New Year’s Day in September? Rosh Hashanah!

Yea, the summer holidays are over! Don’t get me wrong, the summer was great, but it is also exhausting with kids, who are just waiting to be entertained.

Even if they are pretty much independent, they depend on us. There is no swimming pool or other cool activities in our village. So, we need to drive them to the nearby Moshav or Kibbutz and sometimes even the city, so they can go by train.

You can probably imagine how released we were that normal everyday life can start …. not so fast!

Did you know that September is the month with the most holidays? September is full (and, depending on the shifts in the Jewish calendar, October too) with important holidays for the Jewish people.

It starts with New Year. Rosh Hashanah 5783 begins, according to the Jewish calendar (the year 2022) on 25th and goes until September 27th and is of great importance for the Jews. They pray and wish for a blessed year. During the holidays, the Shofar horn is blown 100 times. Sweet foods, such as apples with honey and pomegranates, are eaten for a “sweet” year. Many Jews also eat the head of a fish during the feast, which symbolically means “to be on the head and not on the tail”.

“Jewish tradition teaches that the pomegranate is a symbol of righteousness, knowledge, and wisdom because it is said to have 613 seeds, each representing one of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) of the Torah,”

After New Year’s Day comes the highest Jewish holiday “Yom Kippur”, the Day of “Atonement”. Many Jews fast and pray for 24 hours. For the LORD should forgive the sins and open a new page for the next year. There are no cars, trains or planes flying on that day. Bicycles and pedestrians fill the streets (even highways).

Sukkot is from the origin of Thanksgiving

This holiday is followed by the happy holiday “Sukkot”. Sukkot is from the origin of Thanksgiving (also called the festival of gathering) and is celebrated after the crop has been fully harvested. Sukkot means “huts”, also because you should live in a hut during the feast, the sukkah (hut) should be under the sky and the roof should be made of branches, twigs and foliage. So, you can see the stars. Living in these simple huts, during the holidays, it should be remembered that the people of Israel experienced times when they had to travel through the desert as a simple nomadic people and had no harvest. Today, most of people only eat their meals in a sukkah.

Can you understand why I meet September and October with mixed feelings? Every holiday brings school-free days with it. And those two months is full of holidays!

So, we pray for wisdom and endurance during this special time. Amen