The High Holidays

Rosh Hashanah: a guide for anyone

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.

What Rosh Hashanah actually is

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.

The shofar

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:

• Tekiah — one long, unbroken blast.
• Shevarim — three medium blasts, like someone sighing.
• Teruah — nine or more short staccato blasts, like sobbing.

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, so it is worth checking the day before rather than arriving on the wrong morning for the one thing you came for.

Apples and honey, and the rest of the table

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:

• Round challah instead of the usual braid — a year that comes back round, a crown, depending who you ask. The Chabad custom is to dip challah in honey rather than salt from Rosh Hashanah all the way through Hoshana Rabbah.
• Pomegranate — that our merits should be as many as its seeds.
• The head of a fish, in households that go in for it — that we should be a head and not a tail. Nobody is obliged to enjoy this one.
• A new fruit on the second night, something in season you have not eaten yet this year, so that the shehecheyanu blessing has something concrete to attach to.

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.

Tashlich

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.

If you have never been to a service

Practical things, in the order you will need them.

• What to wear. Whatever you would wear somewhere you wanted to look respectful. Many men wear a jacket; many do not. Married women cover their hair; nobody will comment if you do not. There are kippot by the door if you want one.
• When to arrive. Later than the published start time is completely normal — the service builds through the morning. If you want to hear the shofar, ask the office roughly when it will be and aim for that.
• Where to sit. Men and women sit separately, with a divider between. Sit near the back if you would rather be able to slip out; nobody keeps track.
• What you will be asked to do. Nothing. You will not be called up, quizzed, or asked to donate at the door. If you would like to be called up for an aliyah, say so — that has to be asked for, not sprung on you.
• Following along. The page number gets announced, and the person next to you will happily show you where. Asking is not embarrassing. Not asking and sitting lost for two hours is the worse outcome.
• Phones. Rosh Hashanah has the same restrictions as Shabbat: no phones, no driving, no writing, no photographs. If you drove, park a little away and nobody will say a word about it.

What to say to people

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.

The ten days that follow

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.

What we run, and how to find out when

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.

Questions people ask

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