L'SHANA TOVA

Round loaf of challah

At sundown last night the Jewish High Holydays began.  To our astonishment, G's and mine.  We live now in a very Christian environment - on which more at a later date - no surrounding cultural help for remembering the Jewish calendar.  A culture shock for two who once lived in Newton, MA, and hung out in Brookline, MA, a lot.  Those who live in the Boston area will relate to this.  Brookline is extremely Jewish, delis and bakeries and butcher shops and temples every few feet.  The best bagels in the world, as far as I know.  Beautiful loaves of challah piled in bins. Kugel and tsimmes already made by somebody else's Jewish mother, ready to take home and pop in the microwave.

When I happened to meet the only other Jewish person we know in the area in the cafeteria at school yesterday and she told me she was taking today off - I looked puzzled.  She said...it's Rosh Hashanah, dumbass.  Well, no, she didn't say dumbass, but she might as well have. I didn't see G until nine o'clock last night (our schedules really suck, as far as seeing each other is concerned) and when I told her it was Erev Rosh Hashanah, she almost cried.  We had no apples and honey, no challah, none of the traditional sweet year food to celebrate with.  For this holiday, whose name means "Head of the Year" the challah is baked in a lovely round loaf, to symbolize the head itself.  In past years that we've been here,  friends have come from New York to celebrate with us, or we have gone to Brooklyn to be with them.  

We don't do anything religious, really, but we do like the symbolic gestures - wishing people a sweet new year by dipping bread or apples in the honey is certainly one of them.   Another symbolic gesture that we always do during these Days of Awe is the ceremony of Tashlikh.  I'm not sure if it's the accurate way to do it, but we go to the beach or to any moving body of water and throw stones or pieces of bread into it.  The stones symbolize our sins, our errors, our deeds against others in the past year.  We repent of them, and toss them away, thus ridding ourselves of the year's past burdens, so that clean and new we may begin a new cycle. 

This new year is the year 5765.  May it be for any and all who stumble upon these words a year of goodness, peace, and hope.  It grows harder to believe these things are possible, but we must, we do.  And so, we continue to work for them, pray for them, live for them.  L'Shana Tova to all.