Last night as I pulled out of the parking lot of the Yarmut park in Ramat Beit Shemesh, I spied the new moon setting over the horizon just after sunset. I was able to get a quick snapshot of it with my old ipod (1st pic), and I ran to get my good camera and returned just before it completely set behind the buildings (2nd pic).
The new moon, generally, is symbolic of renewal, of the first light after the darkness of it's having completely ebbed to invisibility. And it corresponds to us, the Jewish people, to whom the Lunar month belongs, as it is the first mitzvah the Jewish people received as a nation. We can sometimes seem to disappear, but then we reappear, we reflect the spiritual light Hashem shines upon us. And we experience cycles of light and darkness in this relationship.
If you've followed my different podcasts over the years, especially those related to Moshiach, so you know that the Rosh Chodesh Av that precedes the leap year is especially significant, as per the Maharsha in Sanhedrin, daf 12.
The leap year is called the 'pregnant year' - ostensibly because of the fact that a pregnant woman has a large stomach and 'sticks out,' which is also true of the leap year, with its extra month. But it's also indicative of a process that takes nine months from conception to birth. And just like the conception of a child happens in private, and the birth is out in public and celebrated for all to see, so too, this process of the leap year is a ninth month process that starts in a hidden way on Rosh Chodesh Av, and completes at the end of 9 months, the culmination of Adar II, born on the first of Nissan of the following year.
We can look back at was happening in the last round of the pre-leap year Rosh Chodesh Av, three years ago, before the Hamas war began, and see how much the craziness of that summer lead up to what happened almost exactly 3 months later at the end of Tishrei, which was the beginning of that war that lead to all that followed.
What are we in for now? I think that it's impossible to predict, but I do want to take note of an important thing that we can observe about the concept of the leap year. The 8th year of the cycle (which was 2024, 2005, 1948, 1967) is the only year when the Jewish calendar pushes ahead of the Solar calendar. Lunar calendar represents the Jewish people; Solar calendar represents the nations of the world. It's not a coincidence that in the year we 'pushed ahead' - 1948, 1967 - we saw amazing miracles for the Jewish people as a nation. It takes some thought to see how that is true of 2005 and 2024, but I think the ultimate results of each of these years - the process that was spawned - was a great leap forward.
What is unique about this leap year is that - for leap years that occur 3 years from the previous one (as opposed to only 2, as in the 8th and 19th year of the cycel) - this coming leap year is the farthest forward that the lunar calendar can reach for a 3rd year leap year, as it follows the 8th year leap year.
Bottom line, we are in for a great process and forward movement in the Moshiach process, it will unfold in Hashem's time, clearly, and we may get an insight as to where it all is headed over the next nine months.
