Lynne Baab

Praying about the flow of time: Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year

Lynne Baab • Thursday October 3 2024

Because Rosh Hashanah is this week, I’ve been pondering New Year’s celebrations. God created us and placed us on this beautiful earth with rhythms of day and night as well as the rhythms of seasons. I wonder if yearly rhythms are imprinted in us, and we feel a need to mark one place in the yearly cycle as an end and beginning. I wonder if we need New Year’s celebrations to nudge us to reflect on the past and experience hope for the future with others.

Of course, January 1 or Rosh Hashanah are not the only New Year’s celebrations. Many New Year’s celebrations from around the world have become a part of the global yearly cycle. Chinese New Year, on the first new moon between January 21 and February 20, is the most important holiday in China and is also celebrated in other Southeast Asian countries and around the world. Nowruz is celebrated at the Northern Hemisphere Spring Equinox in the countries that were once along the Silk Road, including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.I found other New Year’s celebrations, each with their own unique emphases and customs:

• Songkran in Thailand
• Matariki among New Zealand Māori
• Enkutatash in Ethiopia
• Muharram among Muslims
• Diwali, the Festival of Lights for Hindus, is sometimes viewed as a New Year’s celebration

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, lasts two days. This year it is Wednesday, October 2 to Friday, October 4. Rosh Hashanah kicks off the three weeks of the High Holidays for the Jewish people. I’ll write about Yom Kippur and the Feast of Tabernacles in my next two blog posts.

When Dave and I were young adults, we lived in Tel Aviv, Israel, for 18 months. Dave was teaching at the dental school in Tel Aviv, and one of his colleagues invited us to a Rosh Hashanah meal with his family. I remember the emphasis on sweet foods, including applesauce, roasted root vegetables glazed with honey, and two offerings for dessert, to reflect hopes for a sweet year. I appreciate those physical, food-based symbols of our longing for good things in the next year.

At the time of that dinner, I was pregnant with our older son, who was born in Tel Aviv about two months after Rosh Hashana. Dave and I both have strong memories of the Hebrew word “rosh” when our son was a baby. If we took him outside without a hat, even on a cool spring day, someone would invariably say to us, “Ha rosh! Ha rosh!” — The head! The head! Put a hat on that baby to protect him from the burning Middle Eastern sun!

Based on that story, perhaps you can guess that “Rosh Hashanah” means “head of the year.” The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah, from Numbers 29:1, which means “day of a massive shout by people or a horn” or “feast of trumpets.” Trumpets and loud shouts capture the flavor of many New Year’s celebrations. Rosh Hashanah traditions include synagogue worship, reciting a liturgy of repentance, and blowing the shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn.

These Rosh Hashanah traditions are lovely juxtaposition of important themes whenever we end or begin something, and of course, a New Year’s celebration marks the end of a year and the beginning of a new one. We long for sweetness in the new thing. We often need to repent of something in the old thing. And we sound a trumpet to reflect our joy that God is in the transition.

These themes apply to new jobs, as we reflect on the old one and nurture hopes for the new one. These themes also apply to retirement, a new home, and many other new beginnings, including new hobbies, new friends, and new babies and grandbabies.

God of the rhythms of time, thank you for the joy that we feel at new beginnings. Thanks that when we feel sadness or guilt about something that happened in the past, you forgive us and give us a fresh start. At this Feast of Trumpets, help us shout for joy at your goodness. We pray for Jewish people around the world as they celebrate Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays.

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If you’re starting to think about Christmas gifts, I want to recommend my three most recent books. The first two contain dozens of beautiful watercolor illustrations by my talented husband, Dave. For those of you outside the United States, look for these books at the branch of Amazon closest to you so you will pay less postage.

• Friendship, Listening, and Empathy: A Prayer Guide
• Draw Near: A Lenten Devotional
• Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life

Next week: Yom Kippur. Illustration by Dave Baab: Daffodils on our dining room table in New Zealand around the time of Rosh Hashanah

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Lynne M. Baab, Ph.D., is an author and adjunct professor. She has written numerous books, Bible study guides, and articles for magazines and journals. Lynne is passionate about prayer and other ways to draw near to God, and her writing conveys encouragement for readers to be their authentic selves before God. She encourages experimentation and lightness in Christians spiritual practices. Read more »

Lynne is pleased to announce the release of her two 2024 books, both of them illustrated with her talented husband Dave's watercolors. She is thrilled at how good the watercolors look in the printed books, and in the kindle versions, if read on a phone, the watercolors glow. Friendship, Listening and Empathy: A Prayer Guide guides the reader into new ways to pray about the topics in the title. Draw Near: A Lenten Devotional guides the reader to a psalm for each day of Lent and offers insightful reflection/discussion questions that can be used alone or in groups. 

Another recent book is Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian  Life, available in paperback, audiobook, and for kindle. Lynne's 2018 book is Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care for the Twenty-First Century, and her most popular book is Sabbath-Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest (now available as an audiobook as well as paperback and kindle). You can see her many other book titles here, along with her Bible study guides.

You can listen to Lynne talk about these topics: empathy, bringing spiritual practices to life. Sabbath keeping for recent grads., and Sabbath keeping for families and children.

Lynne was interviewed for the podcast "As the Crow Flies". The first episode focuses on why listening matters and the second one on listening skills. 

Here are two talks Lynne gave on listening (recorded in audio form on YouTube): Listening for Mission and Ministry and Why Listening Matters for Mission and Ministry.

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"Dear Dr. Baab, You changed my life. It is only through God’s gift of the sabbath that I feel in my heart and soul that God loves me apart from anything I do."
— a reader of Sabbath Keeping