Hello Spring!

“Keep the month of Spring, and make the Passover offering to the L-rd, your G-d, for in the month of Spring, the L-rd, your G-d, brought you out of Egypt at night” (Devarim 16:1).

Why does the verse emphasize that this is the month of spring, and twice?

The commandment instructs us to celebrate Pesach in the Spring, “Observe the Spring month,” and reminds us, “in the Spring month… the L-rd brought us out of Egypt”—that is, at the most convenient time for the journey , when there is no rain or heat.

While requiring us to celebrate Passover in the Spring, the Torah does not name a specific month. It is only clear that was when Jews left Egypt, however, we do not have a name for the period, nor is it revealed in the parashah.

Should this be one of the months of the spring season?  But in the times before receiving the Torah, the Jews, starting from Avraham, used, as we do today, the lunar calendar.  And when following the lunar cycle, the months “wander” from season to season.  The Egyptians, among whom the Jews then lived, used the solar calendar, in which the position of the months relative to the seasons is stable.  So by what calendar is the month indicated—according to the lunar or according to the solar?

Does the verse answer our questions? No, and nowhere in Parashat Re’eh is this specified.

In Parashat Bo in the book Shemot, we learn of the exodus from Egypt, “This month is for you the beginning of months…” (Devarim 12:2).  It is said unconditionally: this month. When Jews receive a commandment, they know which month of a given year is being discussed, due to an associated event. But when we read the Torah, we receive neither information on the name of the month nor which calendar system to use to continue counting further from that date.

Speaking exclusively about months, not years, the Torah indicates clearly that our calendar should be based on the lunar cycle. However, Ibn Ezra noted, “The moon does not have a year, and the sun does not have a month.”  How then can we make sure that Passover always falls in the Spring?

Let’s return to Parashat Mishpatim in the book of Shemot, “You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread as I have commanded you, at the appointed time of the month of Springtime, for then you left Egypt…” (Shemot 23:15).

The same uncertainty. No indications, besides the words, “As I commanded you.” But how exactly did He command?

It is interesting that we encounter this formula—ka’asher tziviti’cha (“as I commanded you”)— in Parashat Re’eh, but there, in relation to another commandment: the rules of slaughtering cattle. There, we are commanded, “…you may slaughter of your cattle and of your sheep, which the L-rd has given you, as I have commanded you, and you may eat in your cities, according to every desire of your soul” (Devarim 12:21). But at the same time, there is not even a hint of how cattle should be slaughtered in the entire Torah!

I will not intrigue you too much. Most likely, you know that together with the Written Torah, the Almighty gave the Jews the Oral Torah.  And that is where the answers to our questions are.

Once, a few of us Jews were having a conversation about the Oral Torah: How can we prove today that the Oral Torah was given by the Almighty together with the Written Torah? I suggested that one should reason like this: If a sensible person is providing another person with some kind of serious instruction—say, he’s a doctor writing a prescription for a patient or an engineer drawing up instructions for using a device, it should be clear and unambiguous, not allowing for any discrepancies.

So now, I said, let us open the Torah at random to three or four places and see if it is clearly explained. The first words that we came across read, “This month for you is the beginning of months.” You’re familiar with them. And the questions they raise, you’re also familiar with. No matter how we tried to understand them, we did not come to a common opinion.

We then turned to another place in the Torah: “And let it be a sign to you on your hand and a reminder between your eyes… that with a strong hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt,” (Shemot 13:9). To remember the Exodus, we must apparently wear some kind of ‘sign on the hand.'”  But what is it?  What is it made of? Where on the hand it is to be located? What does “between the eyes” mean? We struggled for half an hour and again did not come to a common opinion.

If we believe that the Torah was given to us by the Almighty, it is ridiculous to think that He did not complete something and left us without precise instructions, meaning, that there are instructions. They really do exist, but not in the Written Torah but rather, in the Oral Torah, the teaching that examines all the particulars of the commandments in detail. The Almighty, having given us the Torah, did not neglect a single trifle. All those details were subsequently recorded in the Talmud.

The answer to our first question, how to ensure that Pesach always falls in the Spring, is the usage of the lunisolar calendar, the principles of which are detailed in Tractates Sanhedrin and Rosh Hashanah. The second question, on the rules of slaughtering livestock, is answered in the Tractate Chulin.

In the Oral Torah, you can find answers to all the questions that confused me and my interlocutors.

Copyright© 2023 by The LaMaalot Foundation. Talks on the Torah, by Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber is catalogued at The Library of Congress. All rights reserved. Printed in China by Best Win Printing, Shenzhen, China.

 By Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber zkt"l
Founder, Toldot Yeshurun