There's a three letter word in advertising that's used more than any other adjective: it's "new!" What other word do you know that so economically captures a spirit of hope and excitement; of freshness and opportunity. It's the antithesis of drudgery, weariness and boredom. It captures a feeling that most, if not all of us, seek; and so there's a chance that we'll find a "new" product an object of some fascination; our curiosity will be piqued and we'll want to experience -translate "purchase" - it for ourselves.
In English, the word "month" is related to the word "moon". It's no coincidence, however, that the most common Hebrew word for "month" (חודש - chodesh) is related to the word for "new" (חדש - chadash)! As you may well imagine, it has to do with the most remarkable feature of our closest celestial neighbor: the fact that the moon goes through a series of phases during the course of approximately 30 days. It starts off barely visible as a crescent, shortly after sunset in the western sky; in the course of fifteen days it continues to grow in size until it reaches the shape of a round disc, rising in the east as the sun is setting. It rises later and later each night - closer and closer towards sunrise, getting smaller and smaller until it completely disappears in the light of the rising sun, only to reappear anew, a few days later, to repeat its cycle.
From ancient times this remarkable feature of the moon became a powerful metaphor for the fate of the Jewish people. Time and again they too would have humble beginnings followed by development and gaining strength which ultimately led to their own arrogance (being "full" of themselves!) and their subsequent demise, only to rise again remarkably from the night of oblivion. In this lay the hope of a Divine promise: that despite the inability of the Jewish people to learn from its past; to understand that its success was totally dependent on Divine providence, (just as the moon's brightness is nothing more than a reflection of the light of the sun); that Israel's abandonment of its Creator and Benefactor could only lead to its own destruction; that God would, nevertheless, refuse to allow His people to sink to utter oblivion. He always could be counted on to revive the few remaining and allow them a new opportunity in the hopes that they might have finally learned the lessons of history.
The days of the Jewish calendar are based on the lunar cycle. The first day of the Jewish month corresponds to the first time that moon becomes visible to the human eye. Two of our three Pilgrim Festivals - Pesach and Sukkoth - occur on the fifteenth of their respective months (Nisan and Tishre) when the moon is at its fullest. In this way we can actually live each day of our lives in the spirit of this metaphor and in the hope of its Divine promise.
At the same time, we see a similar pattern in the annual cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter which is dependent on the earth's relative position to the sun in the course of the 365+ days the earth takes to make its annual revolution. The Jewish calendar takes this into account through its eighteen year cycle in which seven of those years contain thirteen lunar months instead of the usual twelve! This guarantees that Pesach will always occur in the spring. (Figure it out: a lunar month is about 29.5 days. If you multiply this by 12 months in the year, it totals 354. This means that a lunar 'year' is 11 days shorter than the average solar year. In other words Pesach will occur 11 days earlier relative to the solar year (365 - 354 = 11). In the space of three years Pesach would occur a whole month early - almost in the middle of winter! That's why we add a thirteenth month approximately every third year.) |
