Days to remember, consider and atone

MICHELE MARR

Yom Hazikaron, Day of Remembrance. Yom Hadin, Day of Judgment. Yamim

Noraim, Days of Awe.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is called all of these things,

but until this year -- on the Jewish calendar 5,765 -- I had never

heard the nine days proceeding Yom Kippur called a “birth canal,”

which is one of the ways Tzvi Freeman describes it in his essay,

“Rosh Hashanah Unwrapped.”

Unlike in the West, where the new year begins on the first day of

the first month of the year, it does not on the Jewish calendar.

Instead the new year is counted from the beginning of the creation of

the universe, much like a person’s age is counted from his or her

date of birth.

Since we in the Western world count years based on the Gregorian

calendar, we may not realize that, according to the Jewish calendar,

Jewish holy days are observed on the same fixed dates every year.

Rosh Hashana is always celebrated on the first two days of Tishri,

the seventh month on the Jewish calendar -- Sept. 15 and 16 this year

on the Gregorian calendar -- and began eight days ago at sundown.

In his essay, Freeman describes Judaism as mysterious and Rosh

Hashanah as one of its mysteries. He quotes, from Psalm 81, “Sound

the shofar at the new moon, at the hiddeness of our festival.” It’s

the sole reference, he says, to a particular Rosh Hashanah tradition:

the sounding of a ram’s horn, or a shofar.

Then Freeman asks an arresting question: “How do we know this is

the beginning of the year?” It’s never mentioned in the five books of

Moses.

It is, apparently, an oral tradition, knowledge passed to Enoch

from Adam; from Enoch to Methuselah; from Methuselah to Noah; from

Shem, Noah’s son, to Abraham and so on, making it clear, according to

Freeman, that Rosh Hashanah is not simply a Jewish holiday, but “the

birthday of humankind,” the birthday of Adam.

It is at once a remembrance of humankind’s coming into being, as

well as a new beginning, a rebirth really, a renewal of the world.

Which brings Freeman to his distinctive description, “the new year’s

birth canal.”

To support his analogy, he notes how a shofar, with its narrow

mouthpiece and widening opening, bears a resemblance to the birth

canal. He mentions Shifrah, a Hebrew midwife, whose name shares the

same etymology as the word shofar.

The shofar, Freeman concludes, is both the birth canal and midwife

of the New Year.

“All that exists resonates with its call until it reaches the very

beginning, the cosmic womb ... New life enters our world and takes is

first breath. It is our own life, as well, and it is in our hands,”

he writes.

A cosmic drama, Freeman calls it.

While his comparison of a shofar to a birth canal strikes me as a

stretch, his unwrapping of the metaphysical nature of Rosh Hashanah

is nonetheless eloquent.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jews gather by a river, ocean

or lake to symbolically cast their sins away, to make a fresh start

in a brand new year. All 10 days of the Jewish High Holy Days, from

Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, are characterized by introspection,

repentance, reconciliation, good deeds and prayer seeking God’s mercy

and forgiveness, prosperity and health, seeking life itself.

Jews greet one another, “May you be inscribed in the Book of

Life.”

The Day of Atonement is the final day of the High Holy Days and

the most important, not only of the High Holy Days but also of the

entire Jewish year. Even those who do not celebrate other holy days

or regularly go to synagogue are likely to attend the long Yom Kippur

services. It’s a day when synagogues overflow, often to the point of

needing to meet in larger, borrowed structures.

From sunset on the evening proceeding Yom Kippur until the evening

of the next day, those attending services will abstain from food and

even water. They will do no work whatsoever; they will spend most of

the day in their synagogue. They will pray for hours from the

machzor, a prayer book used only on the High Holidays.

The year I lived in Tel Aviv, where the din of city clamor

unrelentingly prevailed, on Yom Kippur, there were so many people in

synagogue, but I could hear myself breathe. The silence itself was

like a prayer.

In Israel, the customary greeting between friends and colleagues

was “shalom,” or “peace.” But sometimes when dear friends or family

parted, they would say instead, “l’chaim,” or in English, “to life.”

On Yom Kippur, these words are read from the 30th chapter of

Deuteronomy, “As the heavens and earth are my witness, I have given

you life and death, a blessing and a curse; and you are to choose

life so that you and your descendants will live.”

Life. It’s the object of Yom Kippur. Everything that’s done

between the evening before Rosh Hashanah until the close of Yom

Kippur says, “To life!”

L’chaim!

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].