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Area Jews enter their Holy Season

Rabbi Fredric S. Pomerantz - Congregation Agudas Achim Livingston Manor
Posted 9/14/20

The Jewish New Year, and Day of Atonement, Rosh Ha Shanah, and Yom Kippur, beginning this coming Friday, mark the holiest and most spiritual period of the Jewish year.

The entire period is …

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Area Jews enter their Holy Season

Posted

The Jewish New Year, and Day of Atonement, Rosh Ha Shanah, and Yom Kippur, beginning this coming Friday, mark the holiest and most spiritual period of the Jewish year.

The entire period is marked by sacred introspection. Unlike the secular new year on January first, where we celebrate with noisemakers, and fireworks, and loud parties, Rosh Ha Shanah offers a quiet time to reflect on how we have spent the past year, and to think about others we might have hurt by word or deed. More, each Jew is bid to use this period, especially the time between the two Holydays, to personally ask forgiveness from anyone That he or she might have offended or hurt.

The prayers for both Rosh Ha Shanah and Yom Kippur not only help us give thanks to God for the blessings of our life, and to pray for strength to overcome obstacles,

The prayerbook is fill with public and private confessional where we confess sins, and mistakes, and shortcomings during the past year.

The new year is marked on Rosh Ha Shanah with blasts of the ancient ram's horn as described in the Bible. Then as now, the piecing sound not only proclaims a new start, but it speaks of broken parts and disconnections in life that require healing. We pray for this now, at the edge of the new year.

Yom Kippur is much as it has been described in the Bible. It is a twenty four hour period of time given to contemplation, self examination, fasting, and prayer. The liturgy is both private and communal. Prayers are personal. and public. They provide a blueprint to help us get our lives to places where we want to be. It is a time for confession and for planning. It is also a time for hope.

There is also a memorial service in Yom Kippur, where we remember out loved ones, lost. Their memory guides our actions.

Now, in this time of Covid, where 90% of American Jews will attend virtual worship services for these High Holydays upcoming, the challenge is to feel the sense of community and holiness, so important, especially at this time of year.

Synagogues here in Sullivan County, and those throughout the country, have adjusted the Music, and prayers, and messages of The High Holydays to continue to share both absence of the timeless and the timely, the Eternal with the Now.

Congregation Agudas Achim, a Reform community in Livingston Manor, which has served Jews in the county for over a hundred years Will open their Zoom services to join with its members in worship and celebration.

We wish all of our neighbors, strength and courage as we move together through this pandemic, into a year renewed and blessed.

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