Who owns your time?

At first the answer seems obvious: I do. Yet in a world of constant notifications, endless responsibilities, and 24/7 connectivity, many of us feel that our time is rarely our own. Between emails, messages, and the constant pull of our phones, it can sometimes feel as though everyone owns a piece of our time except us. We pick up our phone for a moment and suddenly ten minutes have disappeared. By the end of the day we may find ourselves wondering: what happened to the time?

We often say, “time ran away from me.” But time does not run. What disappears is our awareness, our presence, and our intentional use of the moments we are given.

This question lies at the heart of the additional Torah reading this Shabbat. As we approach Pesach, we read the section of HaChodesh, which contains the first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a nation: HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem — the sanctification of the new month.

What is striking is when this command is given. It is spoken to the Jewish people while they are still slaves in Egypt, just before the Exodus. At first glance it seems like a technical instruction about the calendar. But that raises an obvious question: why was this chosen as the first national commandment? Surely there were other mitzvot that seem more central.

Rabbi Ovadia Sforno (1475–1550) offers a profound insight:

“From now on the months will be yours, to do with them as you wish. During the days of slavery your time was not yours, but for the service and will of others… therefore this month is the first for you, because in it your existence as beings with free choice began.”

A slave does not control time. Every hour belongs to someone else. True redemption therefore begins not only with leaving Egypt, but with reclaiming ownership of time itself.

Before the Jewish people physically leave Egypt, God gives them something essential for freedom: their time.

But the Torah goes even further. It does not simply give us time — it asks us to sanctify it. The Jewish calendar teaches us when to work and when to rest, when to gather and when to celebrate, when to pause and when to reflect.

Perhaps that is the deeper message as we approach Pesach. While we cannot control how much time we are given, we are responsible for how we use it.

True freedom is not simply having time.
True freedom is choosing how to fill our time with meaning.