In the 1948 Arab – Israeli War, my teacher, Rav Yehuda Amital z’l, then a refugee, survivor, and young immigrant found himself serving in a unit alongside a ragtag group of soldiers from across the world. Among them were older Yemenite men who had been drafted, in part, because they had no birth certificates and the made-up birthdate on their new Israeli te’udot zehut – identity cards – said they were twenty or thirty years younger than they actually were.
One evening a group of these new soldiers were taken for a nighttime training exercise. This entailed spending hour after hour crawling in the dark, through dust and mud and amidst thorns and thick shrubbery, only to stagger back to the base in the pre-dawn hours. Rav Amital turned to one of these soldiers, an older Yemenite man and asked about his night. He replied:
“קידשנו את הלבנה וחזרנו”.
We recited Kiddush Levanah, and then we came home. The entire purpose of the exercise, being out all night crawling around without shelter, was meant to test the endurance of the new recruits, even to break them, so that they could be built back up into obedient and stronger soldiers.But this particular man, crawling through thorns and dust, managed to look up at the night sky, see the sliver of the moon, and recite the beracha we too can say each month.
“קידשנו את הלבנה וחזרנו”.
We recited Kiddush Levanah, and we returned.
Rav Amital was so impressed by this soldier and spoke about him for decades. Because this soldier was able to steal a few quick moments for a mitzvah of hope and transcendence, he was shielded from the hardship of his surroundings. While it was typical to complain of exhaustion and fatigue and how ragged and dirty they looked and felt, this man was content because he had performed a mitzvah.
For this Yemenite recruit the chance to recite Kiddush Levanah entailed the capacity to transform a night of hardship into a night of blessing. For those of you who do not regularly avail yourselves of the opportunity to perform this mitzvah, I would like to describe it. Superficially, it is one of the top five most awkward mitzvot to perform in the presence of gentiles, maybe only second to thwacking hoshanot, but if you scratch beneath the surface, it is a beautiful and profound religious opportunity.
Once each month, typically on a Saturday night when we are still dressed in our fancy Shabbat clothing, as the new moon gains in strength – but before it has reached its full brightness and begun to wane – we step outside of our shuls and our homes and recite a blessing to acknowledge God as the creator of the moon, and to celebrate the moon’s renewal as a perpetual symbol of Jewish survival, Jewish flourishing, and redemption.
Listen to how the beracha itself describes the moment:
Blessed are You….who by God’s word created the heavens…God set for them laws and times, so that they should not deviate from their appointed task. They are joyous and glad to perform the will of their Owner, the Worker of truth whose work is truth. And to the moon God said that it should renew itself as a crown of beauty for those whom God carried in the womb, [that’s us – we are the ones who gestated in God’s womb, as it were] for they [we] are destined to be renewed like it, and to praise their Creator for the sake of God’s glorious majesty.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה מְחַדֵּשׁ חֳדָשִׁים:
The moon is both a faithful servant that follows the laws of physics just as God ordained, and the moon’s growth is a recurring metaphor for the redemptive potential of Jewish history.
After reciting the beracha we repeat the mantra “David Melekh Yisrael Chai V’Kayam – David, King of Israel, lives and endures” an expression of faith in a redeemed future that is currently invisible.
We stand when reciting Kiddush Levanah as one stands when encountering something of consequence.
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, in his book “Kedushat Levi” explains a curious comment of Rashi describing a moment at the beginning of our redemption from Egypt. Recall that in Exodus Chapter 12, the narrative of Yetziat Mitzrayim is interrupted as we are given the mitzvah of marking the new moon each month and celebrating that moment as Rosh Hodesh, the first day of each month. Rashi explains that God had to point to the moon, as it were, and explain to Moshe הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם this is what a new moon looks like. Rav Levi Yitzhak explains Moshe’s confusion:
משה רצה שיהיה גאולה בימיו להחזיר פגימת הלבנה ויהיה אור הלבנה כאור החמה כמו שיהיה אם ירצה השם בביאת הגואל צדק במהרה בימינו אמן.
Moshe wanted to see the deficiency in the moon filled in completely until the moon’s light would match that of the sun as the Midrash says was God’s original intention and God’s plan for a fully redeemed world. In other words, Moshe was disappointed that our redemption from Egypt would be only the first of many future cycles of subjugation and persecution and exile and redemption. God had to specifically tell Moshe that the small and incomplete light of the moon must be sufficient for us to orient our hopes and sustain our faith.
The Sefas Emes, the second rebbe of the Ger Hassidic dynasty, goes so far as to say that our orientation around the moon is the secret of Jewish survival. Our lunar calendar is symbolic of the Jewish people’s historic ability to endure great darkness through faith and expectation that the light will return.
And as long as we hold onto our calendar and as long as we look upwards to the growing moon each month we are able to tap into the capacity for resilience and renewal.
We cannot control what happens to us and we cannot control what hardships we must endure, but we can decide which experiences characterize our time. Do we dwell upon the experience of crawling through dirt, or do we celebrate the opportunity to recite Kiddush Levanah? No experience, no external reality is presented to us with one, and only one, objective meaning. We also choose how to understand and make meaning of our circumstances.
And our circumstances, I do not need to tell you, are challenging, and our circumstances are confusing. Twice in the last week a colleague asked me about our community and the issues we are dealing with. I quickly listed some mundane challenges and opportunities which, with minor variation, could have been shared by dozens of congregations across North America at any point in the past 50 years. But we face challenges that are far less mundane and that are without precedent in any of our lifetimes:
We are trying to make sense of our place in the world in the aftermath of the collapse of the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in American politics. The meaning of Jewish community itself needs to be renegotiated now that a broad, if superficial, Zionism no longer serves as the universal solvent for Jewish communal life. And, the rise of antisemitism along with an ever expanding discourse about Jews has led to a persistent questioning of how and where and in what manner Jews fit into the political and cultural life of every region where we live.
And I do not know the answers to these harder questions.
The double parshiot of this week tell a story. Acharei Mot – Kedoshim. After death, we are commanded to pursue holiness. In the aftermath of an irreparable rupture, we seek renewed transcendence.
And this is the dynamic we embrace through reciting Kiddush Levanah.
In the middle of Kiddush Levanah, there is a unique liturgical element which, to my knowledge, exists for no other ritual: we turn to three other Jews who are also reciting Kiddush Levanah and we greet them, “Shalom Aleichem” and they respond “Aleichem HaShalom.” There are many explanations for this ritual but it indicates that the power of Kiddush Levanah as a metaphor, its symbolism of our capacity as Jews to find faith and hope in a sliver of growing light in a dark sky, only works when it is shared.
And that experience, reciting Kiddush Levanah alongside other members of our community, is an underutilized resource at Ohev Sholom.
I understand that people are rushing when Shabbat ends to tackle the pile of dishes in your kitchen. But, I promise, if you take five minutes to recite Kiddush Levanah, your dishes will still be waiting for you.
This past week, in the context of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut, the seventy-eighth anniversary of the establishment of Medinat Yisrael, it was meaningful to me to connect to teachers and classmates from Yeshivat Har Etzion to ask for sources on Kiddush Levanah and to share stories about our teacher Rav Amital z’l. Later this spring there will be at least one shiur delving into some of the fascinating sources that were shared with me. And it was similarly meaningful to plan next week’s Shabbaton with Rabbi and Rabbanit Rosen from Yakar Jerusalem.
These experiences exemplified an ethos of Ki Mitzion Teitzei Torah – from out of Zion the Torah will go forth. The morally compelling and intellectually rigorous and spiritually vibrant Torah that goes forth from Zion is, to me, a sliver of light, that restores my faith in the midst of great darkness.
At the end of Kiddush Levanah, we recite a passage from the Talmud, in Sanhedrin which describes Kiddush Levanah as a monthly opportunity to be in the presence of God:
תָּנָא דְבֵי רַבִּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל אִלְמָלֵי לֹא זָכוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶלָּא לְהַקְבִּיל פְּנֵי אֲבִיהֶם שֶׁבַּשָׁמַיִם פַּעַם אַחַת בַּחֹדֶשׁ דַּיָם. אָמַר אַבַּיֵי הִלְכָּךְ צָרִיךְ לְמֵימְרָא מְעוּמָד:
The School of Rabbi Yishmael taught: If Israel only merited the opportunity to greet their heavenly Parent once each month, it would be sufficient for them. Abbaye adds, for this reason Kiddush Levanah must be recited standing.
We have many opportunities to encounter the Face of God: when we stand in prayer, when we comfort a mourner, visit the sick, or rejoice at a wedding. Kiddush Levanah is also one such opportunity. But, like the soldier Rav Amital encountered so many years ago, it is an opportunity that we can decide to embrace and that we can decide to turn into something emblematic of our moment. We need to identify the slivers of growing light in this time of darkness and confusion. The darkness is real. But so is the light.
Like the soldier that Rav Amital encountered, can we learn to say “קידשנו את הלבנה וחזרנו”? If we can do that, if only once each month, that can be sufficient.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 