No 4

(Rosh Hashanah)

“In the seventh month on the first day of the month ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you” (Num 29:1). The Jewish new year begins with Rosh Hashanah and is celebrated on 1^st day of the month Tishri. Actually, it is the beginning of a ten-day feast culminating with another high holyday, Yom Kippur. These feast days are referred to “the days of awe” because an individual’s fate was inscribed (on Rosh Hashanah) and sealed (on Yom Kippur) for the coming year. Rosh Hashanah means the “head or the beginning of the year”; however, there are actually four New Year’s Day for Jews. Nissan 1 begins the religious New Year; Elul 1 was used in ancient times to determine the tithing of animals; Shevat 15 was used to determine the tithing of fruit and Tishri 1, Rosh Hashanah is the civil New Year. Rosh Hashanah is also known as the Day for the Sounding of the Shofar or the feast of Trumpets. God directed Moses in Number 10:1-10 to make two silver trumpets to be blown to assemble the children of Israel, to annonce the moving of the camps, to sound an alarm in battle and to annonce festive days. Along with these two silver horns, a shofar (a ram’s horn) was blown on Rosh Hashanah. In Jewish tradition, the shofar reminds the people of two things: 1) To offer their lives to God and 2) To have faith in the future coming of the Messiah. On Wednesday June 7 1967 at the height of the Six-Day War, Israeli forces pushed into Jerusalem and captured the Temple Mount. The chief Army Rabbi did something very significant; he sounded the shofar signaling that Israel was back in the land of their forefathers. Tough Army soldiers broke out in tears of joy. The prophetic message of Rosh Hashanah is the future return and restoration of the people of Israel to the land that God promised them in Genesis 15:18.