Posted on 09/18/2020 1:46:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Celebrated with trumpet blasts, prayers, and festive meals, this holiday is a time for reflection and marks the start of the Jewish high holy days.
Food, sound, prayer, reflection, celebration. Jewish people around the world will wish one another “Shanah tovah” (Hebrew for “good year”) during Rosh Hashanah, the observance of the Jewish New Year. Here’s what you need to know about the holiday, which takes place this year between sundown on September 18 and sundown on September 20 and kicks off the Jewish high holy days.
Origins and meaning of Rosh Hashanah Jewish people welcome the new year in September or October, not January, in observance of the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. Rosh Hashanah begins on the first day of Tishri, the first month of the calendar’s civil year and seventh month of its religious year. Given that the Hebrew calendar is more than a week shorter than the Gregorian calendar and, according to tradition, originated with the biblical creation of the universe, this holiday will mark the beginning of the year 5781 for Jews worldwide.
Hebrew for “head of the year,” Rosh Hashanah is a chance not just to celebrate and look ahead, but to consider the past and review one’s relationship with God. It also marks the first day of a period known as the Ten Days of Awe, or Days of Repentance, during which a person’s actions are thought to be able to influence both God’s judgment and God’s plan for that person. These high holy days culminate in Yom Kippur, a time of atonement that is considered the holiest day of the year.
Though the holiday has been celebrated for thousands of years, its origins are murky. Jewish scripture lays out the month and days of a similar festival but does not call it Rosh Hashanah. In the biblical passage Leviticus 23:24-25, God tells Moses that the people of Israel should observe the first day of the seventh month as a day of rest and mark it with the blast of horns.
At some point, the horn-blowing holiday became associated with the new year. The earliest reference to Rosh Hashanah in a rabbinic text comes from the Mishnah, a Jewish legal text that dates from A.D. 200.
In the leadup to Rosh Hashanah, the shofar—a trumpet made from a ram or kosher animal’s horn—is regularly sounded in synagogues. The holiday itself is celebrated with even more shofar blasts, usually a hundred during the services on both days. Many Jews interpret the sound as a call to repent of sins and seek forgiveness from God.
Work is prohibited on Rosh Hashanah, and many Jewish people spend the holiday attending special services at their synagogues and then celebrating with festive meals.
Rosh Hashanah has its own symbolic foods: round challah, apples, and honey. Symbolizing God, the cycles of the year, and the sustenance that lies ahead, a rounded challah loaf, often studded with raisins, is usually dipped in honey and eaten in a celebratory meal. So are apples, which represent hope for a sweet year ahead. The tradition of eating apples for Rosh Hashanah is thought to have originated with Ashkenazi Jews in Europe who used the fall fruit in their new year’s meals. (See nine breads from around the world.)
So how will the beginning of the year 5781 be celebrated in a time like no other? In many places worldwide, synagogue attendance and family meals are still impossible due to the coronavirus. But some believers are getting creative. In Washington, D.C., for example, synagogues and Jewish organizations have come up with a pandemic plan, writes Matt Blitz for DCist. At 5 p.m. on September 18, hundreds of people around the city will blow their shofars outside in a simultaneous show of new year’s devotion. Others will celebrate outdoors—or just wish their friends and family a sweet new year on a Zoom call.
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Good thread - thanks.
those jews seem to ruin everything... /sarc...
You are welcome.
I thought that the Biblical commandment was to celebrate the start of the year in spring, at the start of Nisan, but during the Babylonian captivity it was changed to Tishri. The earlier holiday is still known as Rosh Chodeshim (head of the months). I thought RH is more properly known as the Day of Trumpets.
Another little-known Jewish holiday is Yom Machshivim, celebrated in the spring. It commemorates the day when the Jews, wandering in the desert, were commanded to install updates and reboot.
They wouldn’t want to end up with the blue screen of desert.
A “manna”ul update?
The hardest part of Rosh Hashanah in the modern age in California seems to be finding a round challah. The local grocery stores don’t seem to stock this except for Ralphs in La Jolla that has its own “Kosher Experience” all year round. The best round challah is found at Trader Joe’s but you have to get there early before they sell out.
There’s a video about how to make a round challah.
Our Torah Observant Christian congregation is having a Yom Teruah/Rosh Hoshanna service tonight. This’ll be my first one. Shofars and everything. The congregation is having a kosher celebration dinner (provided) and we are providing dessert.
Well, happy 5781.
LOL
L’Shanah Tovah!
May all our Jewish FReepers have a blessed New Year!
x2
And right now, we all need a new year.
Interesting.
And here I thought ‘Black Friday’, the Friday after Thanksgiving, was the High Holy Day that started off the Jewish year.
God bless Israel... real good.
One thing is for certain, Ginsburg’s new year begins today as an actual eternity, after facing her maker to account for her deeds to His children.
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Same as Chinese or Greek Orthodox New Year, and others.
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