Rabbi's Message April 2006 Adar/Nisan 5766
Guard Your Tongue for the New Moon of Nisan

The calendar for this month offers a vital yet subtly hidden teaching.

Rosh Hodesh, literally the head of the month, refers the new moon. Jewish months most often begin in the middle of our Gregorian months, giving rise to those confusing calendars, with the Gregorian date in one corner and the contrasting Jewish calendar date in another - which begins, of course, on the previous evening!

This Jewish year as well as the next, Rosh Hodesh, or the new month of Nisan, is followed by the Shabbat when we begin reading a new book of Torah, the book of Leviticus.

So during April, if we are not already reading the sometimes dry, sometimes challenging passages of Leviticus, then the new moon of Nisan will likely indicate, as it does this year, that we have arrived in the Torah land of sacrifices, offering, bodily emission and priestly rules.

What then is the connection between Rosh Hodesh Nisan, the new moon that will wax into the full moon hanging brightly over our first Passover seder, and Vayikra, the name for both this section of Torah and its portion?

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson points out that even though the parshah opens with a detailed description of sacrificial types and techniques, the rabbis saw in it a teaching about the use of speech:

The very first verse of Va-Yikra says, "The Holy One called to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, saying…" Why, the rabbis wondered, is that extra "saying" there? What is God trying to teach us by using a superfluous word?

"We learn that if you said something to your neighbor, that neighbor must not spread the news without your consent," says the Talmud. We learn that act of derekh eretz (proper decorum) from our Torah verse. Even though it was quite clear that the reason God was transmitting this message to Moses so that Moses would pass it on to the Children of Israel, Moses still needed God's explicit verbal instruction before repeating God's words to the Jews. Later Jewish tradition incorporated this stringent concern with consent by insisting, in the words of the 13th Century Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, "If someone tells something to a friend, the friend is not allowed to tell others unless specifically instructed to tell these things to others."

In other words, we should train ourselves to see our conversations as private. Our general assumption is that people will feel free to repeat our private conversations unless we specify that they should not. Instead of having to assure ourselves that "this is just between us" following this Torah law would mean that when we didn't mind something being repeated, we would indicate our feelings to the person we were addressing. And if we didn't, then we could be sure that the conversation would go no further than that one special confidante.

It is not only the new moon of Nisan, the actual first month of the year, which highlights this teaching. The new moon of Tishrey, the date we actually call the new year, Rosh Hashanah, heralds the season of introspection and reflection on our behaviors. We examine and atone for actions taken or not taken, and reflect on such messages in the liturgy as "guard your tongue."

We can always regret the things we might have done differently, but rarely are we presented with an opportunity so likely to prevent a wrong as the observance of shmirat halashon.

Sylva Boorstein, sometimes called the Jewish grandmother bodhisattva, offers a very similar teaching in her book It's Easier Than You Think in the chapter entitled Right Speech: When You Give Someone Your Word, It Might Be Forever:

Sometimes in class, I will say, "Raise your hand if you have ever broken a bone," After people raise their hands, I say, "Leave your hand up if that bone still hurts you now." Usually all the hands come down. Then I say, "Raise you hand if you still feel pain from something someone said to you in the past year." Lots of hands go up. "Keep you hand up if you have pain from a remark someone made about you in the last five years." Hands stay up. "Last ten years … twenty years … thirty years … a remark made before you were five years old." Many people still have an arm in the air.

The remarkably devastating impact of hurtful words could not be more clear, and I suspect that many of us can summon up similar experiences.

Nisan has a second name in Torah, Aviv. The Hebrew letters of this name for the Passover month are another hint about its "new year" properties: the first two letters spell the word father, and the last two can stand for the number 12. Thus, the month is the "dad of all months!"

Let this new moon, and this Passover season, be a new beginning for you of mindful speech. As we joyously sing, read, and eat, long into the night of Nisan's full moon, may its light guide us towards a year of lashon tov/right and good words, with all whom we encounter.

Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton