FestivalJewish
Rosh Hashanah
No rule yet
Nobody has written a rule for this observance yet, so the calendar does not put it on a day. A name with a made-up date beside it would be worse than a name on its own.
Its picture waits on review by the tradition's own authority, so it is not shown yet.
In short
Rosh Hashanah marks the Jewish New Year and begins the High Holy Days, a period devoted to moral reflection and return. Jewish tradition understands the day as both a celebration of creation and a time of divine judgment, when people examine the year that has passed and consider how they should live differently.
The story
Rosh Hashanah marks the Jewish New Year and begins the High Holy Days, a period devoted to moral reflection and return. Jewish tradition understands the day as both a celebration of creation and a time of divine judgment, when people examine the year that has passed and consider how they should live differently. The most distinctive ritual is the sounding of the shofar, usually a ram’s horn, whose sharp calls are meant to awaken conscience. Synagogue prayers emphasize God’s sovereignty, remembrance and accountability. At home, meals often include apples dipped in honey and other foods expressing the hope for a sweet year. Some communities practise tashlich, symbolically casting away wrongdoing near flowing water. Rosh Hashanah is joyful but not carefree: its celebration is balanced by introspection, apology and the decision to repair relationships. It opens the Ten Days of Repentance that lead to Yom Kippur.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Why it matters
Rosh Hashanah is significant to the community that observes it and helps preserve religious, family and cultural continuity.
What people do
The shofar - a ram's horn - is sounded a hundred times over the two days. Apple dipped in honey for a sweet year, and a round challah rather than a braided one. Tashlich is said at running water, where the year's wrongs are cast off. India's communities keep it in Mumbai, Kolkata and Kochi.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Told differently elsewhere
Two days almost everywhere, including in Israel, which is unusual - most festivals gain their second day only in the diaspora. Sephardi and Mizrahi communities keep a seder of simanim, a sequence of foods each with its own blessing, that Ashkenazi practice reduces to the apple and honey.
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