Parashat Bo brings the Exodus narrative to its decisive moment. The final three plagues descend upon Egypt—locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn—and with them comes the collapse of Pharaoh’s will. These are not merely punishments; they mark the unraveling of a civilization that believed itself permanent and unassailable. Egypt’s claim to mastery over power, nature, and history itself is finally shattered.

Yet before the Jewish people leave Egypt, before freedom is fully realized, the Torah pauses. At the threshold of redemption, Israel is addressed for the first time not as a collection of individuals, but as a nation.

This month shall be for you the first of the months:
החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים
(Shemot 12:2)

This is the first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a collective, and it is striking in its nature. It is not a commandment of belief, prayer, or ethics. It is the sanctification of time. After centuries in which every moment of their existence was dictated by Egyptian oppression—measured in bricks, quotas, and exhaustion—the Jewish people are granted authority over the calendar. Time itself is redeemed before space is ever entered.

The mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh establishes that Jewish time is not merely observed but consecrated. Through the sighting of the new moon and the declaration of the Beit Din, human testimony becomes the mechanism by which sacred time is created. Even when astronomical reality might suggest otherwise, the Torah entrusts this authority to Israel. Redemption does not begin with escape, but with covenantal partnership.

If Rosh Chodesh establishes the legal authority to sanctify time, Kiddush Levanah translates that authority into lived religious experience. The monthly blessing over the moon is recited outdoors, beneath the open sky, with no objects and no intermediaries—only time, sky, and faith.

Halachically, Kiddush Levanah may only be recited during a defined window........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)