Adath Jeshurun

Rosh Hashanah in the Community

Reprinted with per­mis­sion. For more about Jew­ish hol­i­days and Jew­ish life, visit MyJewishLearning.com.

Rosh Hashanah is referred to in the Bible as Yom Teruah (the day of sound­ing of the Sho­far) or Yom Hazikaron (the day of remem­ber­ing), but it is its later, rab­binic inter­pre­ta­tion as the New Year that has become the best known to us. Rosh Hashanah also is tra­di­tion­ally asso­ci­ated with the cre­ation of the world. This empha­sis on new begin­nings lends itself eas­ily to the pre­vail­ing High Hol­i­day themes of repen­tance and renewal.

In the syn­a­gogue on Rosh Hashanah, we see a num­ber of themes repeated in both the liturgy and Torah ser­vice. While the struc­ture of the ser­vices is quite sim­i­lar to daily liturgy, there are numer­ous addi­tions that add pow­er­ful reminders that this is a time for us to take stock of our­selves before we enter the com­ing year. Litur­gi­cal poems that empha­size God’s king­ship and judi­cious­ness put us in the proper mood for the day. These are com­ple­mented by some addi­tions to the stan­dard prayers as well. For exam­ple, in the silent Ami­dah, one line is added from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kip­pur begin­ning with “zokhrenu l’hayyim…” which asks God to remem­ber us for life and to inscribe us in the book of life, while another line, “mi khamokha av hara­hamim…” asks God to remem­ber us with mercy.

In the addi­tional ser­vice, Musaf, there are three extra bless­ings in the Ami­dah, known as malkhuyot (king­ship), zikhronot (remem­brances), and sho­farot (blasts of the ram’s horn). Each of these bless­ings is com­prised of ten bib­li­cal verses on that theme, and as a unit they bring forth the fol­low­ing three ideas: God is King, God pun­ishes the wicked and rewards the just, and God has been revealed in the past and will be revealed in the future in the end of days. In lib­eral move­ments, such as Reform Judaism, where Musaf is gen­er­ally not recited, these verses are added to the morn­ing, or Sha­harit, prayer.

The Torah read­ings for the two days of Rosh Hashanah high­light themes of birth, cre­ation, and mercy through the story of the birth of Isaac, and raise issues of fear, judg­ment, and test­ing of faith in the telling of Isaac’s would-be sac­ri­fice (the Akedah.) The rab­bis con­nect the ram, which thank­fully sub­sti­tutes for Isaac’s sac­ri­fice, to the Sho­far (made of a ram’s horn) that is usu­ally blown shortly after the Torah ser­vice and again dur­ing the rep­e­ti­tion of the Ami­dah in the Musaf.

It is these blasts of the sho­far that often make the biggest impres­sion on this hol­i­day. The three dif­fer­ent sounds are the tekiah (a sin­gle, long blast), the she­varim (three shorter blasts which together should be about the same length as one tekiah), and the teruah (nine stac­cato blasts, also about the same length of time as the tekiah and she­varim). There are dif­fer­ent opin­ions about what can be evoked in this series of blasts. Some view it sim­ply as an alarm that awak­ens us to our need to do teshu­vah (repen­tance) and oth­ers see the bro­ken teruah, for exam­ple, as the sound of wail­ing, per­haps in fear of judg­ment. What­ever the inter­pre­ta­tion, the poignant cries of the Sho­far can be quite a mov­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion to the oth­er­wise wordy High Hol­i­day liturgy.

There is another litur­gi­cal addi­tion to Rosh Hashanah that is quite unlike any other ser­vice in Judaism–tash­likh (lit­er­ally, throw­ing away). On the after­noon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah (unless it is also Shab­bat, in which case it is done the sec­ond day of the fes­ti­val), many peo­ple walk to a flow­ing body of water to sym­bol­i­cally cast away their sins in the form of bread crumbs thrown upon the waters. A verse from the prophet Micah 7:19 is cited as the ori­gin for this cus­tom. It states, “You will cast away your sins into the depths of the sea.” While this was once con­tro­ver­sial among those who believed it would triv­i­al­ize the process of repen­tance, it has remained a very pop­u­lar cus­tom to this day.