia is accurate with atomic precision. How did the Jews of antiquity know this precise formula?
Our explanation is that the Almighty revealed it to Moses who passed the secret of the precise length of a lunar moon on to us. The Creator of Heaven and Earth and all the constellations is also the Giver of the Torah and the mitzvah of the calendar intersects the two.
So perhaps the reason why this mitzvah is the first mitzvah that we’re told is to reinforce the principle that mitzvos contain precise, atomic precision. The commandments of the Torah are not arbitrary. Just as maintaining a calendar relies on astronomic precision, the rest of the Torah is also perfectly calibrated. Soon we will read about the prohibition against wearing garments of wool and linen and about the sprinkling of the red heifer – mitzvos that seem totally illogical. If we weren’t initiated into mitzvos with the calendar we may be skeptical about the importance and indispensability of those mitzvos. The calendar mitzvah is measurable evidence that the Almighty gave us correct and precise wisdom. And even when we cannot measure the precision of His wisdom, we can be comforted in knowing that it too stems from a Higher Power and we can rely on it being necessary and useful.
There is a second reason why this mitzvah was chosen to go first. The calendar is in our hands, not God’s. The Mishnah tells us that if the human court makes a mistake and assigns the wrong day as Rosh Chodesh, it nevertheless is accepted by God and the heavenly Court as being authoritative.
Which day is Rosh Chodesh? The day that the human court decides. This mitzvah teaches us about the partnership between us and the Almighty. The Almighty is in charge of all, but He yielded some decision-making power to us. Via the mitzvos we can take a seat at the table and have a say in what happens to us and to the world. The calendar thus highlights the outsized role that we must play in determining what happens to this world.
I think that if we merge these two ideas we get to the heart of mitzvos.
On one hand they are a precise, divinely-determined formula for perfection. But that’s not to say that we are locked out of any influence and have no say. Quite the contrary. With the Almighty giving us the Torah and its mitzvos He also forfeited (to a certain degree) the sole power to determine what happens in this world. He gave us the tools to control the world. As strange as it sounds, we actually agree with the anti-Semites who say that the Jews control the world. We do. Or at least we can, provided that we harness the implements that the Almighty gave us to do so.
Our nation’s sacred mission is to become a light unto the nation; to become the people that lead all of humanity back to God, back to morality, back to faith, back to universal kindness – to be the people at the vanguard of leading the world to achieve the purpose of creation. This began with Abraham and our nation was formally entrusted with this mission at Sinai. We accepted it and all its concomitant responsibility.
We are not helpless in our pursuit. The Almighty gave us the precise formulas to do it. The ones that we can measure mathematically such as the calendar are astonishingly exact. Through this mitzvah we can be assured that the instructions to achieve our destiny are precise. But this mitzvah also reminds us that the ball is in our court. In this critical mission the Almighty yielded some degree of control of the world’s destiny to us. The destiny of the world is in our hands. Our free will is indeed quite vast. Should we choose to exercise it, we will become the nation and the people to bring the world to its perfection.