Rosh Hashanah

• Importance:

  • Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year festival. It lasts two days and commemorates the creation of the world. Rosh Hashanah is also a time when God judges all humanity, when Jews believe that God considers a person's good and bad deeds over the last year and decides what the next year will be like for them.
  • Rosh Hashanah is a time of asking for forgiveness of sins. Many Jews believe that God keeps a Book of Life with the names of everyone who is sorry for what they have done wrong. At Rosh Hashanah, Jews hope that they and their loved ones will be written in the Book of Life.
• Judaism teaches that God decides on the first day of the year who will be forgiven, so they will ensure they apologise to everybody they have been unkind to during the past year. God makes his final judgement on Yom Kippur which means Day of Atonement.
• Importance:

  Time is spent in the synagogue during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as they are the most important festivals in the Jewish year.
• Celebrations:

  One of the synagogue rituals for Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, a ram's horn trumpet. A hundred notes are sounded in a special rhythm. The sound of the shofar starts a ten-day period known as the Days of Awe, which ends with Yom Kippur.
• Celebrations:

  After the Rosh Hashanah service, a special meal is eaten at home, including:

  • apples dipped in honey - a symbol of the sweet New Year that each Jew hopes lies ahead

  • a sweet carrot stew – symbolising reproduction because in Yiddish, the word for carrot, 'mern', has the same meaning

  • challah bread in a round loaf, rather than the plaited loaf as served on the Sabbath, symbolising a circle of life and the year

  • pomegranate – often seen on the table because of a tradition that pomegranates have 613 seeds, one for each of the commandments that a Jew is obliged to keep.
• Celebrations:

  At the meal, Jews dip their first piece of bread in honey and say, 'May God give me a sweet and happy new year'