Apples and Honey for a sweet new year.

I know from communications with various readers, that the Fahrenheit211 blog has a fair few Jewish visitors. Therefore, as sunset tonight marks the start of Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year as it is more commonly known, I’d like to wish all those celebrating Rosh Hashanah a good and sweet new year.

Rosh Hashanah, which directly translated means ‘the head of the year’, is a time when people take stock of the year that has passed, examine their own behaviour, repent of their sins and make amends for them, recognise the supreme sovereignty of the Eternal One, and pray that they will be sealed and inscribed in the Book of Life for another year.

Rosh Hashanah is very unlike the secular new year with its boozing and partying, but there is one thing which Rosh Hashanah has in common with the secular new year and that is the making of resolutions and promises to be better. The ten days that separate Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur are the period where Jews engage in a period of intense self-examination about where things have gone wrong and where things can be put right. These ten days are also a time when God examines the deeds of the individual Jew and opens the Book of Life in which the deeds and thoughts of the person are inscribed. This book is not closed until the sunset that ends the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur.

We are all human, we are all subject to error and foolishness and we have all done wrong at some point in the previous year. Whether that is putting political dogma before truth, not giving to a charitable cause when we could and should have done, or speaking falsehood because it gives the individual an easier ride and reduces criticism, all have erred.

This is the time when God sorts the harvest of souls and very, very reluctantly excludes those who are genuinely evil from the Book of Life. This is the time when all Jews have to decide whether to be the wheat or the chaff.

I understand that the Jewish readership for both this blog and its Twitter feed, is remarkably cross-communal, encompassing those Jews who live their lives according to the strictest observance of Halacha (Jewish Law), and also those progressive Jews who interpret the 613 commandments of Judaism so liberally that they see nothing at all wrong with chowing down on a bacon sandwich.

So whatever sort of Jew you are, whether you are strictly Orthodox and worshipping in a cramped prayer room in Stamford Hill, or a progressive Jew temporarily using a village hall in a rural area for Rosh Hashanah services, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a sweet new year, and may you be sealed and inscribed in the Book of Life for another year, and may this next year contains less of the hurts and oppressions that the previous year has brought.

לשנה טובה תכתב ותחתם

Leshana tovah tikatev v’tichatem”

(May you be written and sealed for a good year )