Trutharchivist

So I didn't write anything on the Shard in the two weeks since my previous supplemental. And now I wanted to write a new supplemental to my Jewish holidays posts! Supplemental no. 6. There are going to be still more coming.

This one is about Rosh Chodesh - the first day of every Jewish month. Originally, I considered writing it at the first Rosh Chodesh of the ew Jewish year - the one of the 2nd month, since the 1st had Rosh HaShana instead. However, something happened between me planning that and the day I planned to write that at. That something was October 7th, 2023. So, after most of this Hebrew year has passed, I think it's time to talk about it in the last Rosh Chodesh of the year. Plus, this day has one or two more special things in it!

So, Rosh Chodesh doesn't have a historical event that it commemorates. Well, this specific one somewhat does - the third time Moshe went to Mt. Sinai - but that's besides the point. So, what makes a day Rosh Chodesh? The renewal of the moon, of course! I have talked a little about the Hebrew Calendar in a previous status update, but didn't elaborate much back then due to attempting to talk about calendars I don't really know well enough. So I intend to talk about it here with greater elaboration.

The Hebrew Calendar year is made of twelve or thirteen lunar months. Each month starts when the moon is renewed and starts waxing and ends when the old moon disappeares. The full moon is at the middle of every month, which makes Jewish holidays very uncomfortable for werewolves, since a couple of Jewish holidays occur in the middle of a month. Now, the average length of such a lunar cycle of waxing and waning is about 29 and a little more than a hald days. And that "little more" makes things a little complicated.

Now, originally, things were slightly more simple: the next month started when two witnesses came and said they saw the moon renewing. There was a whole ceremony around that, and it was very important - to the point where people who saw the new moon were allowed to go to Jerusalem during Shabbat, even if it meant breaking some of the rules. It had to be done by the central Beit Din - Jewish court, more or less - which is why it was usually in Jerusalem. But receiving testimonies for the renewal of the moon wasn't something that stopped with the destruction of the Temple - it continued for a couple of centuries beyond it. The Tractate of Rosh HaShana in the Mishnah and Talmud - yes, the one that's supposed to be about the first day of the new year - is mostly about the rules of how to check testimonies about the new month, how the knowledge was distributed and such things. Believe it or not, certain Jewish subgroups were determined to sabotage this process, and multiple points in the law were designed to address that.

But, like all good things, the time of Jewish capability to keep this up came to an end eventually. It was apparently around the time the Roman Empire made Christianity the official state religion that they started to heavily prosecute the Jewish leadership - the Nasi, head of the central Beit Din and the representative of the Jews in Provincia Syria-Palestina before the Romans. The Nasi of the time was Hillel HaSheni, Hillel the 2nd. Technically he was at least the third rabbi with that name, but he was the second one to serve as a Nasi, the first one being Hillel the Elder who lived at the time the 2nd Temple still stood.

Hillel saw the decline of the Jewish population under Roman role, and realized that soon there may not be a Nasi in the land of Israel anymore. That could mark a disaster to the Jewish people, since the requirements for getting testimonies for the new month couldn't be fulfilled outside of Israel. So, he made the calculations for the average renewal of months to come and based the Hebrew calendar on those calculations instead of getting testimonies. The details of those calculations passed by tradition and (as far as I know) were only made public by Rambam (AKA Maimonides), in his Halachic book. I have studied those calculations, to a degree, but it's honestly not very easy. Sure, everyone could use the calculations of the average month, use the standard rules of Rosh HaShana never occuring on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and find the right day for Rosh Chodesh this way, but those aren't all the calculations. Maimonidas spends a couple of chapters explaining the Astronomy of it all - and besides it being hard to understand, it's also based on the Aristotelian Geocentric model and that is sometimes confusing. There's a couple of stuff about angles in relations to some imaginary line in the sky, and the sky is mapped using the zodiac and I'm not really sure I understood this part properly. Here's a fun fact: in Rambam's time, there lived a rabbi in Provence (nowaday southern France) named Ra'avad. Rambam's books were very popular amond Provencial Jews, so this guy decided to write scathing criticism on it, noting whenever he disagreed with Rambam and usually insulting him over being wrong. Anyway, when he got to the point in Rambam's book where he talks about this topic, Ra'avad said that he doesn't really know nearly enough about this topic so he's not going to critique Rambam on it. The same comment also includes one last piece of critique and one slight jab at Rambam for claiming to be an expert on astronomy. So I daresay, it's ot just me having trouble with this topic.

The essential math, though, is pretty simple: the average distance between two moon renewals is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts - each part being 1/1080 of an hour. The first lunar renewal of the world according to Jewish tradition was 5785 years ago (more or less), on a monday, at 5 hours and 204 parts. Calculating any other moon renewal from that should be simple... Unless I was wrong about the precise year. That's a problematic point.

Either way, the rules of the Jewish calendar right now, beyond fitting as best as possible to the calculations of the lunar renewal based on the above numbers, are as follows: in every year, every other month lasts 29 days with the rest being 30, outside of two months that can change length between years. Rosh HaShana can't occur on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, and Pesach can't occur on those same days only replace Sunday with Monday. Since the months between Pesach and Rosh HaShana have a set length, those things depend on each other. In a cycle of 19 years there are seven years with an additional month, 30 days long. It occurs during the 3rs, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years, and technically breaks the regular pattern - it exists to keep the year of lunar months in sync with solar years and seasons. This additional month is considered some sort of clone of another month, so even if you were born at it you still have a birthday every year. Unless you were born in the last day, since the month it's cloning is a 29 days long month. And no, I don't make the required calculations every time to see when the next month should start. That's what we have Calendars for.

Now, this last month was a 30 days long one. Due to that, we have two days of Rosh Chodesh - because back in the days they still accepted testimonies they could never know if today will end up being the first day of the next month or the last day of the previous one. What does this day being Rosh Chodesh means? Well, there's an old tradition to read the Hallel - Psalms 113-118 - only with two chapters (115 and 116) cut in half. We don't say Tachanun, which I might one day explain a little better, we read a portion of the Torah about the special sacrifices made at the first day of each month and have an additional Musaf prayer, which is also about those sacrifices. And... That's pretty much it.  Some people wear semi-celebratory clothes, but to be honest, they only forced us to do that in elementary school. So, we should be done here, right?

I'd have said no straight up if this thing wasn't long as it is. So, I'm going to be slightly more sensible and try being short about explaining the other stuff in this day. Firstly, tomorrow is the new year for the cattle. Which has implications to taking one tenth of one's herd and sanctify it to be sacrificed at the Temple for the owner to eat, but that's something that obviously can't be practiced nowadays. A more important point is, we're now at merely a month's distance from the High Holy Days, Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. The next month - called Elul - is ususally taken as a time of repentance as preparation to the judgement in those days. Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews start adding Selichot to the prayer for the entirety of this month, and Ashkenazi start reading the 27th Psalm twice a day. In addition to that, all Yeshivas start their first term of the year at the first day of Elul, which is incidentally nearly always close to September 1st. 

Since this is the last month of the Hebrew year, it's the time where you can see it coming around the corner, and in some ways already starting. It's still too early to wish people a happy new year, but it's just around the corner.

In short: Rosh Chodesh is the first day of every Jewish month, meaning it's the day the moon is renewed. There are lots of complicated calculations that decide when it occurs, but who needs them? We have a calendar that was already written in accordance to them! The next month is the last month of the Hebrew year, and new beginnings can already be felt in the air. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!