This Month Is For You: Human Initiative In Setting The Calendar

(1) בראשית IN THE BEGINNING — 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...

(2) This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.

(1) החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים, from now on these months will be yours, to do with as you like. This is by way of contrast to the years when you were enslaved when you had no control over your time or timetable at all. While you were enslaved, your days, hours, minutes even, were always at the beck and call of your taskmasters. Therefore, this is the first of the months of the year, since this begins your time of freedom.

(1) החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים, “this month shall be for you the beginning of the months, etc.” It is significant that at this juncture God did not instruct Moses and Aaron to relay the content of this message to the Jewish people. Surely the word לכם, “for you,” implied that the fixing of the new moon was a commandment applicable to each and every Israelite! Failure of God to issue the customary instruction: “say to all the Israelites, etc.,” therefore indicated that the determining of the new moon was something reserved for the elders of the people, a court of experts, and was not something incumbent on the individual Jew. This is why these instructions were addressed to both Moses and Aaron in their capacity as the experts at the time. The word לכם, in this instance means: “to the likes of you, to trained experts.”

The word החודש הזה is a reference to the month of Nissan. The Torah calls it ראשון, “the first,” both here and again in verse 18. Seeing that the month of Tishrei is the first month in the compilation of years [something we have in common with the rest of mankind, Ed.] the Torah had to add the word לכם, “for you,” to show that Nissan is unique to the Jewish people as the first in our list of months. The implication is that we count these months as a symbol of the month in which we attained our freedom as a nation. It follows that wherever mention is made of the month of Tishrei, the Torah refers to it as the seventh month. This means it is the seventh following Nissan. Incidentally, this is the reason that the Torah has no names for the various months, but refers to them as a ordinal numbers, i.e. “second,” “third,” etc. By doing so the memory of the redemption from Egypt is constantly invoked when we read about any of the festivals which occur during certain months of the year...

We learn from all this that the Torah itself did not give specific names to the months just as it did not assign specific names to the days of the week as is customary amongst the Gentile nations. We refer to the days of the week by their proximity or otherwise to the Sabbath, i.e. “the first day after Sabbath,” “the second day after Sabbath,” etc. We do this in order to maintain the centrality of the Sabbath in our calendar. This is the plain meaning of Exodus 20,8: “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” The Torah demands that we remember the Sabbath on a daily basis.

(8) Rabban Gamliel had, on a tablet, and on the walls of his loft, various drawings of the moon, which he showed to simple witnesses, and said, "Was it like this [drawing] that you saw, or like [the other one]?" It happened once, that two witnesses came and said, "We saw [the moon] in the East in the morning, and in the evening in the West." [In that case,] Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri said, "They are false witnesses." [But] when they came to Yavneh, Rabban Gamliel accepted [their testimony]

And there was another incident in which two witnesses came and said: We saw the new moon at its anticipated time, i.e., on the night of the thirtieth day of the previous month; however, on the following night, i.e., the start of the thirty-first, which is often the determinant of a full, thirty-day month, it was not seen. And nevertheless Rabban Gamliel accepted their testimony and established the New Moon on the thirtieth day. Rabbi Dosa ben Horkinas disagreed and said: They are false witnesses; how can witnesses testify that a woman gave birth and the next day her belly is between her teeth, i.e., she is obviously still pregnant? If the new moon was already visible at its anticipated time, how could it not be seen a day later? Rabbi Yehoshua said to him: I see the logic of your statement; the New Moon must be established a day later. Upon hearing that Rabbi Yehoshua had challenged his ruling, Rabban Gamliel sent a message to him: I decree against you that you must appear before me with your staff and with your money on the day on which Yom Kippur occurs according to your calculation; according to my calculation, that day is the eleventh of Tishrei, the day after Yom Kippur. Rabbi Akiva went and found Rabbi Yehoshua distressed that the head of the Great Sanhedrin was forcing him to desecrate the day that he maintained was Yom Kippur. In an attempt to console him, Rabbi Akiva said to Rabbi Yehoshua: I can learn from a verse that everything that Rabban Gamliel did in sanctifying the month is done, i.e., it is valid. As it is stated: “These are the appointed seasons of the Lord, sacred convocations, which you shall proclaim in their season” (Leviticus 23:4). This verse indicates that whether you have proclaimed them at their proper time or whether you have declared them not at their proper time, I have only these Festivals as established by the representatives of the Jewish people. Rabbi Yehoshua then came to Rabbi Dosa ben Horkinas, who said to him: If we come to debate and question the rulings of the court of Rabban Gamliel, we must debate and question the rulings of every court that has stood from the days of Moses until now. As it is stated: “Then Moses went up, and Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel” (Exodus 24:9). But why were the names of these seventy Elders not specified? Rather, this comes to teach that every set of three judges that stands as a court over the Jewish people has the same status as the court of Moses. Since it is not revealed who sat on that court, apparently it is enough that they were official judges in a Jewish court. When Rabbi Yehoshua heard that even Rabbi Dosa ben Horkinas maintained that they must submit to Rabban Gamliel’s decision, he took his staff and his money in his hand, and went to Yavne to Rabban Gamliel on the day on which Yom Kippur occurred according to his own calculation. Upon seeing him, Rabban Gamliel stood up and kissed him on his head. He said to him: Come in peace, my teacher and my student. You are my teacher in wisdom, as Rabbi Yehoshua was wiser than anyone else in his generation, and you are my student, as you accepted my statement, despite your disagreement.

(4) לכם, “for you.” This lunar calendar is not intended for the gentiles. They are to continue to use the solar calendar.