Book of Days

With the setting sun this evening comes, in the Jewish tradition, a new day… and, with this particular setting sun, a new year. It is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. “Shanah Tovah” is the most common greeting you’ll hear, a wish for a good year. This is the beginning of a period of reflection and repentance that concludes with the solemn Yom Kippur, ten days later.

Rosh Hashanah begins with the sounding of the the shofar, a hollowed ram’s horn, and for some, the day is known as the Feast of Trumpets. This (as an aside) always reminds me of my mom and dad’s old neighbor, Tony, who used to say in Italian, “Quando i suoni di tromba…”  meaning, When the trumpet sounds, well… then that’s it, your time is up. So you’d better make things right with God and make things right with the people you love, and maybe even the people you don’t quite care for.

Micah 7:19 reads, “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea,” and you may find people at the water’s edge during Rosh Hashanah, casting bread into the sea, each bit of bread carrying some of those sins. And with dinner tonight: a round loaf of challah, round to symbolize the circle of the year (as one year ends, another year begins), and, of course, apples dipped in honey. This, for a sweet year ahead.

Image: Feast of Trumpets by Aleksander Gierymski. Oil on canvas, 1884, [Public domain] via WikiMedia Commons.