The moon has always captured the human imagination.

Over the Passover holiday, astronauts broke a new record. On April 1, as we were beginning our Seders, Artemis II launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And while it did not land on the moon, it still shattered the record for the farthest distance human beings have ever traveled from Earth.

To be honest, I cannot say I fully understand the national value of sending human beings back to the moon. But there is something breathtaking about watching people do what no one has ever done before.

But Jews have always been fascinated by the moon.

Long before it was a target of rockets and missions and history-making headlines, it was already one of the first great symbols in Jewish life. The very first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a nation, while we were still slaves in Egypt, was the commandment to count the Jewish calendar based on the moon.

Before we were redeemed, before we left Egypt, and before we became a free people, G-d told us to sanctify the new moon and build Jewish time around its cycle. This becomes so central to Jewish identity that in the Haggadah itself, we raise the possibility that telling the story of the Exodus should begin not on Passover night, but from the start of the lunar month in which we were redeemed.

That itself is astonishing.

Why begin there? Why would the first commandment to a nation still trapped in slavery be about the moon?

Because the moon carries one of Judaism’s deepest lessons. The moon waxes and wanes. It grows, it disappears, and then it returns once again.

In Judaism, the Jewish people are compared to the moon. We too go through cycles. There are times of fullness and times of concealment. There are times when we shine, and times when we feel........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)