Monthly Archives: February 2022

(Drasha given over zoom on my father’s 8th Yahrtzeit , March 7, 2021)

This coming week is Shabbat HaChodesh, which celebrates Rosh Chodesh Nissan – one of the Rosh Hashanas that we have in our calendar

As you have probably heard, there’s a Mishna in Rosh HaShana that says that there are 4 New Years – 1^st of Nissan (coming up), 1^st of Tishrei, 1^st of Elul, and Tu Bishvat.

1^st of Tishrei everyone knows, we make a very big deal about it, and that’s how we count our years, this being 5781 תשפ”א.  But then, we also know that the months are counted from Nissan, so our Rosh Hashana is the 1^st of the 7^th, and the 1^st of the 1^st is next Sunday. It doesn’t have its own chag, so we forget about it, and it’s overshadowed by Pesach. (Imagine if we had to have another 2-day chag right before Pesach like we do right before Succot!!!!)

But – when it comes to when our years start, it’s not so simple.

Of course the very question of when a year starts is kind of silly if you think about. The year is a circle. One rotation around the sun. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end, it keeps going and going… like the song in Rechov Sumsum: the seasons are like a circle …

You can pick any day in it and call it the beginning. So, the Western World picked the darkest time of the year. Your birthday is a new year of sorts, why not. In my birthday greetings, I wish people, “have a wonderful year” – their personal year begins on March 3rd or whenever.

And we like to say that Rosh Hashana is the birthday of the world, היום הרת עולם, and that’s why we start there, right? well.. not surprisingly, this is a Machloket:

R’ Eliezer vs R’ Yehoshua: R’ Eliezer said, The world was created in Tishrei; R’ Yehoshua said, The world was created in Nissan.

And it’s not like this machloket is resolved, not even le’Halacha – if you recall Birkat HaChama, blessing of the sun, which we did last time in 2009 – it’s in Nissan, not in Tishrei

Not only that, but that machloket between R’ Eliezer and R’ Yehoshua keeps going:

You know how we often hear around this time of the year: “Be’Nissan Atidim lehigael” (we will be redeemed in Nissan) ? Well, that’s the opinion of R’ Yehoshua, not R’ Eliezer:

R’ Eliezer said: In Nissan they were redeemed, and in Tishrei we will be redeemed, as it says, “On that day the Great Shofar will be blown.” R’ Yehoshua said: In Nissan they were redeemed, and in Nissan we will be redeemed, as it says, “A night of keeping”, a night that was kept from the six days of Creation

But what does it all matter, if the seasons are like a circle anyway?

I was reading a book recently, just a novel, and it was describing the passing of the seasons in a rural community, waxing poetic about how in touch they were with each change. And then the author pointed out something that I hadn’t thought of before: they said, “and because these cycles keep repeating, nothing ever changed.”

So they have the circle of seasons, and the circle of life, but it ended up in the same place every time, and they don’t ever escape it.

I found this to be quite shocking. Because we don’t think like that. I mean, we do, on Succot, read Kohelet when it says, “דּוֹר הֹלֵךְ וְדוֹר בָּא, וְהָאָרֶץ לְעוֹלָם עֹמָדֶת

“Generation passes, generation comes, and the earth stands in its place”

which is plenty depressing, but for us, it’s only part of the story

The more important part is that the world has a beginning. That, by the way, is the only real proof R’ Yehoshua brings for his opinion that Nissan is the season of Geula. He says that it comes from the ליל שמורים הוא לה’ לילה המשומר ובא מששת ימי בראשית – it’s reserved from the 6 days of Creation. The world is not eternal, therefore, the world can change, therefore, it has the potential of Geula.

Whether that happens in Tishrei like R’ Eliezer, or in Nissan like R’ Yehoshua, the point is that our lives are not stuck forever in the same rut again and again. It’s a spiral, not a circle

Last year, when I did this, one of the first zoom meetings of the shul if I’m not mistaken, I spoke about my father’s philosophy of “one day at a time”. How to deal with the unpredictable. I must say, it has truly helped me this past year, narrowing my focus to just a few days, at most a week, ahead. We’ve survived that.

But we cannot live our lives like that forever. It can’t be the only tool in our kit. Because people who believe that nothing ever changes have no incentive to change anything ever. And that’s not us, that’s not the Jewish People, and that wasn’t my father

He disliked change, and when something was good, he would stick with it long after others would give up – he had the opportunity to take a vacation in Niagara Falls, and then for the next 10 years, they went to Niagara Falls. He saw that we liked fruit compote, so he made fruit compote every week.

But – when something needed to be changed, when he needed to show up for Geula – he left everything he knew, and he walked out into a world that he knew nothing about, seeking new beginnings – because beginnings are possible

B”H now we are entering a season of new beginnings – we see Geula on the horizon, the ability to rebuild our lives, perhaps, to look ahead beyond a day or a week at a time. On a personal level also, as you probably heard, Dedushka has a new great-grandson who will be entering the Brit of Avraham Avinu be”h on Wednesday… generation passes and generation comes, but no, the world does not stand still, because this is a new year, and a time of Geula

Happy New Year!

(Drasha given over Zoom to Kinor David – March 19, 2020)

Today is the yahrtzeit of my father, Peter Rozenberg, Pinchas ben Nassan Nota, z”l

This upcoming Shabbat, Shabbat HaChodesh is the last of the 4 special Shabbatot that precede the Passover season.

The special maftir of Shabbat HaChodesh is the very first mitzvah that Am Yisrael got as a nation. Before telling the Jewish People in Egypt to prepare their houses for the Korban Pesach, no chametz, blood on the doorposts and all, G-d first tells them: – החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים  – this month shall be for you the first month of the year.

The first commandment that we got was about the calendar – how to identify the new moon, and how to combine the solar and lunar year, and when to start counting the months.

If you were G-d, and had to choose one of the 613 mitzvot to say, this is Mitzvah #1, which one would you choose?

The Rambam, when he wrote his compendium listing the mitzvot, chose “Belief in G-d” to be the 1st

The Sefer HaChinuch went in chronological order, with “be fruitful and multiply” (a universal mitzvah)

We might consider others – perhaps R’ Akiva’s choice: “ve’Ahavta le’reacha kamocha” (love your friend as yourself)

So why HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem? Why the calendar?

The Jewish People were used to getting commands from their Egyptian taskmasters. As slaves, they would be told, do this, and do it now, and keep doing it for the foreseeable future. Slaves do not have calendars because they do not plan their lives.

Free people have calendars, and a calendar and its holidays is one of the most visible and notable aspect of a national identity.

So, in order to make us free – a free and independent nation – G-d gave us our own calendar. So that we can plan our lives and plan our future.

Today, this year, before Shabbat HaChodesh, we don’t feel like we can plan anything. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, and what we will be asked to do – or not do.

My father, z”l, used to say to us, “one day at a time”. He would say it a lot, when we’d try to make plans a bit farther in advance than he was comfortable with, or whenever he heard us worry – “one day at a time”

Focus on today, worry about what you’re doing now. Who knows what you’ll need to worry about tomorrow? One day at a time.

Those of us who are planners, who like to know where they will be for all of the year’s holidays, and where they’re going for summer vacation, find it very hard to live one day at a time. But now, we must. Nobody knows where they will be for Shavuos, or Yom HaAtzmaut, or even Pesach. We have to live like my father, one day at a time.

But there are days and there are days.

The first day on the Jewish calendar,  the first of the first – was Aleph Nissan

Besides being the first day ever, it was the first for many other things, too

The Gemara says:

That day took ten crowns: first to Creation, first of the Nesiim, first of the Cohanim, first for Avodah, first for the descent of the fire, first for eating sacred food, first for the dwelling of the Shechina, first for blessing Israel, first forbidding individual altars, and first of the months. (Shabbat 87b)

8 of those events happened on a single day: the 1st month of the 2nd year, on the 1st of the month, when the Mishkan was first built – the first official sacrifices were brought by the first Cohanim, the first time that the fire descended from Above, the first time G-d’s palpable Presence appeared among us, the first time the Cohanim blessed the people, and so on

Busy, busy day.

But only a single day.

Living one day at a time can feel unproductive. If we can’t plan, if we don’t control your calendar, what does that do to our independence, our identity?

The First of the First, HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem, teaches us that one day, a single day, can be full to overflowing with G-d’s Presence.

So that is how we must live our lives now, too

One Day at a Time