Whether you're a seasoned Torah scholar or just starting to explore its teachings, Rabbi Eisenbach's insights and wisdom will leave you with a deeper appreciation for this timeless text. You can join us via Zoom at chabadNW.orglive or on Facebook at facebook.comrabbichabadNW. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with the Torah and with like-minded individuals on a weekly basis!
Shortly before sundown on the 29th of Adar, G-d commanded Moses regarding the mitzvah of sanctifying the crescent new moon and establishing a lunar calendar. This is the first mitzvah the Jews were given as a nation.
Moses had difficulty envisaging the moon's appearance at the exact moment of its monthly rebirth. After the sun set, G-d showed Moses the crescent new moon of the new month of Nissan, showing him the precise dimensions of the moon at the moment the new month is to be consecrated.
For the generations that followed, each new month was ushered in when two witnesses testified before the Sanhedrin (rabbinic supreme court) that they had seen the molad, the new moon. In the 4th century CE, Hillel II foresaw that the Jews would no longer be able to follow a Sanhedrin-based calendar. So Hillel and his rabbinical court established the perpetual calendar which is followed today -- until Moshiach will come and reestablish the Sanhedrin.
Links::
Lunar Time
Rosh Chodesh
The Molad
A few months after its creation, Napoleon's "Sanhedrin" (rabbinical supreme court) was dissolved. The Sanhedrin was created to approve certain religious regulations requested by the French "Assembly of Notables." The regulations were designed to blur the distinction between Jews and non-Jews.
The rulings of this pseudo-Sanhedrin were never adopted by Jewish communities.
Link:: Napoleon Bonoparte
Look deeply and you will see that the Torah does not know of man and woman as separate beings.
Each act is performed once through a single body—a body that in our world may appear as two, but which the Torah sees as one.
On the contrary, for both to be assigned the same mitzvah would be redundant, for why should one half of the body do that which the other has already accomplished?
Just as a man fulfills the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply through the agency of his female counterpart, so does a woman wrap tefillin or wear tzitzit on the body of her male counterpart.
For just as man and woman were first created as a single form, so too, before each soul descends below, they begin as one.
It may be at times that only half a soul must descend for its divine mission, while the other half waits patiently above. And when it will return, they will merge once again.