This Shabbat is Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the new moon. Since Judaism works on a lunar calendar, each month is a renewal. When the new moon falls on Shabbat, we recite the shorter Hallel, psalms of praise.
If you go outside to see the new moon, however, you see only darkness. Jewish tradition heralds the coming of the moon before one can see it in the sky. This quirk of the calendar is a grand metaphor for the Jewish view of the world.
Jewish tradition celebrates the moon because the light will grow. The sky may be dark now, but tomorrow, it will be brighter and then brighter still. Each Rosh Chodesh is an affirmation of the coming of the light.
In the Midrash (Tanhuma, Tetzaveh 6:6), Rabbi Johanan points out that the eye has a light part and a dark part, but one can only see through the dark part. There is a realism to acknowledging the darkness in the world. The recent past has reminded us how very dark the world can be. But to end in darkness is to allow oneself to spiral into a pessimism that will not improve the world. Despair, said Rebbe Nachman, was the greatest sin. One who despairs casts their fate with the darkness, forgetting how many sources of light, secret and apparent, there are in God’s world.
The most famous Psalm, the one recited at many funerals and memorials, is the 23rd. The 4th verse reads: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” How does the Psalmist know God is with him? As was once pointed out to me, there are no shadows unless there is a sun. Rosh Chodesh partakes in this spirit: being honest about the darkness and still having faith in the light.
