While many students entered the millennium toasting champagne glasses and setting off fireworks, the Jewish community will celebrate a second New Year’s Day — one that’s certain not to involve hangovers.
Rosh Hashanah, translated from Hebrew to mean “head of the year,” begins Sept. 29 and marks the start of many of a series of traditional Jewish holidays and events to follow in the next 10 days.
The religious holiday begins the observance of a 10-day period known as the Jewish High Holy Days. Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the first and second days of Tishrei, the seventh month in the Jewish calendar, and it is a time filled with family gatherings, special meals and sweet-tasting foods. The tenth day, Yom Kippur, referred to as the Day of Atonement, closes the High Holy Days with fasting, reflection and prayer.
Students at the University will have the opportunity to spend the holiday festivities in the company of their friends. Hillel, the foundation for Jewish life on campus, is under the organization of a new director this year, Rachel Canar. She will use her master’s degree in Jewish Communal Service to help students on campus connect with traditions and events in the coming weeks.
While Canar said observing the High Holy Days and providing services to students is important, she stressed that Hillel is a vibrant student group that is not just religious in nature.
“I want to communicate to people that being involved in Jewish life is fun,” she said. “It’s not all so serious.”
Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah, allows the Jewish community to prepare for the High Holy Days. Canar said this is a designated time for people to repair and strengthen relationships.
“During the month, people should be reflecting on the entire past year and the lessons they were challenged by, specifically any apologies they feel they need to make,” Canar said.
Rosh Hashanah itself isn’t solely meant to celebrate the New Year. It has a four-fold meaning. It is the Jewish New Year, the Day of Judgment, the Day of Remembrance and the Day of Shofar Blowing.
Rabbi Tal Shachar of the Ahavas Torah synagogue, Eugene’s Orthodox congregation, said that while Rosh Hashanah is a festive event, it is also a day of judgment and the prayers are representative of the coming new year.
“It is important in deciding everything that will happen to you in the year. It is a day of repentance,” he said. It is traditional for Rosh Hashanah to start with services, including a candle-lighting ceremony, Shachar said. Services will begin at Ahavas Torah, located at 3800 Ferry St., at 6:37 p.m.
Canar said that people who have passed away are always remembered during Rosh Hashanah. There are special memorial services that are held and candles that are lit.
The traditions of Rosh Hashanah also include the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn. Shachar said the shofar is sounded 100 times to represent the acceptance of the beginning of the High Holy Days.
On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Shachar said, Jews visit a body of water to symbolically cast away their sins into the water. There are traditional greetings each day and families gather together for the holiday meals.
Sophomore art major Nancy Rhodes said the first night’s meal usually begins with apples dipped in honey, which symbolize sweetness and blessings for a sweet year ahead.
Challah, the bread usually eaten on the Sabbath, is baked in a circle as a wish that the coming year will roll around smoothly without sorrow. It is also dipped in honey before eating.
Rhodes, along with other Jewish students, including junior undeclared major Stacey Schwartz, share the belief that it is harder to make time for Rosh Hashanah because as students, they are no longer living with immediate family.
“You are not forced to do certain things, such as going to synagogue,” Schwartz said.
Despite the distance from loved ones, the holiday still holds value for the Jewish community on campus.
“Rosh Hashanah is one of the most important holidays of the year,” said Stephanie Yellin, the Jewish Campus Service Corps Fellow at Hillel. “It is an intense period of reflection and introspection.”
Personally, Yellin said, Rosh Hashanah is influential because her life has changed so much in the past year.
“I graduated from college. I moved 3,000 miles away. I started my first job out of college and I’m meeting all these new people,” she said. “It’s really hard not being with my family for Rosh Hashanah.”
Yellin said that she feels it is necessary for Hillel to provide a “home away from home” for students as they ring in the Jewish New Year.