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 control of our destiny as well.

We would tell ourselves that we are good people and that we are actually doing the right thing, since man is obligated to do Hishtadlut in life. We would wake up early in the morning to run our businesses and to make decisions that would rule the world of ours, all with the hope that our dreams of everlasting happiness dwell among our walls. But in the end we found ourselves constantly hungry for something more as our hearts would never feel as nourished as it did as we received that kiss from Mother.

The desire for happiness is conquered when we know that it does not depend on us to bring it. Rather it comes from a source outside of our control. Only a figure who possesses Mother’s love can give it to us and no one, and nothing, else. So how do we get ourselves back to a place of childhood? We left that place in search of happiness and came back there looking for more. But what will we do when someone breaks our tower once more, what will nourish our broken hearts?

We have to find true love in our lives, so true that there is nothing in the world that can take it from us. So that our happiness can be assured no matter where we are and no difference what we are going through. It is something far greater than life itself. For in life we have Mother, in life we have a wife, in life we have children, and they are the love that consists in this earthly life. Bigger than life means that we connect to the source of love itself and allow ourselves to be filled with the rays of the beautiful shine.

We come to a stage in life where we are ready to give up on control. Our heart and its emotions pump recklessly through our hearts and we’ve tried endlessly to calm them down without success. We are ready to give control up to the One leading our destiny.

What does that look like? Well, we have to understand that as long as we are alive we are ruled by a day of twenty four hours. It doesn’t matter if we are in control or not, we have 1,440 minutes each day that have the chance for all different experiences and emotions, and giving up control would mean that we revert back to our childhood status where we constantly return to Hashem when we need His kiss.

Take finances as an example. Once we relinquish control and admit that we are not the source of our money, what will we do when the bills come due and we don’t have where to turn to? Getting a kiss from Hashem would mean that our money would fall into our laps, but what about the real Hishtadlut that we are required to do, does that go away?

Hishtadlut means that we take those minutes of our life and make them count. As people on earth with souls in our bodies, we are driven to create. As we were created in the image of the Creator, we too are fueled to create. When we set our sight to receiving Hashem’s kiss we must show Him that we aren’t shy to receive it. Remember how it was back as a child, Mother had an endless amount of kisses stored just for you, all you had to do was ask for it. We weren’t deserving of them, rather they were already ours, given to us lovingly.

Imagine being disrespectful to Mother. One day as your candy is eaten by your older brother and tears roll down your face, Mother’s heart would feel terribly sorry for you, but it is you who has to tell her that you want her connection at this time. You will have to make the Hishtadlut to take the love that is already yours.

The first step in receiving Hashem’s kiss, after giving up on control, is to show Him that you want the connection. “Sur Me’ra V’aseh Tov,” remove yourself from bad and do good. This doesn’t say, don’t be bad and be good instead, it says, “Remove yourself and do!” Hishtadlut has now become your work. You will prove through your actions, words, and even thoughts that you desire His love and affection. You will be like the moon who creeps out from behind the earthliness and shows itself to the source that lights it up.

This is the original stage of Hitchadshut, renewal. When we renew our goal and start working toward it. It all seems great in theory and just following this thought would make the empty-hearted feel full again, but what do we do with hundreds of minutes in our days?

Hashem has given us a schedule to keep. The moon is how we tell time, as to show us that it is time that we must fill in order to receive the full light. He gave us Torah, Mitzvot, Tefillah, and Teshuvah, which can, on their own, fill our hours. As we value the gift of time in our lives we realize that we have to create a schedule that will bring His love into us, so that we can cope with whatever life throws at us. The Torah teaches us lessons through the Patriarchs and their children how to navigate through hardship and deal with stressful situations. The Mitzvot are here to bring joy to us through our actions and to prove to Hashem that from everything we could be doing with our time we are choosing Him over and over again.

With Tefillah we learn to speak to Him, not just as a service, but as we speak to our Best Friend, Father, and Lover. We speak words that were spoken by our parents and compose new verses to extend our heart to Him. And with Teshuvah we admit that we aren’t deserving of anything, and that all we wish for is to be accepted into His arms and be donned a loving kiss on our cheeks.

On the surface level, with money, we realize that we aren’t deserving, rather we were allotted a certain amount each year, as the Gemara states in Beitza 15b. It is through Hishtadlut that we receive our food. Which means that we accept the life Hashem has given to us and the responsibilities it entails, and we choose to spend our time removed from bad and sin, by keeping busy with creating the world. We occupy ourselves with doing good for the sake of receiving the unlimited supply of kisses that is already ordained.

And on a deeper level our Hishtadlut is spending time with Hashem and His will for our destiny. In short, we are returning to a state of innocent surrender in presence just as we were as children.

What is our destiny so we know what Hishtadlut to do?

The simple answer is, “Whatever lofty thoughts you have is the destiny you should reach!” Take a person with a dream for successful international business. Why his mind became fixated on this dream while the person sitting next to him dreams of comic books is beyond us, but the fact that he has it means that there is a great deal of light at that destination. And since his desires are so far away from his current situation, it is now up to him to bring himself closer and closer. There will be many obstacles along the way that will test his resolve, because no free lunch was ever given. “You want that kiss, prove that it’s yours!”

The same is with any thought that runs through your mind, the greatest dream you have thought of will be the light that you will always desire. Sadly we see this with sin, a lot. When we are young and have small desires and the greatest dream we have is an amusement park, we will do whatever it takes to get there. But once we have “been there done that,” we are off to the next excursion. What comes next in the small mind as it expands? As long as we live the heart yearns for experiences, and if we don’t keep that in check, they will float off at bay. We will crave and desire, covet and lust, just to get to that bigger dream, and sadly, those dreams grow out of hand very quickly.

Since this is the nature of man we must know how to control it for the best purpose possible. The goodness we feel with candy and their colorful wrappers and dresses is so short-lived, and when our emotions stir up once more we will be driven mad as the next dream is much harder and way more sinful than the previous one. Hashem, please forgive us.

So, if you dream of something and your heart knows that you can do it, you have to take the steps in your present moments to bring it to reality. If your desire is for your son to finish a Mesechta for his Bar Mitzvah, start learning with him! Move the moon out from behind the earth and bring the light to it.

There are so many minutes in the day to fill and luckily we were given a routine. This routine offers Prayer and learning as we mentioned above, and it also offers free time. In this free time we have to live like a child and face the obstacles head on, and show Hashem that we want His kiss.

This routine brings a vast amount of light into our moon of life. The Shine of Hashem’s rays reaches its destination as we become the sun that shines onto our moons. The better we become at our routines the more light shines upon it. We run on a high for many weeks as we enact this newfound love, and even when roadblocks come up against us we are quick on our feet to figure a way to spread love to our goals.

But “How long can we run on the same routine?”

The light eventually starts to dim. Even as we are forging ahead and making strides we once thought impossible, as long as we don’t keep adding to our growth we will eventually give in to the tests that come our way. We neglect the things that brought us to this moment and slowly start fading away as we unknowingly hide beyond the earth once more. We even start convincing ourselves that all the good work we’ve done over the last short period of time was nice but “not for me.”

The bills and earthly emotions start stirring in our hearts again and instead of reaching out to Hashem’s kiss for comfort and happiness we revert back to our entrenched ways of the past. We become distraught in our fight for light and turn the other way hoping to find light beyond the moon while the true source is hiding behind the earth we are blocked by.

But it is as we remind ourselves that the light we gained throughout the last month doesn’t go away at the end of the month, rather it gets stored so that when we finally break through we can shine with the light of a thousand suns. All we truly need is a time for renewal, the next month when we can continue absorbing light with something new.

As we add more and more moments in our life with following the will of Hashem they inevitably turn into routine. It is incumbent upon the seeker of light to have a list of new “Kabalot,” which literally means, new ways of receiving.

We have to search within our hearts and see in which areas haven’t we yet given up full control to Hashem. Since it is exactly in those areas that we keep falling and dimming our light. It is when those emotions start stirring that we seek earthly pleasures to quell them and by that distance ourselves from the kiss Hashem so lovingly desires to lay on our faces. And when the routine sets in and you feel yourself slipping, be swift and enact the next thing on the list. This renewal will have you going for another few weeks until that too becomes part of your second nature.

Keep adding to the list by finding the things you already do and add meaning to them. Like the Torah and Tefillah you already study and pray, add meaning behind them and learn valuable lessons. Start teaching others and become a sun of light for all dimmed moons out there. Light up your family and community.

And this is the “Koach Ma’asav Higgid Le’amo” Rashi teaches us. Hashem is the source of light and He teaches us before the Mitzvah of renewing the moon what it means to be a light. He raises a world and looks for the right person, Abraham, who accepts His control and fills himself up with the divine Sun. This is the power Hashem teaches His nation, so that we can emulate this path and become creators as He is.

“Hachodesh Hazeh Lachem, This renewal is for you all!” keep absorbing the light and don’t let the earth block the rays of the purest love there is. Spend your time wisely and do Hishtadlut to prove to Hashem that you aren’t shy to receive His kiss. Be steadfast in your belief and stay strong before the naysayers. Keep renewing your resolve and add on more and more until you can shine bright with your new heart, As Izikiel (36:26) prophesied, “I will give you a new heart and a renewed spirit!”

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)