It is amazing how quickly we forget. On the High Holy Days during the COVID pandemic, many prayer services in Israel took place in open spaces, and we all wore masks. Extraneous noises often made it difficult to hear the prayer leader, and that could affect concentration. But God heard our prayers, and our synagogues were there when the pandemic had passed.
I remember the times in Germany in the mid-1930s when worshipers were requested not to congregate but to disperse quickly after exiting the synagogue on Shabbat and holidays. Many synagogues and private homes avoided building a sukkah that could be seen from outside, to prevent drawing attention to the presence of Jews.
It will be 85 years ago this year, when after the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, there were no more synagogues to which we could return. It was the infamous Kristallnacht, during which all synagogues in Germany, Austria, and the already Nazi-occupied western part of Czechoslovakia were burned down, and our holy Torah scrolls and artifacts were either destroyed or stolen, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps. That was officially the beginning of the Holocaust, the end of Jewish life under the Nazis.
Fortunately, I could spend the following High Holy Days in the wonderful community of teenage members of Brit Chalutzin Dati’im in England and again celebrate Simhat Torah with our sifrei Torah. I arrived there with the famous Kindertransport.
Commemorating Kindertransport with March of the Living
Following Sukkot this year, the Kindertransport will be commemorated under the auspices of March of the Living, when three still fit kinder will be flown to Germany to travel the original route via Holland to England, which was taken by almost 10,000 Jewish children without their parents. There will be several events on the way, and a film crew will record the journey. I am privileged to be one of the three.
For all those still among us all over the world who managed to escape the clutches of the Nazis with the Kindertransport between Kristallnacht and the beginning of WWII on September 1, 1939, or indeed their children, this year the High Holy Days will be particularly poignant. Today, our beloved State of Israel will ensure that what happened 85 years ago can never be repeated and we are able to celebrate openly, each in his or her traditional way, with dedication and without fear of hostile action.
Rosh Hashanah, which means “the beginning of the year,” is celebrated on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. But how did Tishrei become the first month? The name stems from the Akkadian language spoken by the Babylonians and means “beginning.” But beginning of what? The Babylonian Jews, the most ancient people in the region, counted the beginning of the year in the spring, the month of Nisan.
Rosh Hashanah is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah, but it appears under different names in it. For instance, it is mentioned as a sacred occasion that starts on the first day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, which today is Rosh Hashanah. Although the holy day was probably well established by the 6th century BCE, the name Rosh Hashanah shows up for the first time in the Mishna, a Jewish code of law compiled in 200 CE.
Another name for Rosh Hashanah is Yom Teruah, “the day of blowing the shofar,” a ram’s horn that was also blown when the Israelites received the Torah at Mount Sinai. During the whole month of Elul, the shofar is blown at weekday services in synagogues. I would term it a wake-up call for what is to come, as on Rosh Hashanah the shofar is sounded 100 times.
Unlike manufactured brass or woodwind instruments, the shofar only sounds when the air exits. The ba’al tekiah, the blower, needs a good set of lungs to produce the four different sounds: Tekiah is a long sound that brings the congregation to attention. Teruah consists of a series of short rapid staccato blasts, not unlike an alarm, a call to attention. Shevarim are three broken blows, thought by some to represent our tears of joy. And tekiah gedolah is like tekiah but lasts as long as one lungful of the blower’s breath.
In the 10 days after Rosh Hashanah, we prepare ourselves for the culmination, the full day of repentance – Yom Kippur, a day on which we neither eat nor drink for 25 hours and hope that God will hear our prayers and forgive our transgressions against Him.
Unfortunately, there are elements of the non-Jewish world that deliberately misinterpret the most holy day on the Jewish calendar to promote their antisemitism. They distribute literature to show that Jews lie and cheat with impunity, in the knowledge that once a year all is forgotten by their God. This is a blatant lie. The fact is that only transgressions against God may be forgiven. To be absolved from offending another person, we must ask mechila, forgiveness, from him or her because only they can forgive us.
This year more than ever, our actions both in the Diaspora and in Israel have transgressed against God’s will by our being so deeply divided and disunited. May God forgive, bless and guard the Jewish people and be gracious to us so that no more evil will strike us in the future. ■
The writer is in his 100th year of life and holds Guinness World Records for being the world’s oldest active journalist and working radio show host.