The Molad (new moon) for the month of Shevat will be Sunday night (1 Shevat), at 2:02 am after midnight and 15 Chelakim (approximately 50 seconds).
“The month of Shevat is the month of song, the New Year for Trees according to Beit Shamai [is] 1 Shevat; according to Beit Hillel 15 Shevat, and from the Molad begins the illumination of the song of the angels, in the mystery of song, in the mystery of ‘Remember Your congregation which You acquired from antiquity; You redeemed the tribe of Your heritage, Har Tzion (Mount Zion)’ – the [initial] letters of which are GoShNaH, the mystery of ‘[he] sent Yehuda before him to Yosef, to prepare ahead of him in Goshen,’ the mystery of Shafal, Galgal, Nivdal, Hiyuli, because in the month of Shevat we merit to be included in the Hiyuli, in nothingness. Therefore, we then read the song of the sea: ‘Then Moshe and the children of Israel will sing this song to Hashem, saying, I will sing to Hashem, because He is very exalted; He tossed horse and rider into the sea.’ Because then in the month of Shevat, Hashem casts into the depths of the sea all of their sins, which are ‘horse and rider he tossed into the sea.’ ‘The mighty sank like lead in the water’ – that all the mighty of Egypt sank like lead. Therefore, on Chanukah we take a dreidel of lead that’s written upon it [the letters of] GoShNaH, that through spinning the lead, we toss every ‘horse and rider into the sea’ and ‘the mighty sank like lead in the water.’ Then on the 15th of Shevat, when a new year for Orla begins, everyone leaves the husk of Orla which surrounds him, in the mystery of ‘on the lion and viper you will tread, you will trample young lion and serpent,’ Esav and Yishmael, because then in the month of Shevat, which begins from the Molad, we toss the entire husk of Esav and Yishmael into the Nukva D’Tehoma Raba, and merit to ‘trembling gripped the powers of Moav’ which is the joining together of Rachel and Leah, and the Keter (Crown) of Rachel turns into the shoe of Leah. Then the verse is fulfilled: ‘Moav is my washbasin, I will toss my shoe up Edom,’ because then we merit that the Keter of Rachel turns into the shoe of Leah, in the mystery of ‘Chanoch would sew together shoes’ – and so too Metushelach and his son Lemech and his grandson Noach – that all their work was to sew shoes for Leah from the Keter of Rachel, and through this, Metushelach merited on the day of his death to move the sun and the moon for seven days, that instead of going from east to west, they went from west to east, and he gave his entire generation a taste of seven days of an aspect of the World to Come.”
For the prayer in the original Hebrew, click here.
