Kiddush Levana, Wacław Koniuszko, c. 1885-1900. Wikimedia
The First Month of the Year
A cornerstone of the Jewish luni-solar calendar or a commandment about the order of months?
Published: December 31, 2013
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
See for example the traditional commentaries and midrashim on 1 Chronicles 12:33 ומבני יששכר יודעי בינה לעתים. For the lunar calendar, and Exod 12:2 in particular, as a marker of Jewish identity, see already Philo of Alexandria, Questions on Exodus 1.1 (ed. R. Marcus; Loeb Classical Library, London 1953), pp. 4-5.
For more on the Cairo Genizah, see: Adina Hoffman and Pete Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (Schocken, 2011); also Sacred Treasure – The Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic (Jewish Lights, 2010).
The piyyutim were primarily meant for a special Kiddush on the first day of Nisan. See: Y. Yahalom and M. Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, Jerusalem 1999 (in Hebrew), pp. 35-39, 220-240. The connection with parshat Bo relies on the inclusion of these poems in manuscripts of the Fragment Targum ad Exodus 12.
See S. Stern, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar 2nd Century BCE – 10th Century CE, Oxford University Press 2001 pp. 50-53.
Meir Paran, Forms of the Priestly Style in the Pentateuch (Jerusalem 1989), 94-95 [Hebrew].
וידבר ה’ אל משה לאמר. דבר אל בני ישראל…
A similar statement appears in 12:18, where it is clarified (once again by means of interrupting the stylistic flow) that the count of day with regards to the consumption of Matzah begins in the preceding evening rather than in the morning. Compare Leviticus 23:32 and contrast Leviticus 7:15, 19:6.
