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