The first Rashi in the Torah notes that the Torah should have started with the commandment of “Hachodesh Hazeh Lachem.” The Mitzvah of renewing the month as the new moon is seen. Since this is when the Yidden finally left Egypt and were on their way to the Holy Land. He answers that the reason for this not being the case is since, “Koach Ma’asav Higgid Le’amo,” He announced His strength to His nation.

Moshe Rabbeinu stands in the middle of the desert as Hashem gives him this command. Moshe has a hard time figuring out exactly what he is supposed to see, so Hashem shows him. Imagine the sun on the right of earth and the moon on the left. The sun sends its rays toward the moon but the earth blocks it from getting to where it wants. Finally after a few hours the moon creeps out just a little bit from behind the earth and a tiny sliver of it is lit up by the shine of the sun.

Hashem says, “We don’t count our years by the light of the sun, rather we count it by the result of its light.” We look towards the moon and see how the light sent from the sun reaches its goal, and it is that that we celebrate each first of the month.

Hachodesh = renewal, what does that mean?

As children we live in the moment. As we build our lego forts we are actually building an entire world. And as we hold that toy airplane in our hands we are actually flying an aircraft. We make the sounds of the engines and imitate the pilot. And as we crash the plane into our fort we create destruction. This all seems like play to the adult, but for the child this is as real as they come. So if someone dares, maybe a sibling, neighbor, maid, or whomever, to destroy this creation it will form real tears and true heartbreak.

This is innocent surrender and presence in action. How we yearn to be able to live in such a state, but we have to ask ourselves the clear question, “Why did we ever leave?”

As we look back at those times we realize that as much as the lego was so delightful to build and how the emotions were true and honest, on the flip side when they broke the pain was also true and real. We had Mother to console our little, fragile heart as she sat us in her lap, hugged and kissed us as our tears were wiped away. We were never deserving of such kind of love, rather it was always there and available for us. All we had to do was ask and say that we needed it for our happiness.

Oh, how that love is missed and what we would do to have Mother kiss us again and truly make all the pain go away like it did back then.

At that time as a child we experienced those raw emotions for the first time in our lives, but as these feelings started repeating themselves through different stories as we grew older we came to a conclusion that we must do something about it. The kiss from Mother was old school, and our friends would make fun of us if we ran to her for consolation. We determined that it was up to us to bring happiness to our hearts, sometimes we used love and sometimes hate. We turned to candy and sweets since that was something that always managed to brighten our day, and we shifted to revenge to feel somewhat higher than the low we felt at the fall. We would tell ourselves that we were actually uplifted while in essence it was just a feeling in our heart that we managed to distract.

Underlying beneath this progress we subconsciously decided to take control of our happiness. The word control is very important since it is the decision to hold the wheel that is the source not to our happiness but rather the reason we feel down all the time. It is true that initially we only meant to take control in order to uplift, but the hidden secret is that we became enslaved to the need for control.

From now on in life it was up to us to find ways to rise up, be it in happiness as we first wished, but also in status, with our figure and finances. Over time we started convincing ourselves that we succeeded in making ourselves happy when our hearts felt down, and with that grew the ego that tells us that we are in........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)