The Jewish New Year festival of Rosh Hashanah is held every year over a special two-day period of families, eating together, praying and reflecting. This year in 2022 this intensely religious festival will begin on the evening of the twenty-fifth of September and continue until nightfall on the twenty-seventh. Celebrating the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman to be mentioned in the Bible and the role of human beings in God’s World.
One of the most traditional of the customs included in the Rosh Hashanah Festival is the blowing of the Shofar, a cleaned-out rams horn as specified in the Torah. The symbolic horn is blown everyday for the month before the two-day New Year Festival and is supposed to awaken listeners and make them ready for the judgement day. This time of year is very special to Jewish families and they often send each other Rosh hashanah cards from a company such as cazenovejudaica.com/uk . The families come together and prepare special meals such as apples dipped in honey, the head of a fish, dates, pomegranates, pumpkin-filled pastries and leek fritters.
The pomegranate is specifically chosen to represent the family being fruitful like all the seeds found inside the juicy fruit. Prayers are chanted as close to running water as possible and all the sins of the family are symbolically thrown into the flowing waters. The festival ends with the holiday of Yom Kippur.