The Cesium and Rubidium atom clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory Time Center are accurate to one second in 300,000 years. But three thousand years ago, Moses, had no
such time-piece.

However, somehow Moses knew the exact length of the lunar month - 29.53059 days - an accuracy which was literally out of this world! In the reference work Astronomy and Astrophysics the precise length of the lunar month is listed as 29.530589 days! How did Moses have a figure so accurate that it took science three thousand years to come to the same number?

That number was given to Moses by Hashem and was passed down from Moses to Hillel the Younger, the last prince of the House of David. When Hillel the Younger sanctified all the new moons from his day until the final redemption, he had to know the exact length of the lunar month to within a
fraction of a second, for even a small error would, over millennia, amount to a visible error.

This was in fact the case with the calendar of Julius Caesar, which by the year 1582 had wandered so far that Pope Gregory XIII erased 10 days from the calendar, with the result that the day after the 4th October 1582 was called the 16th October!

There have been approximately 41,000 new moons since the time of Moses, but from Mount Sinai onward, the secret of the exact length of the lunar month has always been known to the Jewish People, because Moshe Rabbeinu had a clock that was literally 'out of this world'...

How can one be convinced that the Torah is really given by the Creator of the world?

The fate of the Sons of Israel is one living example to the truth of the Torah, in manner of fulfillment of it's prophecies. To dwell on the subject of Torah prophecies and their fulfillment is another avenue in achieving that goal of proving the Torah is the Creator's instruction book of how to handle His creation (Torah = instructions).

Let's take though another path. The Torah is more than instructions. It is the blueprint of creation. Although not a text book in sciences, whenevr some data is needed to observe its commanments, it's given. The following is but
one of myriad examples that inevitably leads one to the conclusion that the Torah is really what the Jews claim it to be for the last 3312 years - the word of the Creator.

1. The Mitzva (commandment) of sanctifying the New Moon:

"G-d said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: This month (Nissan) shall be the head month to you. It shall be the first month of the year."
Shemot (Exodus) 12:1-2

2. The Jewish Calendar is luni-solar. This is mandated by the fact that the Torah repeatedly describes the holiday of Pesach (Passover) as occurring in the month of Aviv ("Spring"), and commands:

"safeguard the month of Aviv so that you will be able to keep the Passover to G-d, since it was in the month of Aviv that G-d brought you out of Egypt by night."
Devarim (Deuteronomy) 16:1

3. The Succot holiday as well must coincide with the Autumn
harvest:

"On the 15th of the seventh month (Tishrey), when you harvest the land's grain, you shall celebrate a festival to G-d for seven days. The first day shall be a day of rest, and the eighth day a day of rest."
Vayikra (Leviticus) 23:39

Where the Jewish year to be regulated on the basis of a simple lunar calendar, both Pesach and Succot would occur some 11 days earlier each successive solar year. The months of the year would therefore retrograde through the seasons with the result that the month of Nissan, and hence Pessach, would not occur regularly in the Spring. The same would be true of Succot.

Accordingly, the commandment to safeguard the month of Aviv must be understood as mandating that the cycle of the lunar months be adjusted parallel to the seasons of the solar year. The necessary adjustment is accomplished by INTERCALATION, i.e. by adding an extra month in some years. Adar Sheni, the intercalary month, is added in seven out of every nineteen years. This nineteen-year cycle is called
the machzor katan, the small cycle, or machzor halevana, the lunar cycle.

4. Ten lost days:
The effect of small errors in calendrical calculations
accumulates over long periods of time. The Julian calendar,
adopted in Rome in the year 46 B.C.E., exceeded the actual solar year by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. This minor discrepancy amounted to approximately 1 day in every 128 years and therefore lead to the establishment of the
Gregorian calendar in 1582:

"When the Julian calendar was first introduced the vernal equinox fell on the 25th day of March. By the year 1582 the equinox had retrograded to March 11th. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII directed that 10 days be suppressed designating that October 5th 1582 became October 15th.

The dates October 5 through October 14 were simply eliminated from the calendar for the year 1582. In this way the vernal equinox which then would have occurred on March 11th was shifted forward to March 21st. March 21st was selected by Gregory XIII as the date of the vernal equinox and the beginning of the spring because the equinox fell on March 21st in the Julian calendar in the year 325, the year in which the Council of niece was held."
Rabbi j. David Bleich,
"blessings of the Sun - Renewal of Creation"
Artscroll - Mesorah Pub. (1980) Pg. 47

5. The first commandment given to the Nation of Israel on the eve of the exodus included precise instructions for establishing the calendar:

"'G-d said to Moses and Aaron: This month shall be the head month for you...'At that moment when Moses received this command, the Holy One transmitted to him the precise rules of calculating the New Moon, how to intercalate the year and how to establish the months. This was in order to fulfill the verse, 'Safeguard the month of Aviv... to keep the Passover to G-d'."
Midrash Sod HaIbbur;
see M.M. Kasher, "Torah Shelemah"
Amer. Biblical Enc. Society, 1949, Pg. 1

Ibbur = Intercalation.

6. These instructions were transmitted as SOD (Secret) and preserved by the Sages of the Sanhedrin, who were charged with proclaiming the New Moon and establishing the calculation upon which proclamations were based:

"My hand shall be against the prophets who see vanity and who divine falsehood. They shall not be in the SOD (counsel) of my people, they shall not be written in the register of the family of Israel, and they shall not enter the Land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am G-d."
Ezekiel 13:9

Gemara Ketuvot 112a:
"When Rabbi Eliezer went up to the Land of Israel, he remarked, I have escaped one penalty. When he was ordained, he said, I have escaped two penalties. When he was given a seat on the counsel of intercalation, he exclaimed, Now I have escaped three penalties.
For it is written, 'My hand shall be against the prophets... THEY SHALL NOT BE IN THE COUNSEL OF MY PEOPLE'. This refers to the SOD HAIBBUR.
'They shall not be written...' refers to ordination.
'They shall not enter the Land...' is to be understood according to it's plain meaning".

7. The destruction of the 2nd Temple and the dispersion of Jewery gave rise to a state of affairs which led to an about face with regard to this policy: The Sanhedrin, shorn of of its power and authority, was no longer able to proclaim the New Moon every month.

The principles governing the calculations of the calendar and intercalation were in danger of being forgotten. They had, therefore, to be publicized as widely as possible.

Accordingly, we find recorded in the Talmud narratives concerning various Sages telling of how they imparted to their colleagues and students fundamental astronomical data with regard to the length of the Lunar month and the hallachic grounds which would justify periodic intercalation. This knowledge was transmitted as a tradition which, obviously, had earlier been withheld from the multitude of scholars.

Gemara Rosh HaShana 25a:
"Our rabbis taught: Once the heavens were covered with clouds and the likeness of the moon was seen on the 29th day of the month. The public mistakenly thought to declare the New Moon and the Sanhedrin wanted to sanctify it. Rabban Gamliel, however, said to them: I have it on the authority of my father's father house (Hillel) that THE RENEWAL OF THE MOON TAKES PLACE NO LESS THAN EVERY TWENTY-NINE DAYS, TWELVE HOURS, TWO-THIRDS OF AN HOUR AND
SEVENTY-THREE PARTS(*)."

(*) The hour is divided into 1080 parts for easy calculation without fraction. Thus, two-thirds of an hour = 720 parts plus 73 parts = 793. In rabbinical literature the calculation is therefore given as 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts of an hour.

8. Maimonides (Rambam) codified the Oral Tradition as recorded in the Talmud.
Rambam, Laws of Sanctification of the Month 6:2-3:

"2. The day and the night consists of 24 hours, 12 for the day and 12 for the night, in any season. THE HOUR IS DIVIDED INTO 1,080 PARTS. The reason for dividing the hour into this number of parts is that this number may be divided without a remainder by two, four, eight, three, six, nine, five, and ten, and with these denominators the fractions may again be divided into many other parts.

3. By these figures, the interval between two conjunctions of moon and sun according to their mean motion is 29 DAYS AND 12 HOURS OF THE 30th DAY, BEGINNING WITH THE NIGHT OF THIS DAY, AND 793 PARTS OF THE 13th HOUR. THAT IS THE TIME WHICH ELAPSES BETWEEN OME (MEAN) CONJUNCTION AND THE OTHER, AND THAT IS THE DURATION OF THE LUNAR MOON."

9. According to the Oral Torah which was handed by the Sages, the time between one New Moon and the next is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts of an hour.

793
---- = (0.734259) = (0.03059)
1080-----Hours---------Days

If we add 29.5 days, we receive a total of 29.53059 days.

10. According to NASA, the length of the "synodic month", i.e. The time between one New Moon and the next, is 29.530588 days. The difference between this figure and that used by the Sages is .0000006, or sixth millionth of a day.

To achieve that astronomical accuracy NASA had to fly very
sophisticated instruments to the space, free of
atmospheric interference.


To have that accuracy 3312 years ago, in the desert, with no instruments - is possible only when the source of the data is the Creator of the moon.

To sum it up:
1. One of the 613 commandments is to celebrate the Passover - it must occur in the spring, 14th of month Nissan.
2. Since the months in the Jewish calendar are in accordance with the Lunar year, there is a mechanism of intercalation, so that 14th Nissan should always fall in spring.
3. In order to calculate it precisely, is needed the knowledge of the exact time between one New Moon and the next.
4. There is no way how one could have this information 3312 years ago with the technology then. NASA found it out only recently.
5. Moses handed this data with the rest of the Torah.
6. The most plausible explanation to that phenomenon is that the Torah was given to Israel by the Creator of the universe.

One tiny demonstration. A drop from the ocean.

Why do the ten commandments open with G-d's description of Himself as the one who took us out of Egypt, rather than as the Creator of the World?

No one witnessed the creation, says Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi. The Exodus, on the other hand, was witnessed by 1,200,000 men and women between the ages of 20 and 60, apart from those over 60 and those under 20, a total of some three to four (or five?) million people.

This information has been passed down through the generations along a massively broad front, for example in the uninterrupted tradition of the Pesach Seder. Year after
year, every Jewish family has gathered together at the family Seder to transmit this vital historical testimony. Daily we refer to it in the Shema.

Subsequent to the Exodus, the same number of people were witnesses to the Revelation of G-d at Sinai. They all heard Him speaking to them. They knew He was there and what He was.

The Torah (Deut. 4:32-33) challenges humanity to find another such claim to mass Revelation, anywhere in history. There will never ever be such a claim, for the simple
reason that such a claim cannot possibly be invented. One cannot fool large numbers of people and tell them they saw what they did not see and heard what they did not hear.
The existence of such a claim amongst a complete nation, transmitted unchallenged by hundreds of thousands of people for thousands of years, is a historical testimony to the
truth of the claim.

Why then do so many people not accept this evidence?

Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, one of the most powerful Jewish thinkers of the pre-WW2 years, wrote an "Essay on Faith" (Printed in the pamphlet, "Epoch of the Messiah.")

In no-nonsense style he states very emphatically that the truth of G-d's existence is so obvious from the existence and complexity of Creation that it is only due to the
following that so many do not recognise Him.

The forbidden pleasures of life act as a blinding bribe to the mind, blocking recognition of the obvious. Bribed by our passions and weaknesses, our minds are rendered incapable of objective observation. Bribery will affect any human mind and create blockages.

The biggest blockage to a recognition of the Creator is the threat that the information will force us to admit our previous mistake and to change our lifestyle.

In psychology, this is known as "cognitive dissonance". We do not wish to accept any information which will cause us discomfort."

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH.

Aldous Huxley, wrote the following towards the
end of his life:

"I had reasons not to want the world to have meaning, and as a result I assumed the world had no meaning, and I was readily able to find satisfactory grounds for this assumption... for me, as it undoubtedly was for most of my generation, the philosophy of meaninglessness was an
instrument of liberation from a certain moral system. We were opposed to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom."

"Confessions of a Professional Free-Thinker", 1966.