Category Archives: Shabbat HaChodesh

March 21, 2023 · 22:47

Communal Memory

(Drasha given in Kinor David on the occasion of the 10th Yahrtzeit of my father, Peter Rozenberg, פנחס בן נתן נטע z”l, 18 March 2023, Shabbat VaYakhel / HaChodesh)

My father’s Yahrtzeit is always a week before the new month of Nissan, which is coming up this Thursday.

The new month of Nissan was the very first commandment that G-d gave the Jewish People, just as we were about to leave Egypt. G-d told us how to make our calendar, and that this month should be referred to as the first of the months.

Now, you might ask, was this really the first commandment, right before they left Egypt? What about Bris Mila? Wasn’t that given to Avraham?

Actually, that commandment was given to an individual, a family. The commandment about the calendar is meaningless for individuals, it requires a community, a nation. We can’t each have our own calendar – at the very minimum, we all need to agree which day Passover falls out on.

What about the commandment after that, the second one? That was to bring the Passover offering – to eat the lamb and put its blood on the doorposts, and there too, G-d says to Moshe: “speak to the entire community of Israel”. That commandment is both for each family, each household, but also, for the entire community – one of the first actions that we take to remember the Exodus from Egypt.

Shabbat is another example – this week’s Parasha, VaYakhel, starts with Moshe gathering the entire community of the Jewish People to tell them about how to keep Shabbat. We keep Shabbat as individuals, as families, and also as a community. In fact, the Ohr HaChaim points out that we learn from Moshe that we should gather together on Shabbat – as indeed, we do.

So there are commandments for individuals, for families, and for the entire community – and there’s memory of individuals, of families, and of the entire community.

A few years back, I was corresponding with a person online, not Jewish. They wrote to me that they were a little jealous of me for having a national, communal memory. Apparently, their memory is only about things that happened to them personally, a little bit of their family history, and that’s it. They don’t have any national or communal memory.

I found that to be more than a little shocking. Communal memory is such an important part of my identity, my view of the world, it is hard to imagine that people live without it; it must be so lonely and disconnected.

I am listed on the Nefesh BeNefesh web site for people making Aliya to Ra’anana, and I get occasional phone calls asking for advice. One of the points that I always make is the importance of community, especially for Olim. It’s something that we take for granted outside of Israel, but is unfortunately less prevalent here, except in Ra’anana and other places that Olim have settled and influenced. We do have community – that is, a rav and even a rabbanit, and Torah lessons, and events, and meals for people who have given birth, and kiddushes, and memorials and shivas.

This week was the 10th Yahrtzeit of my father, Peter Rozenberg, Pinchas ben Natan Nota, z”l.

When a person – especially a person who made a difference to a community – passes a way, they leave a “Chalal”, a hole, a gap in the cosmos, a gap in the sum total of G-d’s Presence in this world. When they’re gone, the gap that they leave needs to be filled, and then we each feel the need to fill it.

The gap in G-d’s Presence – which we might call “Chillul Hashem” – is filled through Kaddish. When the community answers, “Yehei Shmei Rabba” – “may His Name be blessed forever” – that fills the empty space, a little bit.

Also, each of us find ways to fill it, in our own way.

For the past ten years, I have given a Drasha in my father’s name, and each time I try to bring to life an aspect of his character – on Parashat Parah, I talked about the heart of flesh and greeting everyone with a smile; on Ki Tisa I talked about Rav Chessed – dedication to kindness, on VaYakhel about Shabbat and community, on HaChodesh about “one day at a time”.

These are my individual memories, and the Torah that flows from me, inspired by him.

But every time, each year, members of our community tell me their own recollections, their own memories, what they learned from him: how to be a grandfather, a friend, how to greet a person they meet on the street with true joy, how to show respect to each human being.

Each one fills the space that he has left, in their own way, and that in turn, lifts each of us up.

This way, an individual that helped create a community, even when they’re gone, their influence continues to be felt, through the community itself, through community memory, memory that extends to more than just one person, and memory that extends forward through time.

May his memory be blessed

Leave a Comment

Filed under Shabbat HaChodesh, VaYakhel, Yahrtzeit

February 26, 2022 · 21:42

Happy New Year!

(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 – 1st of Nissan (coming up), 1st of Tishrei, 1st of Elul, and Tu Bishvat.

1st 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 1st of the 7th, and the 1st of the 1st 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!

1 Comment

Filed under Shabbat HaChodesh, Special Shabbatot, Yahrtzeit

· 21:11

One Day at a Time

(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

1 Comment

Filed under Shabbat HaChodesh, Special Shabbatot, Yahrtzeit

March 27, 2014 · 18:50

Shabbat HaChodesh

This Shabbat is the last of the four special Shabbatot. We read Parshat HaChodesh that relates the commandment of Rosh Chodesh and of the first Pesach, and the Haftarah is of from Yechezkel, describing the dedication of the final Temple.

Linear annotated translation of the Haftarah of Shabbat HaChodesh

There are so many interesting ideas that the Haftarah brings up in connection with Rosh Chodesh Nissan, and Rosh Chodesh Nissan itself is such an interesting date, it was hard to find just one thing to focus on. So perhaps some day in the future I will write about whether the world was created in Nissan or Tishrei and what difference it makes, and about the Gates of the East and the return to Gan Eden. This time I wrote about the 1st of Tishrei as the New Year for kings.

This is also a chance to summarize the 4 special Shabbatot that prepare us for the season of national independence and achievement:

  • Shekalim on the power and utility of money, which is one of the bases of society.
  • Zachor on the shared values that are worth standing up to protest
  • Parah on the paradoxical nature of Jewish history, and on the potential for change
  • HaChodesh on how we became a nation in the first place.

    May this season bring only good news and joy to the entire Jewish People, wherever they may be.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Shabbat HaChodesh, Special Shabbatot

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

· 18:30

Shabbat HaChodesh – New Year for Kings

Shabbat HaChodesh is the fourth and last of the special Shabbatot, the Shabbat immediately preceding Rosh Chodesh Nissan.

On Shabbat HaChodesh we read Parshat HaChodesh, the very first commandment that G-d gave to all of Israel as a nation[1]:

(א) וַיֹּאמֶר ה’ אֶל מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל אַהֲרֹן בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לֵאמֹר:

(ב) הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים רִאשׁוֹן הוּא לָכֶם לְחָדְשֵׁי הַשָּׁנָה:

1) Hashem said to Moshe and to Aharon, in the Land of Egypt, as follows:
2) This month will be for you the first of months, it will be the first for you among the months of the year.  (Shemot 12)

Not only was this the first commandment that Israel was given as a nation, it is this commandment that made Israel a nation in the first place. In the ancient world, what distinguished a nation from a bunch of tribes was that nations had kings. The Jewish People in exile were still just a large family, a dozen tribes. By giving us commandments, G-d made Himself our king, and made us a nation.

The 1st of Nissan is associated with kings in Halacha. When listing the various new years in our calendar, the Mishna states:

ארבעה ראשי שנים הם באחד בניסן ראש השנה למלכים ולרגלים :

There are four new years: 1st of Nissan is the new year for kings and for holidays (Mishna, Rosh Hashana 1:1)

What is a “new year for kings?” In the times of the Tanach, people would date their documents based on the reign of the current king, eg: “in the 2nd year of the King Yehoshafat.” The year was incremented not on the date of the coronation of that king, but rather on the 1st of Nissan. Let’s say King Yehoshafat had been crowned during Adar; starting with the 1st of Nissan of that year, we would start dating our documents as the 2nd year to his reign, even though he had only been king for a month.

The “coronation date” of the Jewish People is not the coronation date of a particular human king, like all other nations. Instead, it is the date that we accepted G-d as our king and became a nation, the date when G-d gave us our first commandment: the 1st of Nissan.

The Haftarah of HaChodesh describes the dedication ceremony of the final Temple, which begins on the 1st of Nissan[2]. It talks about the offerings that will be made on that day, in particular, by the leader of the Jewish People, whom Yechezkel calls “nassi.”[3] Surprisingly, the Haftarah begins a few verses before the description of the dedication ceremony, and ends a few verses later. Those extra verses refer to a seemingly unrelated topic: the laws that limit the power of the leader of the Jewish People.

This “nassi” has an important role, especially in the dedication of the final Temple: he must collect the taxes, and he must represent the people in bringing their offerings. He is shown respect: certain gates are opened especially for him, and he is allowed to use certain passages that others are not. But the Haftarah states explicitly that these privileges are only given to him when he is actively representing the nation. When he comes to the Temple as a private person, as an individual, he does not get any special treatment.

The Haftarah goes out of its way to point out that the leader of Israel, whether he be called “king”, or “nassi”, is given power only to the extent that he serves the nation. He represents them, he organizes them, he leads them, but he does not truly rule them. It is not his authority that defines them as a nation. Their years are not dated from the beginning of his reign, but from the beginning of G-d’s reign – the date of the first commandment given to Israel.

The nation of Israel may have many new years, but we have only One King.

PDF for printing, 2 pages
Copyright © Kira Sirote
In memory of my father, Peter Rozenberg, z”l
לעילוי נשמת אבי מורי פנחס בן נתן נטע ז”ל


[1] Avraham’s commandment of Brit Milah was given to him as an individual and the head of a family.

[2] The Mishkan’s dedication ceremony was also on the 1st of the 1st.

[3] “Nassi”, which is used in modern Hebrew to mean president. It is sometimes translated as “prince”, but a prince in English connotes the child of a king. It literally means,  “one who is raised”, as in “his highness”, or in the case of the Jewish People, “first among equals”. Which is why I went with “president”.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Connections, Shabbat HaChodesh, Special Shabbatot

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,