Daily Talk
For about two days every month the moon is simply not there, and when the sliver returns it is not the sky that makes it Rosh Chodesh but a room full of judges. Why would God tie the dates of His own festivals to what a human court decides on a given afternoon?
Who Says the Month Has Begun
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About This Talk
Chapter 1 of Kiddush HaChodesh sets the frame for the whole calendar: months measured by the moon and years by the sun, the eleven day gap that produces a thirteenth month, the two days each month when the moon cannot be seen, and the rule that no month ever runs longer than thirty days. Then it hands the sanctification of the month not to any individual but to the court, which reckons like an astronomer before it ever listens to a witness, and which may do so only in the Land.