The holidays after the summer holidays!
Oh, how beautiful! The summer holidays were great, also it is good that they are over, and normal everyday life can start …. not so fast! Did you know, that September is the month with the most holidays? September is full (and, depending on the shifts in the Jewish calendar, October too) with important holidays for the Jewish people.
Some of these have great significance for the Jewish people. It starts with New Year. Rosh Hashanah 5779 begins, according to the Jewish calendar (this year) on 9 and goes until September 11 and is of great importance for the Jews. They pray and wish for a blessed year. During the holidays, the Shofar horn is blown 100 times. Sweet foods, such as apples with honey and pomegranates, are eaten for a “sweet” year. Many Jews also eat the head of a fish during the feast, which symbolically means “to be on the head and not on the tail”.
After the New Year’s Day comes the highest Jewish holiday “Yom Kippur”, the Day of “Atonement”. Many Jews fast and pray for 24 hours. For the LORD should forgive the sins and open a new page for the next year. There are no cars, trains or planes flying on that day. Bicycles and pedestrians fill the streets (even highways).
This holiday is following by the happy holidays “Sukkot”. Sukkot is from the origin a Thanksgiving (also called the festival of gathering) and is celebrated after the crop has been fully harvested. Sukkot means “huts”, also because you should live in a hut during the feast, the sukkah (hut) should be under the sky and the roof should be made of branches, twigs and foliage. Living in these simple huts, during the holidays, it should be remembered that the people of Israel experienced times when they had to travel through the desert as a simple nomadic people and had no harvest. Today most of the people only eat their meals in a sukkah.
Can you understand why I meet September with mixed feelings? Every holiday brings school-free days with it. And this month is full of holidays!