The Month Of Nissan

.....................................   Pesach: Festival of Freedom?  The Story of Pesach The sign for the month of Nissan is the ram -- long ago associated in Jewish astrology with the Paschal lamb - the Passover sacrifice. Nissan has four names: Chodesh HaRishon, the first month, Chodesh HaAviv, the month of spring, Rosh Chadashim, the head/first of the months, and Rosh Chadashim Limelachim Velirgalim, the New Year for kings and for pilgrimages. The Spring fully begins in Nissan - By Tu B'Shvat the winter is beginning to break, in Adar it continues, but by Nissan, Spring is really here. It is as though Hashem is reminding us each year of the fact that He took us out in an auspicious month. Nissan is also considered a good month for the Jewish people, and a month of new beginnings. According to the Brisker Rav, Nissan did not become the season of freedom because the Exodus happened in Nissan, but it was rather because Nissan is a time of freedom, of life and rebirth, that it was a fitting time for the liberation of the Jewish people to arrive. Today, it is still a time for personal renewal. Just as "spring cleaning" is a universal urge, Nissan is a good time for a spiritual spring cleaning, and an auspicious time for us to break out of our personal enslavement -- whether to emotional and physical addictions or just bad habits or character traits. The Jewish view of time is not that of a straight timeline, but rather a spiraling one. Each year, we complete a turn of the circle and touch the same points, although in a slightly different way. Additionally, Jewish tradition holds that the yearly cycle of holidays do not just represent commemorations of past events, but that the great events of our past occurred when they did because those were the appropriate spiritual seasons for those holidays. There is a special potential for closeness to G-d in the autumn on the Days of Awe, while the months of Tammuz and Av have been dangerous ones, and Pesach, the festival of Freedom, had to occur in the spring because it was a time of freedom - a time fitting for freedom. (Written by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair and edited by Rabbi Moshe Newman, both of Ohr Somayach Institutions.) The Lamb In Pesach The sign for Nissan, the first month of the Jewish Year, is T'leh - the lamb (Aries). When the Jewish People were about to leave Egypt, G-d commanded them to take a lamb, which the Egyptians worshiped as a god, and to lead it through the streets to their home. They tied the lamb to their bed-posts, and three days later, it was this lamb which served as the Pesach sacrifice. Its blood was used to mark the doors and lintels so that G-d would 'passover' the Jewish homes, and it was eaten at the first seder on the very night that the Jewish People left Egypt. On Shabbat, the tenth of Nissan, the Egyptians saw the Jews leading lambs through the street and asked "What is this lamb for?" The Jews replied, "We're going to slaughter it as a Pesach sacrifice, as G-d has commanded us." It is easy to imagine how the Egyptians felt, seeing their god led through the street in order to be slaughtered and eaten! Miraculously, however, they were prevented from harming the Jewish People. They ground their teeth in fury, but did not utter a murmur. It is this miracle that we commemorate on the Shabbat immediately preceding Pesach on Shabbat Hagadol, 'the Great Shabbat'. Written by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair and edited by Rabbi Moshe Newman, both of Ohr Somayach Institutions.   Pesach: Festival Of Freedom?  The Story of Pesach .....................................