For Rosh Hashanah

Each Rosh Hashanah we begin a new year
And seek ways to start if off with good will and good cheer.
There are many activities that you can do
To celebrate starting this year anew.
For recipes, cards, and puzzles galore
Click on the links and see what's in store!

About Rosh Hashanah:

Legends tell that a huge book containing every person's name is opened in heaven during the New Year holidays. Our past deeds are judged and our fate for the next year is decided and written down in the book. That's why, when people send greeting cards to each other before Rosh Ha-Shanah, the card often says, "Leshanah tovah tikatevu," which means, "May you be inscribed (written down in the huge book) for a good year."

Right at the beginning of the school year, when you're just starting to doodle in your new notebooks, the first holiday of the Jewish calendar comes along. It is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Ha-Shanah.

This isn't a sleeping-late, pancakes-and-eggs-for-breakfast holiday. It's a hurry-up-and-get-into-your-dress-up-clothes-and-go-to-synagogue holiday. On Rosh Ha-Shanah, Jews gather in the synagogue to do some hard thinking about how they spent the past year and how they could do better in the next one. All morning, the large room is filled with people swaying back and forth and praying. During the service the sharp cry of the shofar, the ram's horn, cuts through, calling out to everyone: "Obey God's laws. Work to be a better, kinder person during this new year!"

At home, even before lunch, the family dips slices of apple or round hallah (holiday bread) into honey. "May it be a good, sweet year - shanah tovah u-metukah" we say to each other, and we exchange sweet, sticky kisses.

Sometimes we get disgusted with ourselves. We feel stupid or ugly or shy or too scared or too pushy. We may think that someone else is perfect and that we can never be like that.

A rabbi called Zusya of Hanipoli thought about this problem and said: "When I am judged by the heavenly court, they will not ask, why weren't you Abraham or Moses? They will ask why weren't you Zusya?"

So you don't have to be as great as some hero - just try to make the very most of yourself.

Leshanah Tovah Tikatavu

"Leshanah tovah tikatavu: May you be inscribed for a good new year" is the traditional Jewish New Year greeting. We like to wish all our family and friends the best in the year ahead.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a fall holiday, celebrated in the month of Tishre (September/October). Many Reform congregations celebrate only one day of Rosh Hashanah.

According to tradition, many important events happened on Rosh Hashanah: The six days of creation were completed; Abraham and Jacob were born; Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah, after years of wanting and praying for children, conceived Isaac, Joseph, and Samuel; and Joseph was freed from prison.

If you play with the letters of the first word of the Torah, Bereshit, which means beginning, you can form , which means the first of Tishre, the day of the world's beginning.

In synagogues, during morning prayers, a shofar is sounded one hundred times (except when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat). The sounds are a wake up call to repentance. Most often the shofar is made from a ram's horn, a reminder of the time Abraham took his son Isaac to be sacrificed, but used a ram instead. The traditional Yemenite shofar is made from an antelope's horn.

On the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, a prayer of forgiveness, Tashlikh is said near a body of water. Following the prayer it is customary to throw bread crumbs into the water, where they are swallowed up in the hope that like the bread, our sins will be swallowed up, too. If the first day of Rosh Hashanah is Shabbat, Tashlikh is said the next day.

On Rosh Hashanah many Jews dip hallah and apple in honey and ask God to grant us a sweet new year. Some dip the hallah in sugar and eat only sweet foods at the Rosh Hashanah meals. Rosh Hashanah hallahs are not the usual rectangular or oval shape. They're round, the shape of a crown, because on Rosh Hashanah we remember that God is our King.

Rosh Hashanah is a good time to look back at the past year and ahead to the year that's just beginning.

Leshanah tovah tikatavu - May you be inscribed for a good new year.