Jewish Series: Rosh Hashanah

History of Rosh Hashanah

Jewish New Year

Shofar

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the Jewish new year, which starts tomorrow according to the Jewish calendar; it begins at sundown tonight. “Rosh” is Hebrew for “head,” and Rosh Hashanah refers to the head of the year on the 1st day of Tishri, the seventh month of the Jewish ecclesiastical calendar. It marks the beginning of the civil year.

Judaism employs a solar/lunar calendar system, in which the lunar reckoning is predominant. The first in the cycle of months is Nissan (which has nothing to do with the automobile manufacturer), the month in which Passover occurs. However, solar years are reckoned to begin at Rosh Hashanah.

The new year is heralded with the blowing of the shofar or ram’s horn by the “baal t’kiah” (meaning master of the shofar-blast), during prayers and 100 blasts throughout the day. You’ve heard the story of Joshua leading the Jewish people to march around Jericho, blowing their trumpets so that the “walls came a-tumbling down” (Joshua 6:4–5)? That’s the shofar.

Festival meals during Rosh Hashanah include traditional foods mentioned in the Talmud (notes on the Jewish oral tradition, known as the Mishnah), including dates, leeks, spinach, gourds, and black-eyed peas. Also featured as a later medieval…