As Jews gather to celebrate Rosh Hashana, they will welcome in their new year not with fireworks and a midnight countdown, but with the blowing of the shofar. The trumpeting wail of the ram's horn is a central part of the observance of the holiday, which begins at sundown Sunday.
The shofar is blown 100 times, in long and short bursts, on both days of the holiday.
"The thing that's going to resonate the most for people is the blowing of the shofar," said Rabbi Kalman Winnick of Congregation Agudath Achim in Little Rock. "It's such a Jewish noise. Words don't describe it. It's so guttural and deep within us."
Rosh Hashana is known as the Jewish new year, and the words literally mean "head of the year." The two-day holiday marks the creation of mankind as told in Genesis, and that's where one link to the shofar comes in.
"Adam was created on the sixth day, so the new year is marked with the creation of human beings and we celebrate humanity on this day," said Rabbi Pinchus Ciment of Lubavitch of Arkansas in Little Rock. Ciment said God wasn't simply speaking Adam into being; rather, God was "actively forming the image of man and blowing into him a spiritual life."
By blowing the shofar, Jews are celebrating that and giving recognition to God as the creator. It's a prayer beyond the power of words and an acknowledgment of the kingship of God, he said.
"It's difficult to give someone who has everything something new, so what we give to God is from the depths of our being, saying, 'We recognize it comes from you,'" Ciment said.
Even as Jews celebrate the new year, the minds of many worshipping in synagogues will be on the proposed U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, a longtime enemy of Israel.
Rabbi Barry Block of Congregation B'nai Israel in Little Rock said American Jews are not of one mind on the deal, but he is concerned with the nature of the discourse, which has included name-calling and threats between opposing sides. Block said he'll discuss it during services but won't be pushing a position on the deal. Rather, he'll express his concerns over how the issue is being discussed.
"I can say it would be immoral for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we have a moral imperative to stop them, but we also have a moral imperative to remain a united Jewish community and not to tear ourselves apart or our country apart in the process of having a debate over strategy," he said. "The rabbis of old taught that there were different kinds of debate, some worthy of heaven and some not."
Block said debates over how best to fulfill God's will, or how best to be moral, are legitimate and appropriate debates.
"Debates over who ought to be in charge and certainly debates in which we call each other names are not," he said. "There's been a lot of name-calling over this issue, and whether a rabbi speaks from the pulpit on this issue or not, it's going to be on the minds of Jews on the High Holy Days."
The High Holy Days begin on Rosh Hashana and continue through Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown Sept. 22. Rosh Hashana is a happy occasion and celebratory meals feature sweet foods eaten in the hopes of having a sweet new year. Jews often eat apples dipped in honey or challah bread with honey.
Pomegranates are also common. Ciment said the seeds of the fruit symbolize that a Jewish individual is full of mitzvahs or commandments. Foods that are bitter or sharp are avoided during Rosh Hashana.
One service during Rosh Hashana, known as Tashlich, offers the opportunity to cast away sins.
"We find something that represents our sins -- bread or grain -- and we go to a place where there's living water and we recite a few verses and empty our pockets into that water, where it will be recycled," Winnick said. "It's really cathartic doing that. It's very simple and really quite lovely."
In addition to being the start of the year, Rosh Hashana is also known as the Day of Remembrance or Day of Judgment. Tradition has it that a person's fate for the year is decreed on Rosh Hashana and sealed on Yom Kippur. The 10 days from the start of the High Holy Days until Yom Kippur, known as the Days of Repentance, offer time for reflection and repentance. In other words, there is still time to change and set things right before the Book of Life and the Book of Death are sealed on Yom Kippur.
"If we can display better behavior, we should be sealed for a good year," Ciment said.
Where Rosh Hashana is joyous, the mood on Yom Kippur is more serious, but not necessarily somber. It's not a sad occasion and Block suggests that Jews should also experience joy during Yom Kippur.
"God says through repentance and prayer and righteous acts of giving we can become better people in the year ahead. We are not doomed to continue our bad behavior, so perhaps we should be looking for the joy," he said.
Jews fast during Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) from all food and drink, including water. They are to set aside physical comforts and focus on the spiritual side of their lives.
"It's an oasis in time," Ciment said. "It becomes the Sabbath of the Sabbaths."
"It really is the holiest day, the most reverent day in our calendar," Winnick said. "It's meant to be a day of catharsis, in a healthy way."
The service of Kol Nidre is held on the eve of Yom Kippur. The Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark and the congregation, while being confronted by God's word in the Torah, chants a solemn prayer.
"Regardless of the words themselves, what most people are thinking about at that moment is how we have fallen short of what God expects of us in the last year," Block said. "It's asking God to absolve us of vows that we've taken and not fulfilled in the last year."
Block said the prayer comes from a time when "people took too many vows and took them too seriously."
"So the rabbis felt people needed a way to be absolved of vows they should not have taken and that really doesn't apply to our day. We take too few vows and don't take them seriously enough," he said.
The prayer of Kol Nidre also spiked in popularity during the Inquisition, when Jews took vows to convert to Christianity to escape death.
"It became popularized as a way to nullify that vow," Block said. "There was a time in Europe when Jews were accused of being unreliable because we had this process for relieving ourselves of these vows, which it was never intended for, and the lie that was told was you couldn't do a deal with Jews."
Many Jews will stay in the synagogue all day on Yom Kippur saying penitential prayers.
"It's a time of judgment," Winnick said. "It should be a little scary but we're supposed to be inspired to improve. The reward is commensurate to the effort. No pain and no gain but the positive is, there will be a reward. Yom Kippur is really meant to be the climax of that."
The final service on Yom Kippur is known as Neilah.
"It's very powerful," Winnick said. "We open the ark the entire time and stand in the presence of the Torah. Neilah literally means the closing -- to lock -- so we think the gates of heaven are closing and our goal after we've been fasting and praying to squeeze out every bit of repentance is so we can squeeze in just as the gates lock. If we've been doing it right, we should be exhausted."
At the end, the shofar is blown again, sealing the books for another year.
"It really ties it back to where we started," Winnick said.
Religion on 09/12/2015