When I tell people that Judaism marks a new year four times during each Gregorian year, they’re usually a little confused. Surely that can’t be right, their eyes seem to say, because how would you know what year you’re in?
But it is true. Time doesn’t have to be a linear progression from point A to B and on into the so-called future; it’s fully possible to be inhabiting several layers of time at once. I’m not in just one year—I’m in a bunch of them. It’s more a helix than a timeline, the way I experience it.
New beginnings are all over the place. Several versions of me are traipsing around the world at the same time.
This week’s Torah portion designates one of the moments in the calendar that is considered a new year. “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you,” God tells Moses in Exodus 12:2, and he doesn’t mean Rosh HaShanah, which will occur many months later. He means the month in which the Israelites will walk out of Egypt.
These days, we call that holiday Passover, or Pesach, but in the original biblical texts it’s not that at all. Rashi (possibly the best known Torah scholar) agrees, contending that “no Scriptural verse can lose its literal meaning, and He really spoke this in reference to [this] month.” The year starts at the crossing of the Red Sea. Or, it starts there as well.
I love the practice of counting time in relation to important events in our lives. It allows us to recognize and give space to our various selves as they develop on their specific paths. So, yes, we just started the year 2022, and I can take a gander at who I, my wife, and my kiddo all were last January. But I’m also firmly situated in the Jewish year 5782, and I can also recognize that I have a self who began her journey when my kid was born. How is she doing, anyway?
Similarly, I think about various moments in my kid’s life as being mile markers to check in with. When we cut off his baby curls, for example, it seemed like a new big kid was born. More importantly, it was the first time he had voiced an opinion about his own appearance. You should have seen the grin when he saw his short-haired reflection in the mirror for the first time.
