Parashat Bo- New Year's Resolutions

Hachodesh hazeh lakhem rosh chodashim rishon hu lakhem l’chodshei hashanah.

This month will be for you the beginning of the first month for you of the months of the year. (Shemot 12:2)

Study of the Jewish calendar is a discipline unto itself. There are multiple “new years”, seven leap years, adding a full month, every nineteen years, and we count years from the tenth month. You need a PhD to decipher it all. What are more easily understood are the actions and spiritual reasons connected with each of the calendar oddities.

I once shared a seder with a new Jew-by-choice. Although chronologically in his forties, he insisted on reciting the Four Questions as the “youngest Jew there.” He had restarted his age count on the day of his emergence from the mikveh.

Appropriately, B’nei Yisrael are also to restart their count. From this moment of new freedom, this moment that changes us from a family to a people, we also restart our count. Redemption marks a new life for us as a people and as individuals. All that came before is now behind us. It has marked us, and made us who we are as a people to that point. However, our past does not define us. How we move into our future does.

Jews could have remained cowed by our experiences in slavery. We could have been bitter, angry at the world. We could have become insular, ignoring all others for our own benefit. We did not. We began anew. As a result, we pioneered the idea of tikkun olam and tzedakah as a righteous act. We have reached out beyond our own communities to benefit the world community. When Jews were subject to quotas at universities, they founded Brandeis University not to be a school for Jews, but a “host to all”. Israel is one of the first responders to tragedy around the world, no matter what its relationship with the country. Organizations like VeAhavta and Mazon work with communities and other charities regardless of denomination.

Bad things happen. People suffer. But our positive ability as a people, to move beyond and rise above that suffering to make our world a better place, and our lives with it, will define us far beyond the negative.