Jewish High Holidays – A Primer

The Jewish High Holy Days occur every year in the early fall.  It is a very important time in the Jewish year, and can be both joyful and solemn, celebratory and introspective.  It is important that the Trinity community support our Jewish students during this most sacred time in the Jewish calendar.  Please be aware of the following possible realities at this time of year. Students may be absent from class to attend worship.  They may be fasting on Yom Kippur, even if they do not attend synagogue.  Some may go home for the holidays if they live near enough.  Students who remain on campus may particularly be missing their families and home observances.  It is important to be sensitive to these realities at this time. The information below is meant to inform and prepare the Trinity faculty and staff, to build awareness and understanding for our Jewish students.

Introduction:

This ‘primer’ is meant to be a very brief, quick, overview of the Jewish High Holy Days. It is by no means an exhaustive discourse on the meanings, rituals, symbolism, or theological underpinnings of these holidays.  For more information, some helpful resources include:

• www.myjewishlearning.com
• https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ 
• https://reformjudaism.org/ (for the Reform Jewish Movement’s perspective)
• https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/jewish-time-shabbat-and-holidays/ (for the Reconstructionist Movement’s perspective)
• https://www.exploringjudaism.org/holidays/ (for the Conservative Movement’s perspective)
• There is no ‘one stop shopping’ for Orthodox perspectives but My Jewish Learning is a good general resource

The Jewish Calendar (aka Hebrew calendar) – overview

The Jewish calendar is a lunar-solar calendar.  Every month begins with the new moon. It is not a pure lunar calendar, but corrected so that the holidays fall in the season where they belong.  You sometimes will hear someone say ‘the holidays are late this year’ or ‘early this year’.  They are not.  They fall on the same date every year in the Jewish calendar, it just looks like they move because they do not line up with the secular calendar.  So for example, Rosh Hashanah is always on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, Yom Kippur is on the 10^th day.  Passover begins on the 14^th day of Nissan. And so on. 

Every holiday (technically, every day in the Hebrew calendar) begins on sundown the night before and ends at sundown the next day if it is a one-day holiday, or on the last day if it is a multi-day holiday. You may see in an English calendar that the first day of a holiday is such and such a date, but that may be in error. It may actually begin the night before.  So be careful! 

One further note – the Reform Movement observes a slightly different calendar than the Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist Movements, so some students may still be observing a holiday when others have completed their observance. 

General Jewish observances: 

On any holy day, whether the weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) observance (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday), or a holiday, observant Jews will not engage in secular activities, they will not ride in a car, they will not watch tv or go to movies, they will not use any device that uses electricity.  Degrees of observance of these restrictions vary widely between Jewish Movements and among individual Jews. Do not assume that Jewish student’s reporting of a restriction affecting their schoolwork applies to any other Jewish student. Everyone is different.

Rosh HaShanah – the Jewish New Year (literally the Head of the Year)

This holiday commemorates the creation of the world, which is calculated, based on the generations in the Torah, to be 5785 years ago.  On Rosh Hashanah, the new Jewish year will be the year 5786.  This holiday is joyful, celebratory, and honors the Jews’ relationship with God as Ruler and Creator of the universe.  Observance includes worship services in the evening, this year on Sept. 22, continuing into morning worship on the 23^rd and 24^th.  The Reform Movement observes one day of Rosh Hashanah, while the other movements observe two days, concluding at sundown on the 24^th. Rosh Hashanah begins the Ten Days of Repentance, during which time Jews examine their behaviour over the past year, ask forgiveness and make amends to anyone they have hurt, and prepare for the culmination of this process at Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement

The last day of the Ten Days of Repentance, Yom Kippur is the most solemn day of the Jewish year.  It begins this year at sundown on Oct. 2 and ends at sundown on October 3. It is not (contrary to popular lore) the holiest day of the year – that would be Shabbat. But it is second only to Shabbat in importance. Jews fast from sundown to sundown, and spend most of the evening and day in synagogue.  Prayers focus on personal and communal confessions, prayers for forgiveness, and time to examine one’s soul and resolve to do better in the coming year.  The day-long service ends at sundown with a Break the Fast meal.

Sukkot and Simchat Torah – the Feast of Booths and Rejoicing with the Torah

Sukkot is not considered one of the High Holy Days, but it follows almost immediately after Yom Kippur. This year in the secular calendar Sukkot begins at sundown on Oct. 6 and ends on Oct. 13 at sundown. Sukkot commemorates the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert after escaping Egyptian slavery, before they were allowed to enter Canaan (present-day Israel). During their wanderings, they lived in temporary dwellings or booths (in Hebrew, one booth is a sukkah. Sukkot is the plural form.) The holiday also commemorates the fall harvest and remembers when the Israelites were an agrarian society and farmers would dwell in temporary structures out in their fields during the harvest. In memory of these two phenomena, Jews build temporary dwellings, sukkot, and ‘live’ in them for seven days.  In modern times, most Jews do not actually live in their sukkah, but they have meals in the sukkah, usually with guests. They may engage in study of sacred texts in the sukkah.  There are special blessings and rituals that are performed in the sukkah to commemorate the bounty of the Biblical land of Israel. Reform Jews observe seven days while Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox Jews observe eight days.  Sukkot, whether seven or eight days, ends with another holiday – Simchat Torah. This holiday celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people. It is a joyful holiday where the Jewish community ends the annual cycle of Torah reading with the last verses of Deuteronomy and immediately begins the cycle again with the beginning of Genesis. Jews dance with the Torah scroll and sing and rejoice in the giving of the Torah.

Thank you for your support of Trinity’s Jewish community!

Please feel free to reach out with any questions you may have – [email protected].