Parshas Bo, "This month shall be for you" - Today is a new day!

00:02 Once, a Jew went in to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for yechidus. He was deeply broken. He wept bitterly and poured out his heart. He told the Rebbe that he felt he could not begin serving Hashem. When he thought about everything he had been through in his life, and how stained he was by all kinds of sins and transgressions from his past, how could he suddenly begin serving Hashem, learning and davening, when he knew he had a whole basketful of sins? He poured out his heart this way and wept bitterly. The Rebbe waited until he had finished, and then said to him with deep feeling, in a singsong voice: Hashem created the world, and we know that He creates it at every moment. Why did Hashem create the world in such a way that He creates it anew at every moment? Why is each moment separate, a moment in its own right? Those who learn Chassidus, in particular, know from the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov that Hashem did not create the world just once; creation is renewed at every moment. The reason is that a Jew must know that when he comes before Hashem and wants to do teshuvah, and he

02:05 wants to serve Hashem from now on, he becomes a new person, an entirely new being. Everything from the past has fallen away completely. He starts fresh, in a new reality, and in that new reality there is no past. Then he can begin serving Hashem with vitality and freshness. In today’s parsha there is the verse, “This month shall be for you the first of months.” Hashem comes to Moshe Rabbeinu and tells him in Parshas Bo: “This month shall be for you the first of months; it shall be for you the first of the months of the year.” What was the first mitzvah Hashem gave the Jewish people? This is the subject of the well-known Rashi, the very first Rashi in the Torah, in Parshas Bereishis, on “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” There Rashi asks: “Rabbi Yitzchak said: The Torah should have begun only with ‘This month shall be for you.’” Hashem should have begun the Torah with “This month shall be for you,” in Parshas Bo, “for it is the first mitzvah the Jewish people were commanded.” When Hashem told the Jewish people to leave Egypt, what was the first mitzvah they were given? The first mitzvah was “This month shall be for you.” “Why, then, did it begin with Bereishis?” Rashi says, and continues: Why does the Torah indeed begin with Bereishis rather than “This month shall be for you”? Because “He declared the power of His deeds to His people, to give them the inheritance of nations.” Hashem wanted the Jews to know what to answer the nations when they come and claim that the Land of Israel belongs

03:50 to them. They will tell them that the whole world belongs to Hashem. He created the world, first gave the land to them, and then “by His will He took it from them and gave it to us.” That is the first Rashi in Chumash. What we see from this Rashi is that “This month shall be for you” is “the first mitzvah the Jewish people were commanded”—the first matter, the first command Hashem gave the Jews. Why? Why was “This month shall be for you” the first mitzvah the Jewish people were commanded? After all, there are many mitzvos, 613 mitzvos. Why was this one specifically the first? The Sfas Emes says that this is the point: the word chodesh, “month,” is related to chiddush, “renewal,” and “This month shall be for you the first of months” was the first mitzvah the Jewish people were commanded. The Sfas Emes says: This is the first thing Hashem tells the Jews when He wants to take them out of Egypt. The Jews were in exile, the exile of Egypt. What is the exile of Egypt? Exile, he says, is the opposite of renewal. People grow drowsy, sink into a rut, their service becomes “a rote commandment of men,” and they lose that sense of renewal. “A new king arose who did not know Yosef”—[unclear] renewal in serving Hashem. From now on, their service must have renewal and freshness, like a new building, like a new person. In the exile of Egypt, by contrast, people grow drowsy. They enter a state of forgetfulness, a state of sleep, without vitality. That is the point of “This month shall be for you”: when they need to escape Egypt, this is the first mitzvah the Jewish people are commanded. What is the mitzvah? That a Jew should know how to escape this Egypt. And I—

05:51 What does Egypt mean? It means constraints, limits. A person is caught up with the yetzer hara, with the animal soul, with the constraints and limits of life, of spirituality, of all the things in the world that conceal the soul’s vitality. The Jews are told: Know that “This month shall be for you the first of months.” A new period is beginning; there must be renewal in serving Hashem. And how do we bring about that renewal? How do we become fresh? The Jews were still in Egypt; they had not yet left. Moshe Rabbeinu comes and says, “This month shall be for you.” This brings renewal into the creation of the world. It happens when a Jew reflects and comes to recognize that the world is being renewed. This is one of the great teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, which the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah: a Jew should know that “Forever, Hashem, Your word stands firm in the heavens.” When Hashem creates the world, He does not create it as a one-time act; He creates it at every moment. This is one of the foundations of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings: the coming into being of the world, of every detail of creation, is renewed at every moment. The Baal Shem Tov explains this, and the Alter Rebbe expands on it at length in Tanya: the world is not like an object made by a craftsman. A person makes it once, and afterward it remains. He has to take care of it, but he does not have to remain there—he can—

07:23 He can go wherever he likes, and the object remains. But creation from nothing takes place at every moment. He explains why: a craftsman who makes an object does not create something new. Its material existed before—a piece of wood, a piece of gold or silver. All of that already existed. What did he do? He gave it a form. He gave something that already existed a different form. That is not a new creation, so the object can remain even without the craftsman. But Hashem creates the world at every moment. At every moment there is a new coming into being, a new creation, a fresh world. When a Jew reflects deeply on “Who in His goodness renews each day, continually,” on the fact that Hashem creates the world anew at every moment, that renewal enables him to serve Hashem with fresh vitality. Not, G-d forbid, as “a rote commandment of men”—with today the same as yesterday and tomorrow the same as today—but with today truly new. “Who in His goodness renews each day, continually.” [unclear] in serving Hashem, as if new. Rashi gives several explanations: “Today”—each day they should be new in your eyes. [unclear] that serving Hashem should be fresh, as if new. The Alter Rebbe says in Likkutei Torah, [unclear] redemption from exile. [unclear] there is the holiness between exile and Geulah.

09:04 Between exile and Geulah. “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words, which I command you today...” “Which I command you today”—each day they should be new in your eyes. A Jew must know that today, the Giving of the Torah is something new. The Torah is present in a world that is renewed at every moment, and the Torah, too, is new at every moment. “I command you today”—that is the “I.” What happened at the Giving of the Torah is “I command you today.” Today the Torah is being given anew, and when a Jew feels that every day is something new, that should bring the Geulah. It should not be exile. [unclear] When a Jew feels that renewal, truly feels alive and truly lives with Torah and mitzvos, it takes him out of exile—from the soul’s exile and the exile of the Shechinah. [unclear] And it is specifically the passage “This month shall be for you” that concerns serving Hashem. A Jew must know that he has the ability to start anew. That is the point: it is new. And more than that: the Tzemach Tzedek brings a powerful account from the Gemara about Rabbi Elazar ben Arach. He was one of the greatest Tannaim. Who was Rabbi Elazar ben Arach? Pirkei Avos says: “If all the sages of Israel were on one side of the scale and Rabbi Elazar ben Arach on the other, he would outweigh them all.”

11:09 This was the great, holy Tanna Rabbi Elazar ben Arach. The Gemara relates that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach once went to a place called Diyomset, and [unclear]. It was a very pleasant place, a place of material comforts, [unclear]. Diyomset. He stayed there for some time. The Gemara continues: When he returned, he tried to read the verse, “This month shall be for you the first of months.” Instead of “This month shall be for you,” he read, “Their hearts had become deaf.” The exact opposite: “This month shall be for you” became “Their hearts had become deaf.” Instead of saying “this,” he said “had become”; instead of “for you,” he said “their hearts.” “Their hearts had become deaf.” The heart had turned to stone, a heart of stone. The sages heard this, understood what had happened, and prayed for mercy on his behalf, and he returned to his former state. That is what the Gemara relates in Tractate Shabbos. The Tzemach Tzedek asks: What is the meaning of this? It is measure for measure. It is no coincidence that this happened specifically with the verse “This month shall be for you.” Rather, one is the opposite of the other. A Jew needs to know—

12:56 “This month.” A Jew needs to know that to understand “this month,” he must remember that Hashem “in His goodness renews the work of Creation every day, continuously.” That was the struggle with Egypt. The Egyptians said, “I do not know Hashem”; they wanted only nature. They were completely immersed in it. To them, all of reality was nothing but nature, the natural world, the Nile—as they would say, the Nile. “Who is Hashem that I should obey His voice?” They did not want to know about anything beyond nature. They did not want to know about renewal. Moshe Rabbeinu came with “this month”: You must remember what is new. When a Jew remembers that Hashem “in His goodness renews, every day, continuously,” when a Jew remembers that at every moment there is a new world, that fresh renewal comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself—“this”: it must be real and tangible to him. What does “this” mean? The renewal shines for him. And “for you” means inwardly. In other words, it is something he feels within; he experiences it inwardly, and it penetrates him more and more deeply. That is “This month shall be for you.” Then there is no “Their hearts had become deaf.” But when we forget the renewal, forget that it happens “at every single moment,” look at the world and are drawn after its natural ways, look at nature—then a person sees things according to nature, according to what is considered

14:23 and looks at them that way, and little by little is drawn after them. This is where “the wine of Prugyasa and the waters of Diyomset” come in—the things of this world. The world becomes a reality in his eyes, and then livelihood and material concerns become his reality. A person starts thinking that he must chase after livelihood, after what the world says and what material life demands, and he is drawn in more and more. Even permissible things, things that are allowed—the wine of Prugyasa and the waters of Diyomset were permissible. But an abundance of permissible pleasures draws him in more and more, and instead of living with renewal and freshness, he reaches “Their hearts had become deaf”—a dullness of the heart—and grows distant from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So when the Jews are about to leave exile, Moshe Rabbeinu tells them this one passage: A Jew who wants to leave his inner exile must remember, “This month shall be for you.” There is renewal; when we live with renewal, with the awareness that at every moment everything is renewed, a Jew is refreshed and becomes a new person. There is a wonderful teaching from the holy [unclear]. He says: On Tisha B’Av, in Eichah, we say, “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return,” the final verse of Eichah. Everyone says it, and I conclude: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.” But that is not the end; the next verse also says, “For You have utterly rejected us.” And then we repeat the verse, after “For You have utterly rejected us,” once more: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.”

16:02 The holy [unclear] offers a wonderful Torah teaching. He gives two Torah teachings, both wonderful, and we can draw great strength from them in our service of Hashem. He says: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return”—Master of the Universe, bring us back in teshuvah. “Renew our days as of old”—Master of the Universe, make our days as they once were. Then we say: “For You have utterly rejected us; You have been exceedingly angry with us.” He asks: Why does it say, “You have utterly rejected us”? Master of the Universe, have You, G-d forbid, rejected us and “been exceedingly angry with us”? Is that how Megillas Eichah ends? Afterward we conclude by repeating “Return us.” But what do these verses mean? What are we saying with “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. For You have utterly rejected us”? What is the connection between the two verses? What are we trying to say? The holy [unclear] gives a wonderful explanation. After all, all of Megillas Eichah is about “she has become like a widow”—“like a woman whose husband has gone overseas.” The entire matter of the exile of the Shechinah and the exile of the Jewish people is a matter of divorce: Hakadosh Boruch Hu has, so to speak, divorced the Jews, severed the relationship. It begins with the verses, yes, “Where is the bill of divorce?” This is the idea of divorce. What is exile? It is as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu divorced the Jews. “We have been distanced from our land”; “because of our sins we were exiled from our land.” That is the idea of divorce. He says that the Gemara speaks of two kinds of divorce: There is a divorce in which a man divorces his wife and then marries her again. There are divorces after which they may marry again. What is the difference? If a man divorced his wife because he “found something indecent in her,” then he is forbidden to marry her again. But if he divorced his wife only…

18:03 He wants to give us a new one. Then we will return, G-d forbid, to Him. The holy Rebbe of Berditchev says about what we recite in Megillas Eichah: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.” We ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu: Redeem us. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu bring us back to the Geulah. “Renew our days as of old”—may we return to the days of the Geulah. He asks: What was the reason for the divorce? After all, the verse does not say only “Return us”; it also says, “For You have utterly rejected us; You have been exceedingly angry with us.” The whole matter of exile was that Hakadosh Boruch Hu pushed us away—“You have been angry with us.” If it was because “You have utterly rejected us,” then the question remains: How can we ask again, “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old”? That Hakadosh Boruch Hu should once again shine His former light upon us and take us out of exile. That is what the holy Rebbe of Berditchev says. He explains: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.” Why the repetition? What are we trying to say here? He says: “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return”—so that we can return to You. And what is “renew our days as of old”? The holy Rebbe of Berditchev says: “Renew our days as of old” describes the way to “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return.” How can we return to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? How do we leave exile? What we ask for is “renew our days as of old”: that each person should know that today is a new day. “Renew our days as of old”—as though this were the first day of Creation. We ask to grasp and feel that “our days are renewed”: today is a new day, a new world, a new creation. There is no yesterday or the day before. Only now has a new reality come into being. And that is “renew our days

20:02 as of old.” Then we leave exile. Then “Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return” is fulfilled. This alludes to the idea of teshuvah. This is also the meaning behind what is written: The Gemara relates an incident in which Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi wanted to know when Moshiach would come. He met Eliyahu Hanavi and asked him: When will Moshiach come? Eliyahu told him that Moshiach was at the gates of Rome, there among the sick, near the non-Jews. Yes, and he pointed out exactly where he was: Look, so you will know who Moshiach is. The Gemara relates that he went to the gates of Rome, found the man who matched the description he had been given of Moshiach, and asked him: “When will the master come?” When will Moshiach come? He answered, “Today.” He would come today. Well, he was delighted, very pleased: Moshiach is coming today—what could be happier than that? He stood and waited, waited for Moshiach to come. The day passed, night fell, and Moshiach had not come. He was deeply distressed. The next day he met Eliyahu Hanavi again and told him the whole story: Moshiach had misled him. He had said he was coming “today,” but the day had passed and he had not come. Eliyahu told him: “Today, if you heed His voice.” After “today” come the words “if you heed His voice”: If we heed the voice of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then it will be “today.” The holy Rebbe asks

21:46 of Berditchev: Why did he say “today” to him? Where is the answer in that? What does “today” mean? After all, you didn’t say, “Today, if you heed His voice”; you only said, “Today.” How does that answer the question? He explains that when Moshiach said “today,” he meant: This is the way to bring the Geulah—to live today. Today, you need to recognize “today.” You need to know that there is only one day—today. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow; there is “today.” There is today. And you need to make this day the most beautiful day it can be. Today is a new world. It did not exist before. Something new is beginning; there is something new, a new reality. And when a Jew experiences “today” as a new reality, as a new day, we leave exile. That is what Moshiach tells Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, who asked, “When will the Master come?” You want to know how we leave exile, when Moshiach comes? “Today.” When a Jew experiences “today,” says the holy sage of Berditchev—when he feels that today there is no yesterday and no tomorrow, only today, with life, with meaning, with vitality, with something new. A new reality begins; Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates the world anew. When we are with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, with “today,” then

23:14 that is how we will leave exile. Based on this, we can explain the account of the Baal Shem Tov asking Moshiach the same question. There is the well-known story, recorded in a letter the Baal Shem Tov wrote to his brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon of Kitov, that he was once in Moshiach’s chamber and asked, “When will the Master come?” It was the same question Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi had asked: “When will the Master come?” Moshiach answered him, “When your wellsprings spread outward.” When the wellsprings of Chassidus spread throughout the world, Moshiach will come. And the Rebbe once asked: Why does the story repeat itself? Moshiach had already answered the question! The Gemara relates that when Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asked Moshiach when he would come, he answered, “Today.” Why did he then answer again, “When your wellsprings spread outward”? The Rebbe says this is not a new answer; it explains the earlier one. We need to be able to live “today” today. And how do we create that “today”? Through “your wellsprings spreading outward.” How can a Jew live “today” today, so that “every day they should be like new in your eyes,” fresh and alive, serving Hashem with a sense of renewal? When “your wellsprings spreading outward” shines within him. The inner dimension of Torah, Chassidus, the teachings revealed by the Baal Shem Tov, brings renewal to our service of Hashem. That is what he is saying: Our service of Hashem must be “like new.” It must be done with a sense of renewal. As it says in Kesser Shem Tov, the Baal Shem Tov cites there

25:18 the words of the Torah that a person must renew his good deeds. He must constantly bring renewal to his good deeds, so they do not become a fixed routine in his eyes. He must constantly renew his good deeds, rather than let them become a fixed routine. In other words, this is one of the foundations of Chassidus, the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov: not to fall into a fixed routine, into “mitzvos performed by rote.” He must fulfill a mitzvah with a sense of renewal, bringing new life into that very same act, that very same service. This is what it means to renew good deeds: The same prayer he prayed yesterday, he should pray today with new life and new vitality. To understand this, there is the phrase, “In His goodness, He constantly renews the work of creation each day.” This is embodied for us in “This month shall be for you”: Each day has new vitality and is a new world. Based on this, when we return to the first Rashi, Rashi makes a remarkable point. Rashi says: “Rabbi Yitzchak said: The Torah should have begun only with ‘This month shall be for you.’” Why, then, does it begin with Bereishis? “He declared the power of His deeds to His people.” The Torah should have begun with “This month shall be for you,” yet it begins with “In the beginning, G-d created.” What is Rashi telling us here? This leads into an entire explanation with remarkable depth. Rashi wants to explain that when the Torah says, “This month shall be for you, the first of months,” renewal in our service of Hashem applies not only when we learn and pray, but even when we deal with worldly matters: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” Even when a Jew is in the world, going about daily life, dealing with material things, with earning a living, with physical needs, with eating and drinking. As the Mishnah says, “Let all your deeds be for the sake of Heaven,” and as the verse says,

27:18 “Know Him in all your ways.” Serving Hashem must extend even to when we eat, when we drink, when we walk. And the Rambam says, “A wise person is recognizable in his eating, his drinking and his walking.” It should be evident in all his physical activities. In other words, what is Rashi hinting at here in the verse in Bereishis? That “This month shall be for you”—renewal—must apply even to the matters of “Bereishis,” even to worldly matters. A Jew knows that the entire world, with all its physical concerns, exists for one purpose alone: “For the sake of the Torah, for the sake of the Jewish people.” Even when he is involved in worldly matters, he serves Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and he serves with renewal and new life in everything. This is what it means to live the Geulah. When a Jew knows that, in essence, a Jew is above the world, he does not remain sunk in sleep amid worldly concerns and the patterns of nature. Instead, he lives with the life, freshness and renewal of “In His goodness, He constantly renews the work of creation each day.” This is “This month shall be for you, the first of months.” And this is what we must take from our parsha and live with in our daily lives. A Jew needs to know that he must live today—with “This month shall be for you,” with renewal and new life—so that every day is lived with a full sense of life and renewal. This is how we leave our personal exile and truly become a fresh Jew, a Jew of Geulah, a Jew who lives above this world, above nature—with “today.” And through this service, we bring about “today,”

29:02 and indeed, may we soon merit the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, “Today, if you heed His voice.” On this subject of “today,” the Rebbe once spoke at a farbrengen, a Simchas Torah farbrengen—and I was privileged to be there. I remember the Rebbe speaking then; it was a very joyous and spirited farbrengen, on Simchas Torah. The Rebbe was always joyous. At that farbrengen, the Rebbe spoke specifically about this “today.” I remember the Rebbe dwelling on the question: Why did Moshiach answer “today,” rather than say, “Today, if you heed His voice”? The Rebbe said something remarkable: Moshiach was telling Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi that a Jew needs to know he does not belong in exile. Exile must be utterly inconceivable to him. It must be something he rejects completely. A Jew does not belong in exile. So when a Jew asks, “When is Moshiach coming?” the answer is “Today.” The Geulah must be today, not another day in exile. [unclear]. A Jew needs to live this way day after day: not to get used to exile, not to become “a Jew of exile,” as the Rebbe said. Not a Jew of exile who grows accustomed to exile and says, “Moshiach will come when he comes.” No. “Today”—the Geulah is today. And when the day passes and he sees that Moshiach has still not come, he asks: What happened?

30:31 Then we say, “Today, if you heed His voice”—that was what was missing. But that is [unclear]. The basic assumption, day after day, must be “today”: Today is the day of Geulah. And when a Jew knows this, he serves Hakadosh Boruch Hu with vitality and freshness, knowing that Moshiach is indeed coming today, and that the complete Geulah will come speedily in our days, amen.