January 18th - Rosh Hashanah

Today I am celebrating the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.  Meaning “head of the year” or “first of the year” in Hebrew, Rosh Hashanah is commonly interpreted as the Jewish New Year.  However, this does not mean that it is a day of champagne-fueled revelry and Kosher football.

Instead, Rosh Hashanah is more about reflecting on the previous year, and figuring out ways to live a more pious and righteous life during the upcoming year. It lasts for two days (I’m only celebrating the one), and there are various parts to each day that signify this reflection.  No work is to be done on Rosh Hashanah, but try telling that to your boss when A) you are not Jewish and B) it is not actually Rosh Hashanah.

So instead of ducking out of work, I decided to what I could here at the office.  First, I had knishes, which I first heard about from Woody Allen’s Whatever Works…

 

  …and from then on was fascinated to try them.  They’re basically just a potato pie wrapped in a doughy shell.  Very good stuff, and I highly recommend them.  They’re relatively easy to make (they came out way better than my hamantash), or you can get them in your frozen food section (Gabila’s is the best).

The big tradition of Rosh Hashanah is to listen to the shofar, which a ram’s horn that is hollowed out and blown.  It sounds like a trumpet in the right hands…kinda .  Most of the videos I found online sounded like Ferris Bueller when he tries to play the clarinet.  I did no better…

The notes are supposed to be played 100 times throughout the two days.  While I was able to get through some of them at work, I will be saving the majority for home.  I hope my roommate isn’t a light sleeper…

Rosh Hashanah rounds out the Jewish holidays that I will be celebrating this month, and I have to say, they have been my favorite.  It might be because I had no experience with them before and therefore got to learn a lot more about Jewish culture.  It also might be that they were fun and interesting, and had something different to commemorate.

But mostly, I think it's because they are about celebration, unadulterated celebration.  So much of my religious upbringing was about what I was doing wrong.  I was sinning by doing this or that, and I was going to burn in Hell for those sins.  I had to confess these sins to a scary man in a little, dark box, and I had to be bored.  That seemed to go hand in hand with religion to be, boredom.

That hasn't been my experience with the Jewish holidays thus far.  I'm sure that I've only gotten the Cliff's Notes version of them, but for me, they are more about being happy and being joyful about faith than being mournful about it.  They're about reflection, not only about your life, but about the life of your family and your friends.  I like that, a lot.  It's what holidays are all about, or, at least, what they should be all about.

Before this project really kicked off, I spoke with a member of a local synagogue to see if they could help explain some of the finer points of their holidays.  She was extremely helpful, and at the end of the conversation, she invited me to attend a service.  I just might have to take her up on that...if only to get a better knish recipe...