Keeping the New Moon, from Generation to Generation

If you didn’t grow up with a Rosh Chodesh practice, it might be surprising to learn that for generations, keeping the new moon was a tradition passed down from mothers to children.

In fact, Rosh Chodesh may be the most ancient tradition of all. When the Israelites fled captivity in Egypt, the very first divine commandment they received was to keep time by the moon.

What does it mean to keep time by the moon? For the ancient Israelites, it meant that the month when they left Egypt was to be considered “the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you” (Exodus 12:2). This was the month of Nissan — the start of the lunar year.

From then on, the entire Israelite people began a new month with every new moon. When the sky fell dark at the end of the month, they would send out witnesses to look for the first sliver of the crescent moon; as soon as two witnesses reported back that they had spotted the moon, the start of the new month was declared. This was the first calendar!

The entire Jewish community kept time by the moon, but the first day of the month — Rosh Chodesh (which literally means “head of the month”) — came to have special significance for women.

This connection also traces back to the Exodus from Egypt. When Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the Israelites began to lose faith that he would return. They gathered up all their gold jewelry and ornaments and melted them down to make a Golden Calf. But the women remained steadfast and refused to give their jewelry for this purpose — and so the Divine rewarded them with a special holiday of rest each month (Da’at Zkenim on Exodus 35:22:1).

Thus, according to the ancient Jewish Sages, the women became the “keepers of the new moon” (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 45:4).

Ever since then, Rosh Chodesh practices have flourished among communities of Jewish women all over the world. Each part of the Diaspora has developed their own special customs and traditions.

Keeping family traditions alive is a vital kind of relational work — there’s even a name for it. It’s called “kinkeeping,” and it’s the process of cultivating “family solidarity or connectedness,” in the words of Dr. Carolyn Rosenthal, a professor at McMaster University.

‍According to the research of Rosenthal and others, kinkeeping “fosters a family’s sense of connectedness, identity and well-being,” which ultimately “supports mental health.”

These benefits align with research by Dr. Robyn Fivush and Dr. Marshall Duke at Emory University, who found that telling family stories is one of the best ways we can foster emotional resilience in children. These family stories connect children to a sense of “intergenerational self” — an understanding of personhood that draws strength from the challenges and struggles the family has already overcome.

At a time when rates of loneliness, anxiety, and depression are rising to epidemic levels, especially among youth, we can offer our children a family story that stretches back thousands of years.

By reviving the ancient tradition of Rosh Chodesh, we can become our families’ kinkeepers, just like our mothers’ mothers, and their mothers before them.

May we close the circle, and may we become the last generation to grow up without Rosh Chodesh.