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The High Holidays
What happens, what the Shofar is for, why there are apples on the table, and what it is actually like to walk into a service you have never been to.
Next year
The holiday begins in the evening of
Friday, October 1, 2027
Candles are lit before sunset — the exact minute is on the times page.
Every date on this page is worked out from the Hebrew calendar when you load it, so it is never last year’s. Candle lighting times for San Jose are on the times page.
Rosh Hashanah is two days, the first and second of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. In English it gets called the Jewish New Year, which is true and also slightly misleading — there is no countdown and nobody blows a party horn. The tradition understands the day as the anniversary of the creation of the first human being, and therefore as the day the world is looked at again: what it is for, and whether the people in it are living up to it.
The image the prayers use is a courtroom, and the image they use just as often is a coronation. Both are in there, and they pull in different directions on purpose. It is a day that is meant to be serious without being miserable. People wear good clothes, eat well, and are genuinely glad to see each other. Nobody sits in sackcloth.
The two days work as one long day — yoma arichta, in the phrase the Talmud uses. The second day is not a lesser echo of the first, and it is kept in Israel as well as everywhere else, which is not true of the second day of any other festival.
A shofar is a ram’s horn, hollowed and shaped, and it makes a sound that is not quite a note. Hearing it is the one thing the Torah actually commands about this day. Everything else — the length of the service, the food, the greetings — grew up around it.
There are three sounds, and they alternate:
A hundred sounds are blown over the course of the morning: a first set while everybody is seated, then more during and after the Musaf prayer, ending in one very long tekiah gedolah that the person blowing holds until they run out of air. It is common for the room to be completely silent for it, and equally common for a baby to cry through the whole thing.
The classical explanation is Maimonides’: the Shofar says wake up. Not a rebuke — an alarm clock. You do not have to arrive at services with anything prepared in order to be woken up by it.
If the first day falls on Shabbat, the Shofar is not blown that day at all and you will hear it only on the second. That catches people out every few years, and this page used to end there — telling somebody to go and check, on a page that already knew.
The Shofar next year. The first day of Rosh Hashanah is Shabbat, so the Shofar is not blown that morning. It is sounded on Sunday, October 3, the second day, only. It is a rabbinic safeguard, not a shortened holiday — the second day of Rosh Hashanah is a full part of it everywhere.
On the first night, before the meal, there is a short round of symbolic foods — simanim. A slice of apple is dipped in honey, a blessing is said over the fruit, and then a one-line request: that the coming year should be good and sweet. Children usually get to say it, and usually get honey on their sleeves.
Other things that turn up on the table, each with a line to go with it:
Tick what is on your table. Ticks stay on this device only.
Widespread Ashkenazi custom, Chabad included, is to avoid nuts on Rosh Hashanah. The reason given is a wordplay — the Hebrew for nut shares a numerical value with the word for sin — and it is a custom rather than a law, which is a distinction worth getting used to, because a lot of this day is custom.
On the afternoon of the first day, people walk to running water — a creek, a lake, the sea — say a few verses from the prophet Micah about casting sins into the depths, and shake out their pockets. Some throw breadcrumbs, which is a later addition and not the actual custom, but children love it and nobody stops them.
It takes about ten minutes. If the first day is Shabbat, Tashlich moves to the second day. We go to Almaden Lake; the meeting point and what to expect are on the shofar and Tashlich page.
Practical things, in the order you will need them.
Before the holiday and on the first night: l’shanah tovah tikatev v’techatem — may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year. Chabad custom uses the full phrase through midday of the first day. After that, and honestly at any point, shanah tovah is right and is what most people say. Gut yom tov and gut yontif are the Yiddish versions and mean the same thing.
There is also a custom of asking forgiveness before the holiday from anyone you might have wronged. It is an awkward thing to do and worth doing anyway; a short honest message is enough.
Rosh Hashanah opens a stretch called the Ten Days of Repentance, which close on Yom Kippur. The Shabbat in between is Shabbat Shuvah. It is a period for the two categories of repair the tradition separates carefully: things between a person and God, which Yom Kippur addresses, and things between one person and another, which it does not — those have to be settled with the person themselves.
Services here are free and open, with no ticket and no membership, and there is a holiday meal. Times and the year’s arrangements are published as they are set: see the Rosh Hashanah page, candle lighting and holiday times, and the community calendar. If you would rather just ask a person, the office answers the phone.
If you have nowhere to go for the meals, say so — that is a normal thing to tell us and we will find you a table. Shabbat and holiday hospitality is the page for it, and it is used more than people assume.
This year’s dates, the dinner, and how to reach us.
Where we meet at the lake, and what happens there.
The whole day, including who should not fast.
The whole autumn run in one place. No tickets, no membership.
Anything on this page that is a question about your situation — a fast you have been told not to keep, a kitchen you are not sure how to handle, a custom your family does differently — is a question for a person, not a page. Ask Rabbi Mendel, or call the office. Nobody will think less of you for asking; the questions on this list are asked every single year.