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Rosh HaShana: New Year, new beginnings

Yaakov, Béla Orbán

"There is a time for everything" (Ecclesiastes 3:1) 

The different new beginnings of the year… 

According to the Jewish tradition, there are four different new beginnings a year. 

1. / The first of the month of Nissan 
The new year of the Kings and the beginning of the pilgrims. 

2. / The first of the month of Ellul
The beginning of the annual cycle of tenths upon the sacrificed animals 

3. / The first of the month Tishri 
The civil new year: 

- Yom HaZikaron – the Day of Memory 
According to the tradition, this was the day of the creation of the world, when the universe was born.  
The other essence of the remembrance is the remembering of the last year’s events. 
It is a matter of a very strict examination, an awakening from our deep sleep and laziness which meaning and goal is: 
The Return to God. 
The first part of the feat’s prayer (Musaf) is the Malkiyot (powers). 
This prayer starts with the last words and thoughts of the Olenu prayer that ends the cults during the week and which is a praise, a hymn to the Creator, to the one Who rule over the Universe: The Eternal God.

- Yom Trua – The day when we blow the Shofar. 
This is the day when the Shofar resounds. 
This particular instrument gives the heartbreaking tone of the day. It is nor a trumpet nor a clarion but the voice of the Shofar, a horn that calls us to convert, to go back to God because the moment of His arrival and judgment is near. 
God reveals His Law while the shofar is yelling. This same shofar reminds us today to remain faithful to this Law. 
The third part is the shofarot prayer (the shofars).
This prayer refers to the penetrating and powerful sound of the shofar.  
This is the sound that was first heard during the Revelation at the mount Sinai and which resounds again at the moment of the People’s Gathering… 
The voice of the shofar announcing the release and the arrival of the Messiah is also a scream of joy for the People of God: a joy announcing that the Redemption is near…  

- Yom Hadin – the Day of  Judgment 
We just talked about the need and the obligation to repent and convert because of all the sins of omission and rebelliousness committed during the year. 
The second part of the celebration prayer is also connected to this.  
Zickronot (memories) do refer to the judgment: God is the Supreme Judge of the World, He is the absolute Truth. 
But we also remember the fact that God is highly merciful too.   
Jews do experiment this in a visible and a symbolic way the first day of Rosh HaShana, through the ceremony of Tashlick. 
They recite their prayer of invitation to repentance and conversion which also asks for sins to be wiped out such as the stream of water washes the dirt away.

- The beginning of the Shmita (sabbatical) and Yovel (jubilate) Year. 
"Speak unto the children of Israel: 
In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation." (Leviticus 23:24-25) 

And also 

- Rosh HaShana: THE NEW YEAR’S DAY. 
Before the captivity of Babylon, the year started at Nissan, the first day of the first month. This was reported from spring to fall, to the moment when the People got home. This happened at the beginning of the seventh month, the first of Tishri.
This way, Rosh HaShana, as the new year’s day (the head of the year) is not coming from the Bible but from the Talmud. 

And finally, the fourth new year: 

4. / The first and the fifteenth of the month of Sh’vat. 
The new year of the trees… (According to the Talmud of Babylon) 
According to Jewish tradition, this day is the day of the trees. Hamisha asar (tu-bish’vat). 
It is on this day that we discover which are the trees that will give fruits and which are the ones that will dry out.   
It is on this day that we celebrate the blossoming and the revival of the flora in the Holy Land.  
This day, the Jewish Community recites 15 Psalms: from Psalm 120 to 135. 
We say: 
"… They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." 
"For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands, Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table." 

The beginning of the Shmita (Sabbatical) year which is:
"The Sabbath of the Land": 

The meaning of Shmita is: to release – to deliver. 
But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land … 
We can find this commandment many times through the Bible: Exodus 23:10-11, Leviticus 25:1-2, and 20, in Deuteronomy 15:1-2, and 9, and also in Nehemiah 10:31… 
Concerning its essence, its main precepts are the followings: 
- The prohibition of any work upon the lands. 
It was a global holiday embracing all domains of life, when the field had to be left fallow.  
The ground together with men rested, revitalized and gathered strength to face the next new beginning.   
- All that grew wild during this time did not have any owner. 
Or rather they did… 
During this Sabbatical year, all man has the same rights and can freely eat from the products of the earth.  
The Owner is the Eternal God: the One who had abundantly put the table with the products of the ground for all men and animals.   
The same way He did with the People by giving the manna during the wandering in the desert.  
- All debt and loan has to be release. (Deuteronomy 15:1-4)
The last day of the year (29th of Ellul), any debt that had not been paid back yet, had to be canceled and the Jew working for his creditor so that he could pay his loan back, had also to be released.  

The Law of Hakcel 
It is a law concerning the Year of Shmita and which is still applied today: 
During the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth), the King had to read the entire Law of God before the whole gathered People (men, women, children and aliens)! 

(Deuteronomy 31:10-13 and Nehemiah 8:2, 13-18) 
This lay is still respected today in Israel and it is the actual president of the State who has to do it. 
(The year 5768, the one that starts the 13th of September 2007, is a Shmita Year…) 
Concerning the Sabbatical Year, we can read that one of the reasons of the Babylonian exile of Israel was exactly the transgression of this precise law. (Leviticus 26,34) 
The reason of the number of years spent in captivity in Babylon is also revealed to us: 
The duration of 70 years was: "…until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths…"  (2 Chronicles 36,21) 

The beginning of the Year of Yovel (the release).
The year of Freedom.
This year received its name from the horn of the goat: the Shofar. (Joshua 6,5) 
(The word Jubilate also comes from Yovel). 
This is the same shofar that proclaimed the entire release of men and lands; it means that everything returned to the same state than it was 50 years earlier. (Leviticus 25:8-17) 
The aim of that was to avoid the Land together with all things that she contained to become the property of men. But we also avoided men to become themselves the definitive property and slaves of each others.
The Jubilating Year thus comes every 50 years. 
From the end of each seventh Sabbatical Year.  
- Every slave working on the fields of other people had to be released (Leviticus 25:29-54) 
- The Land returned to her original owner (Leviticus 25:13.23-28) 
After the obligatory release taking place at the end of each seventh year, the seventh year of the seventh years brought freedom too… 
The freedom is for everyone: 
"for the land is mine" (Leviticus 25:23) 
Men were born to be free and must only serve the Eternal God.   
"For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 25:55) 

For us, the Yovel Year does also have a prophetic dimension:
The Anointed King-Messiah does restore and will soon bring the Kingdom of Peace. 

What is our duty since then?
To hear the sound of the shofar which reminds us the need to repent, to settle our lives and relations with God and men in order, all these things that are the necessary conditions to any new beginning.   
So that we’ll be able to blow the shofar in joy ourselves! 
- To lead people out of the darkness of sin and bring them also to light, to the Anointed King.  

- So that the People of God, the Body of the Messiah (Christ) should hear the Law of God together with the Grace proposed and offered by the King, or by hearing this Law again, they should again reinforce their Covenant with God.  
- So that the Will of God and His Law should be a blessing for all.

- And so that the strengthened testimonies of the Release, the Redemption and Grace should be seen by all men on earth.

 

 

 

 

Translated from hungarian by Richard (Zeev Shlomo)

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