Adath Jeshurun

Prayer Ser­vices of Rosh Hashanah

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

by Rabbi Daniel Kohn

As one of the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah, the cel­e­bra­tion of the new Jew­ish cal­en­dar year, is marked by the addi­tion of numer­ous unique and elab­o­rate prayer ser­vices. Under­stood by the rab­bis as an annual coro­na­tion of God as the ulti­mate spir­i­tual sov­er­eign of the Jew­ish people–and, indeed, the cosmos–Rosh Hashanah wor­ship ser­vices are char­ac­ter­ized by a pageantry intended to par­al­lel the royal cel­e­bra­tions in ancient kingdoms.

In addi­tion, Rosh Hashanah is the for­mal begin­ning of the High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, in which Jews are called upon to begin a solemn process of intro­spec­tion and repen­tance for past mis­deeds. There­fore, in addi­tion to the royal images of God preva­lent in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, there are numer­ous prayers deal­ing with our per­sonal, inter­nal spir­i­tual life and exter­nal behav­ior and conduct.

First and fore­most, nearly every prayer and wor­ship ser­vice of Rosh Hashanah is char­ac­ter­ized by a spe­cial nusah, or body of musi­cal themes and melodies. Both evoca­tive and cel­e­bra­tory, the music of Rosh Hashanah is an occa­sion for great oper­atic inno­va­tion and dis­plays of can­to­r­ial virtuosity.

The silent, stand­ing prayers–called Ami­dah prayers–of Rosh Hashanah are filled with numer­ous piyyu­tim, or reli­gious poems, writ­ten and inter­po­lated into the ser­vices over the span of cen­turies. Most of these poems empha­size the awe­some nature of the coro­na­tion of God as king and speak of the inad­e­quacy and ter­ror of mere human beings in approach­ing God in prayer and praise.

In addi­tion, all of the Ami­dah prayers include entreaties to God to remem­ber and inscribe the Jew­ish peo­ple in the book of life. In the rab­binic imag­i­na­tion, God was described as a heav­enly scribe, record­ing all of the deeds of human beings and dili­gently writ­ing them in down var­i­ous heav­enly archives: the book of life, the book of remem­brance, the book of liveli­hood, the book of merit, and so on. On Rosh Hashanah, God records our deeds and on Yom Kip­pur God judges our spir­i­tual fate for the com­ing year. There­fore, the Days of Awe are a time when all life on earth is sub­jected to God’s review and judgment.

Because Rosh Hashanah is a coro­na­tion of God as king of the uni­verse, one of the most famous and famil­iar prayers of this sea­son is Avinu Malkenu (“Our Father, Our King”). Con­sist­ing of 20 lines of entreaties ask­ing God to for­give our sins, to help us achieve repen­tance for our trans­gres­sions, to remem­ber us favor­ably, and so on, it con­cludes with a haunt­ing con­gre­ga­tional melody in which the com­mu­nity sings “Our Father, Our King, gra­ciously answer us, although we are with­out merit. Deal with us char­i­ta­bly, and lov­ingly save us.”

Because of the exceed­ing humil­ity of the rab­bis, the Torah and Haf­tarah read­ings for Rosh Hashanah all revolve around the theme of God remem­ber­ing. In fact, Rosh Hashanah is known as the “day of remem­brance” (Yom Hazikaron), refer­ring specif­i­cally to the merit of our ancient ances­tors and God’s covenant with the Jew­ish peo­ple, on whose behalf we implore God to be mind­ful of his peo­ple and inscribe us in the book of life. The rab­bis assumed that since the present gen­er­a­tion of Jews is com­pletely unwor­thy of a favor­able spir­i­tual judg­ment, we have no recourse but to appeal to God’s mercy and the mem­ory of the merit of our bib­li­cal patri­archs and matri­archs, as well as to the covenant that God estab­lished with them to sus­tain the Jew­ish peo­ple through­out all time. There­fore, the nar­ra­tives and read­ings from the Torah and prophets on Rosh Hashanah empha­size these themes either directly or through implication.

The most well known and beloved of Rosh Hashanah syn­a­gogue obser­vances is the sound­ing of the ram’s horn, the sho­far, to her­ald the begin­ning of the new Jew­ish year. The Torah describes Rosh Hashanah as “a sacred occa­sion com­mem­o­rated with loud blasts” (Leviti­cus 23:24). Sev­eral bless­ings are recited before the blow­ing of the sho­far, then approx­i­mately 100 blasts are sounded through­out the rest of the wor­ship ser­vices. The blasts of the sho­far are divided into three kinds of blasts: tekiah, one long sound­ing; she­varim, three some­what shorter sound­ings equal in length to one tekiah; and finally, teruah, a series of at least nine stac­cato notes, also equal in length to one tekiah blast. Among the var­i­ous rea­sons given for the blow­ing of the sho­far is that the coro­na­tion of kings in ancient times was sup­pos­edly marked with the sound­ing of a sho­far. In addi­tion, because Rosh Hashanah is also a time of spir­i­tual intro­spec­tion and repen­tance, the sho­far essen­tially calls us back to our senses and serves to remind us to mend our ways.

The Musaf or addi­tional prayer ser­vice of Rosh Hashanah is also unique in that it con­tains three sub­sec­tions that empha­size three cen­tral themes of the hol­i­day. In the MusafAmi­dah, there is a selec­tion of 30 dif­fer­ent bib­li­cal verses divided into three dis­crete sec­tions called Malchuyot (“king­ship”), Zichronot (“remem­brance”), and Sho­farot (“sound­ing of the Sho­far”). These three col­lec­tions of 10 verses each speak respec­tively about (a) the procla­ma­tion of God as sov­er­eign of the Jew­ish peo­ple and the uni­verse, (b) God remem­ber­ing the covenant and merit of our ances­tors, and © the sound­ing of the sho­far dur­ing the rev­e­la­tion of the Torah at Mount Sinai and the coro­na­tion of God as king, pro­claim­ing God’s awe­some power to all of the inhab­i­tants of the world.

It should be noted that there is a prayer that serves as intro­duc­tion to the first of these sec­tions, the Malchuyot, which speaks about the oblig­a­tion of all peo­ple to acknowl­edge God’s sov­er­eignty and king­ship. It also speaks of a future day, when all peo­ple will acknowl­edge and accept the king­ship of God. Called Aleinu, it includes a pas­sage that states, “There­fore, we bend the knee and rev­er­ently bow before the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be God.” At this point, as part of the chore­og­ra­phy of the ser­vice, it became cus­tom­ary to actu­ally bow before God in a phys­i­cal act of accept­ing God’s king­ship. One of the old­est prayers in the Jew­ish liturgy, the Aleinu is included as the con­clu­sion of every Jew­ish wor­ship ser­vice, whether hol­i­day, Sab­bath, or week­day. Yet, it orig­i­nated in the Rosh Hashanah Amidah.

Although not offi­cially a part of the syn­a­gogue ser­vice, an addi­tional cus­tom devel­oped in medieval times called Tash­likh, which means “cast­ing out.” On the after­noon of Rosh Hashanah, Jews gather by a body of water, recite spe­cial verses and then throw crumbs of bread into the water in a sym­bolic ges­ture of cast­ing off their sins. Per­haps in an echo of the scape­goat cer­e­mony, the fish are expected to eat the sin-crumbs and bear them away. When­ever the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on a Sab­bath, the Tash­likh cer­e­mony is per­formed on the sec­ond day of Rosh Hashanah.