[Avodah] Mesei Midbar

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, February 8, 2007 11:05 am, Galsaba at aol.com wrote:
: ... the Rosh Chodesh
: is the day that they said it was.  They decide. so cannot be mistake.
: If that's the case, why they thought they might made a mistake?

RAG already asked me this privately. Here was my best off-the-cuff guess:

Maybe they knew the mitzvah, but didn't yet realize it meant they define the
reality rather than are charged to sanctify in response to reality. I could
just imagine the growing stress as the days move on, people wondering "Just how
wrong did we get the calendar in 39 years? How are we ever going to pull this
off in the long term?"

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter