Bo

“This month shall be for you the first of the months . . . “
(Shemos 12: 1)

“This month shall be for you . . .” From now on, the months shall be yours to do with them according to your desires. But, during the time of slavery, your days were not yours. “It will be for you the first month” for in it you have begun your truly free existence. (Seforno)

We can understand the words of the Seforno, “the months shall be yours to do with them according to your desires”, as referring to the law of sanctification of the new month i.e. the Jews now have the power to designate the calendar as they see fit. However, a deeper explanation seems implicit in his words.

The nations of the world are literally “slaves to time”, buffeted by the vicissitudes of life’s changing situations. The temporal maelstrom which is life both enhances and inhibits each nation’s spiritual growth or decline. However, from the words of the Seforno, we see that the Jewish people, unlike the nations of the world, are “masters of time”, using it to further their spiritual mission. On the contrary, the ups and downs of this-worldly existence does not effect the constant development of the Jew—in this sense, he is “above” the effects of time. A Jew is, to use Mark Twain’s phrase, “timeless”, and this is the secret of his eternal indestructibility. While nations great and mighty disappear almost by themselves from the world’s stage, the Jew endures to carry out his Divine task.

Thus, the Seforno writes, the Jew began in Egypt a “truly free existence”: for, although all mankind partakes of the gift of free will, only the Jewish people is free even from the corrosive effects of time’s trials and tribulations. Further, this is the secret of the spiritual power of the Exodus, for it instilled into the Jew this timelessness, this eternal spiritual freedom from the bondage of time through their acceptance of the Torah at Sinai. As our sages say, “Do not read the verse ‘Engraved into the tablets (charus al ha-luchos)’ but ‘Free—through the tablets (cheirus al ha-luchos). The only truly free individual is one who toils in the Torah”—because only one who is truly free is one who is not a “slave to time”, but one who uses time to further his own growth.

(This d'var Torah is based on the work Peninei Daas, the essays of the Telsher Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch, zt"l, edited by Rabbi Noson Tzvi Baron, shlit"a, and Rabbi Avrahom Chaim Levin, shlit"a, vol. 1, p. 166-7)