Time for Freedom
And God spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying: 'This month is the first of the months for you, it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. Speak to the entire Congregation of Israel, saying, on the tenth of this month each person shall take a lamb ...' [Exodus 12:1-3]
These verses mark the first commandment given to the entire congregation of Israel.
The Midrash cited by Rashi on the very first verse of the Torah, questions the propriety of the Torah beginning with the narrative of creation and then the stories of the Patriarchs. One would have assumed that the Torah -- being a book of laws -- would have begun with a legal section. Rashi specifically asks, "Why didn't the Torah begin with the passage from the Book of Exodus that reads This month is the first ... "
We must conclude that ultimately the narratives of Genesis and Exodus are quite important and are therefore included in the Torah. Nonetheless, the verses cited above could have been the beginning of the Torah, and, had they been the beginning, would have made an appropriate one.
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
As noted above these verses mark the first commandment given to the entire community of Israelites. But there is more to this passage that makes it unique.
For one, we might ask: Why was this the first commandment? Surely God had at least 613 other choices.
Furthermore, why was this Commandment given in the land of Egypt? Why couldn't the Jews wait until Sinai?
In a sense the commandment regarding the new moon is a prerequisite for the holiday of Passover which would be celebrated in Egypt. In order to separate a lamb on the tenth of the month, one needs to know when the tenth of the month is. In order to have a seder on the eve of the fifteenth one needs to know when the fifteenth is.
Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, Zat"zal, explained why this commandment was given here, and now. The Jews in Egypt were slaves, and therefore lacked a sense of time. They needed to acquire a sense of time in order to be truly liberated, transformed from objects to independent people.
While this explanation certainly gives us insight into the concept, one could argue that many, if not all, of the commandments contribute to the religious personality of the Jew. It is hard to see why this commandment could not have waited some two months until Sinai. God simply could have told Moses: "In ten days have the people prepare a lamb, and in two weeks we are leaving."
I think that an analysis of the seder which the Jews celebrated in Egypt will help us to understand the importance of this commandment, and why it was indeed given at this particular point in time.
THE PUZZLE OF THE FIRST SEDER
The Jews were commanded to take a lamb, to slaughter it, and to smear its blood on the door posts and door frames.
This was certainly liberating, considering that many animals were worshipped in Egypt; to kill the animals, and smear the blood was certainly perceived as a defiant act against the Egyptians, and rejection of their deity.
They were then commanded to:
'Eat the meat (of the sacrifice) that evening, roasted; eat it with matza (unleavened bread) and maror (bitter herbs).' [Exodus 12:8]
At first glance this verse seems unexceptional, for thousands of years Jews have observed this rite, eating matza and maror on Passover eve, either with the sacrifice (during the time of the Temple) or by itself. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Jews in Egypt ate the Passover sacrifice with maror and matza.
Upon contemplation, a problem arises: Why do we eat maror or matza?
We are taught in the Mishna [Pesachim, Ch.10] that we eat maror as a "memorial" to the Jewish lives embittered by slavery. If this is the case then it indeed seems strange that the Jews in Egypt prior to the Exodus needed a memorial, as if they had already forgotten what it was like to be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Perhaps today we need to eat bitter herbs in order to remind ourselves what the bitterness of slavery was like, but why would the slaves need such a reminder?
The matza poses 