The beginning of months

Rabbi Ammos Chorny

In the Book of Exodus (12:2), God points out that the Exodus from Egypt should mark the start of the Jewish calendar. Henceforth, the Israelites regard Nisan as the first month. This may sound surprising, since we are accustomed to marking the Jewish new year with Rosh Hashanah. So, does the Jewish year start in Tishrei or Nisan? The Talmud records discussions about this question, shedding light on the various ways we mark time as individuals, as a nation and as human beings.

Tractate Rosh Hashanah begins with the assertion that there are four different ‘new years’ – Nisan: marking the cycle of festivals and measuring the reign of Jewish kings, Elul: marking the new year for tithing cattle, Tishrei: the new year for tithing produce and the reign of foreign kings and Shvat: the new year of trees. These four do not present a conflict until a fierce debate ensues about when the world was created, as all agree that the world was created only once. But was it on Tishrei or Nisan?

Each rabbi marshals evidence in favor of his opinion for dating creation, reflecting their broader sensibilities. For Rabbi Eliezer, the new year depends on the creation of the world, a universal event independent of Jewish history. But to Rabbi Yehoshua’s more particularistic sensibility, time begins with the Exodus from Egypt, hence Nisan becomes the first month and, thus, it must have been in Nisan that the world was created, and that the world will someday be redeemed.

This tension between the universal and the particular is also reflected in Rashi’s first comment on the Torah. Quoting his father, Rabbi Yitzchak, he asks why the Torah begins with the book of Genesis. After all, the Torah could have begun with God’s commandment to mark the year with the month of Nisan.

If the Torah is a ‘book of laws,’ why does it have to inform us about the creation of the entire world? The answer is to be found in a verse from Psalms (111:6): “He [God] reveals to His people His powerful works, in giving them the heritage of nations” …in order that He might someday give the people of Israel their heritage, namely the Promised Land.

Rashi explains that since the Torah begins with Genesis, the Israelites can turn to the Torah to point out that God created the world and, thus, it is God’s prerogative to choose whom to give the land of Canaan. Consequently, the universal serves to justify the particular — the Torah begins with the creation of all of humanity to justify God’s unique relationship with one particular nation.

All of this reflects our tradition’s universalist and particularistic tendencies, reflected in the various ways we mark time. As universalists, we live in accordance with the secular calendar, scheduling appointments and dating documents in January, February, etc. But, as Jews, we also live in accordance with the particular rhythms of the Hebrew calendar marking holidays, determining when to feast and when to fast. And beyond the universal and the particular, we also have personal calendars marking birthdays, wedding anniversaries and important dates in our lives. These multiple calendars all map onto one another, such that the first of January may be not just the secular new year but also, say, the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet and the yahrzeit of a beloved grandmother. We live in accordance with the various rhythms of the affiliations that matter most to us.

When God tells Moshe: “this month shall mark for you the beginning of the months,” God is essentially stating that the Exodus is such a powerful and momentous event, that it is as if time starts all over again. But it is not the only such event. As individuals, we all experience moments when time seems to start anew — when we get married or become parents, etc. These occasions mark, for us, new beginnings, as we think in terms of how long we’ve been married or how old our child has grown or how old our parents would have been.

As the rabbis of the Talmud knew, time does not just start anew for us in Nisan; our lives are punctuated by significant new beginnings, and the various ways we chart our time infuse our lives with meaning.

Rabbi Ammos Chorny serves at Beth Tikvah.