Ginzberg, in Legends of the Jews, presents a fascinating, almost unsettling, answer.

You see, when the time for redemption drew near, fulfilling the promise to Abraham, there was a problem. A big one. According to this telling, the Israelites in Egypt… well, they hadn't exactly been racking up the mitzvot, the good deeds. They were lacking the merit needed to warrant being freed from slavery.

So, what did God do? He gave them two commandments: the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, the Passover offering, and the commandment to circumcise their sons. These weren't just arbitrary tasks; they were acts of faith, opportunities to earn that merit.

And with the Passover offering came something else crucial: the Jewish calendar. Passover, of course, is celebrated on the fifteenth of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish year. But understanding the calendar, figuring out how the months and years aligned… that was no easy feat.

The text goes on to say that Moses himself struggled with the complexities of the calendar. It wasn't intuitive. He couldn't grasp it until God Himself revealed the movements of the moon to him, making it plain as day.

But it wasn't just the calendar. According to Legends of the Jews, there were three other things that Moses found equally baffling, things he could only understand through divine revelation: the precise recipe for the holy anointing oil, the intricate design of the menorah, the candlestick in the Tabernacle, and the complex rules determining which animals were kosher, permitted for consumption, and which were tref, forbidden.

And then there's the determination of the Rosh Chodesh, the new moon. This, too, required special instruction from God.

The story takes an even more remarkable turn here. To teach Moses the exact procedure, God appeared to him wearing a garment with fringes, tzitzit, on its corners. He instructed Moses to stand at His right hand and Aaron at His left. Then, calling upon Michael and Gabriel as witnesses, He questioned the angels about their observations of the new moon!

Finally, God instructed Moses and Aaron, saying, "Thus shall My children proclaim the new moon, on the testimony of two witnesses and through the president of the court."

Think about that for a moment. The very process of declaring the new month, a cornerstone of Jewish timekeeping, is rooted in a divine lesson, a celestial court convened to ensure accuracy.

It's a powerful image, isn't it? It highlights the immense importance of these commandments and the direct involvement of God in even the smallest details of Jewish life. It also reminds us that even the greatest leaders, like Moses, needed guidance and instruction to fully understand God's will. And perhaps, it suggests that sometimes, the path to redemption isn't about grand gestures, but about embracing the seemingly small, yet profoundly meaningful, acts of faith.